http://www.vocaltwit.com/4720

...yes, I AM deliriously happy DC Nation has started again, why do you ask?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sHzdsFiBbFc

Have some yule.

http://www.jibjab.com/view/e846H8KSQzGMP4OYzilsXg?utm_campaign=URL+Copy&utm_medium=Share&utm_source=JibJab&cmpid=jj_url

Humbug.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....deer-good1.jpg

Because for the last 8 years, we've gotten a bonus check based on the amount of hours we worked during the year, typically over a hundred for me, and this year, the first under the new ownership, we got...a $25 Wal-Mart gift card.

Y'know, I was KINDA counting on that check that I'VE GOTTEN EVER SINGLE PREVIOUS YEAR TO COVER BILLS DUE TO ME SPENDING MONEY ON PRESENTS FOR RYAN...sorry, the harder I try to rationalize this in my head, the ANGRIER I GET. I mean, it's no "Jams of the World" subscription, but it's still feels like a HUGE FUCKING MIDDLE FINGER AT US FROM THE OWNERS...sorry, sorry...

Am I over-reacting for expecting something that has been regular as clockwork for almost a decade from the new owners, and do people even still GET Christmas bonuses anymore?

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh.....better-person/

Of particular note is the closing:

"So how about this: one year. The end of 2013, that's our deadline. Or a year from whenever you read this. While other people are telling you 'Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!' I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Write for Cracked.

"But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ('I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ...'). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people.

"'I don't have the money to take a cooking class.' Then fucking Google 'how to cook.' They've even filtered out the porn now, it's easier than ever. Damn it, you have to kill those excuses. Or they will kill you."

I know for a fact this is gonna come back and bite me on the ass come December 2013 (looking at you, NaNoWriMo), but I'm gonna do this. Not sure what I'm gonna do YET, but I figure I still have two weeks to figure it out.

...side note: between Cracked.com and "The Daily Show," at what point did lowbrow comedy hubs become the last bastions of integrity and honesty? I'm suddenly recalling the bit from "History of the World: Part 1" where Mel Brooks made the words "comedian" and "philosopher" interchangeable...foreshadowing, or am I finally getting the joke?

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.tumblr.com/

...this is seriously the funniest thing I have seen all weekend.

To quote the Scout in "Meet The Medic": "You will NOT believe...how much this hurts."

Just spent the past 3 hours saving my CoH/CoV characters using the Sentinel program on the distant, off chance something might be done with them some time in the future. Grabbed all the ones my son had made too that were over level 1 (he had a really bad habit of making a character, loading into the tutorial level, then exiting and making another...gee, I wonder who he got that from, says the man who spent 3 hours saving all his own characters? LOL).

I logged in as Grimchurch the other day, same as I said I would...and I could barely last an hour, it hurt so bad. It was so...empty. No chatter, nobody in Pocket D (except a single vaguely Superman-meets-Captain-America toon standing at the bar, alone, drinking and staring into space. Unsettling.) It seemed to be a little more lively today when I was jumping toon to toon to save them, but...I gotta take a break.

The oddest thing? There was no sign of my Samurai P-I character. I'd thought I had at least two versions of her, one on Virtue and one on Pinnacle, but both were gone (and an oddly suspicious looking blank slot remained in the middle of all my Pinnacle toons). Either I deleted her without thinking for some reason sometime during my suicidal depression and forgot...or she got fed up with all the "waiting for Doomsday" BS, packed up her sword and fedora, and headed off for parts unknown herself.

http://skinnyartist.com/9-warning-s.....mateur-artist/

Important note: this article means "artist" as "someone who works creatively," not just someone who draws. Important distinction while reading.

Sorry I've been absent; I've been in a real bad downswing and I figgered I'd do everyone a favor and work through it myself without dragging everyone else into my bullshit. It's JUST a mood swing, nothing actually wrong, which is why I decided to work though it myself, but I should be back to normal shortly.

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/...../thank_you.php

As if I wasn't depressed enough already...yeah, it's a stupid MMORPG, but it's one I devoted years of time and hundreds of dollars to, a constant in my chaotic life that I could go to and lose myself for a while. Hell, I was even a beta tester for City of Villains...the fate of our shared account was even one of the things discussed during the divorce.

I don't like this. So many things that have been vital parts of my life are ending this year. I don't like the precedent being set.

I'll have more to say later. I'm just kinda, well, stunned and really, really bummed. If you ever RP-ed with me on CoH/CoV, please, leave a comment.

Sorry I haven't been around much...in all honesty, my 39th birthday on the 14th hit me harder than expected. No, it's not anyone or anything in particular...in fact, this was actually one of the better birthdays I've had in recent years, with loads of people posting "happy birthday" messages on my galleries and never-used Facebook page, and a few even giving me awesome art of my characters as well.

It was...I dunno, just a case of birthday blues that got out of hand. I've been depressed and avoiding people, snarling at folks, even losing my temper over stupid stuff. I don't have to explain why, I'm assuming, just look at my age and compare it to how little I've actually accomplished in my life; still, that plus the mounting evidence that, if I'm actually gonna survive, I'll need both a second job AND, simultaneously, a full-time school schedule just to bring me up to the same level as you people half my age...well, I haven't been in a good place emotionally, but it's nobody's fault but my own.

I am still working on those commissions I owe, so thanks for your patience. I'm just...really trying to stop worrying and get on with things.

tl;dr, I've been feeling sorry for myself so I stayed offline to keep from exposing people to my bullshit.

Bit of good new to share: as of his last visit with his doctor, it's been determined that my dad's cancer is not affecting his organs and that they caught it early enough that they believe they'll be able to treat it with injections and probably only 4 sessions of chemotherapy. So, yeah, BIG relief here...

I'll post again if anything changes; thanks to those who commented and those elsewhere who wished him well to me "in person" (well, chats are "in person" enough for me, anyway).

...oh, and my mom made certain to remind me that my dad is only 78, not "in his 80s" like I said. In my defense, I lost track of his age back in grade school, and the past 6 or so years have been kind of a blur...but, yes, duly corrected now.

SO...my dad called me yesterday and told me he has multiple myeloma of the kidneys. Basically, blood cancer. It's incurable (cancer, hello?) but treatable with chemo and radiation; my ex's oldest brother has had it for ten years now and he's still doing OK. The concern is that my dad's in his 80s already, so he's basically looking at spending whatever life he has left in treatment.

I...don't know how to react. I don't. It's...like the pragmatic side of me is trying to say not to worry, it's not like he was going to be around much longer anyway (thus giving me the ever-familiar desire to punch myself in the nose for being a dick), while the emotional side is wanting to scream and cry and freak the fuck out. I mean...I was already trying to cope with the realization that my parents aren't gonna be around forever already (fuck you, I just lost my first close family member, my aunt, 2 years ago, it's still a new thing for me...all my grandparents were dead and in another country by the time I was ten). I was already trying to get my head around various job and money issues that have popped up this last month, now...

On top of that, multiple myeloma is passed to the male members of the family, so this means my brother and I will need to keep watch for it, and that my son now has it on BOTH sides of his family.

I feel like even worrying is probably overreacting, but I don't know how to think about any of this.

I feel like I want to scream. This morning (OK, for ME it was morning...I work 10-hour graveyard shifts and that's how my internal clock works), I gave myself a near panic attack when I started mentally ticking off the things I still haven't done in my life and it quickly went from the usual self-pity bullshit (never received a blowjob, never bought a car that wasn't in someone's driveway at the time, etc.) into actual serious stuff like "almost 40 and have no savings account or pension or retirement plan or even a FUCKING CAREER"...it took a few hours of watching old Whose Line Is It Anyway? episodes on YouTube before I finally calmed down enough to think rationally again.

It reminded me of one of my theories about my creative block: that my problem is not a lack of ideas and inspiration, it's that I feel so rushed about doing something successful that I keep undercutting myself. Any artistic type will tell you that the key to failure is to do something solely for money and that those who are truly successful are those who simply do what they love for the sake of doing it...but I wasted so much time that I feel like I CAN'T take the time to find what I love, that I need this NOW and it just doesn't work that way. I can't separate my fears and the tremendous pressure I'm under daily from my art, and it's killing me. I see so much potential that I find myself running back and forth from one project or character or story idea to the other frantically, unable to decide on where to put my energy because, God forbid, what if it's the WRONG project? I've already wasted 9 years of my life on the K-Girls, that's almost decade I will NEVER get back on something that was fun at the time and ultimately led me spiraling down into the ground nose-first and left me with a cast of characters that, no matter how much I may love them, are completely worthless to me since they are all based on other people's properties, not to mention the other more troubling aspects of them.

I have joked about having weekly mid-life crises in the past, but that's exactly what I'm having right now, I think, and unlike most who have these I have NOTHING to fall back on due to injuries and my lack of training. I'm worthless and conflicted and panicking and I just want to go back to bed and hide and hope the ceiling falls in on me.

Everything everyone has ever said about me is right. I'm useless.

EDIT: And, for the record, NO, I'm NOT looking for people to tell me how great they think I am or to give me ego-strokes or shit like that. I'm fucking panicking about the shithole I've driven my life into and, frankly, I don't know WHY I'm posting this but if you think I'm just trying to fish for compliments or something like that, go take a running fuckoff and die, please.

The closest thing I can think of as to what I might want from someone who reads this is, maybe, some advice on how I can stop panicking long enough to get my ass back in gear creatively without constantly stressing about whether I can build my non-existent future from it or not. Best way I can see right now is to just give up, and that's barely a viable option because I HAVE NOTHING ELSE I CAN DO. It's no joke or self-pity thing when I say I'm useless, I AM.

So...yeah.

So I was depressed and stressed about...well, lots of things...but, since I was also watching my son, I figgered ANYTHING was better than sitting around the apartment moping.

So we went and saw "Battleship."

*headdesk*

To be fair, it WAS a little better than expected. It was essentially a tribute to the Navy in the same way ID4 was one for the Air Force...I mean, (SPOILERS!) they even fought the aliens with the fucking USS Missouri during the climax, half-manned by retired vets who prepped the ship to the montage-fodder tune of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."

Yes, I nodded with approval there...so sue me. I love AC/DC, even if they're fast becoming this decade's answer to Smashmouth as far as movies go.

However, that was part of the movie's problem: there was NOTHING NEW HERE. NOTHING. I mentioned ID4? It ripped whole CHUNKS from that film, from the briefly imprisoned alien projecting images of their planet-raping ways into the hero's mind to a character I referred to as "Not-Goldblum" the whole time; worse, it did it SMALLER than ID4. That movie, the entire world was getting thrashed by alien fleets. This one? Hawaii. By five ships and a force field. I won't even bother with all the Bayformers riffs, those have been amply covered elsewhere...I did lean over to my son at one point an commented that I was glad to see Scorponok still had work, tho'.

And just when you actually started to get into the brainless spectacle, they'd throw something from the fucking boardgame in to yank you right the fuck out of it. The missiles the aliens launched at the ships were THE PEGS FROM THE GAME; they even would embed themselves in the decks of the ships before exploding, just like you stick the pegs in the game pieces. The single destroyer took out three alien ships by using tsunami bouys TO PLAY THE FUCKING GAME...yeah, they though we wouldn't notice by using terms like "Echo Niner" instead of "E-9."

And the crowning moment of fail, the quintessential proof that they just didn't give a fuck? You know how many movies nowadays have the little "victory lap" CG ending credit sequence before the actual credits start, usually to some kickass oldies rock song or instrumental score? Guess which song they chose. Come on, guess.

Give up?

"Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

They used an ANTI-WAR PROTEST SONG for the credits sequence of their "AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!" military fantasy film.

GAH...you have NO IDEA how happy I am this movie tanked worse than "John Carter" (according to the last estimates I read about a week back). Don't get me wrong, there are times when this kind of movie can be fun, and I DID find myself digging it at points (I thought it was a nice touch that the boardgame reference plan was concocted by a Japanese captain in defence of Hawaii and that they DIDN'T drive that point into the ground), but it was otherwise just so...LAZY. Like Thor said in the Avengers movie, "You people are so petty...and SMALL."

No, just this movie.

...I admit it. I've been doing that with depressing frequency lately, but I honestly don't mind. It's better to be corrected than to keep laboring under false pretenses. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that that was exactly what I was doing with the second "destroyer" phrase as well as the original.

In my previous, now-deleted journal, I painted a picture of one of my former friends that I'd believed in for years now, one that stated he was abusive, vindictive, and, like most everyone else I knew, that he'd abandoned me in my darkest hours.

What I didn't realize was that he'd been a follower of my deviantArt account for a while and HAD been reaching out to me, sending me links to groups and sites he thought I might be interested in. He never said who he was because he assumed I knew; it was my fault for never bothering to check the account (in my defense, I only just recently started checking out the accounts of my followers). He'd kept his distance because, like I've admitted repeatedly in the past, I was not a very good person in the past...as he himself stated, and I'm sure a few of you who follow me would be inclined to agree, I was "draining" to be a friend with, dismissive and flighty and in constant need of validation from others. He simply didn't want to risk being dragged down again...but, unlike most, HE was actually making an effort.

And I repaid that by calling him a monster.

I doubt anything I post will make amends for that, but I have removed the previous journal and am posting this retraction. I will not post his identity, so don't ask.

I admit when I have wronged someone, and I wronged him badly. I'm sorry.

Yeah, take a guess what it's called, too. Been dicking around Tumblr the past few weeks and finally decided to make one, mainly for reposting amusing or cool shit I find and to stalk writers & artists I like.

...prolly should've posted this journal before the last one, but whatever.

http://kateordie.tumblr.com/post/24.....ce-to-get-from

Whenever I have tried to imagine what it'd be like to live life as a woman, it terrifies the fuck out of me.

It means realizing that things are fucked up, and that over half the population is living in fear for their health and safety almost constantly. Yeah, men don't live in Paradise either. We DO have things just as fucked up in many cases, more so in others. But that doesn't make it RIGHT to piss on people who are trying to get a fair shake, who are trying to make it a little less likely that they will be brutalized and then blamed for it because "they were asking for it," who have their concerns about being portrayed as fuck dolls and shrieking harpies downplayed and written off because "they're just on the rag."

I spent much of my life being blamed by people I loved for things done to other people by someone who first did them to ME, like I somehow encouraged it by merely existing, and this is how many people, men AND women both from EVERY COUNTRY AND RACE AND SECTION OF THE POPULATION, regard women, like it's somehow THEIR fault for being treated like shit just because they didn't "do something" about it. Well, they're TRYING to, and they're getting treated like, well, fuck dolls and shrieking harpies for their trouble.

So fuck your double-standards, you ignorant shits. And if you don't understand why that's wrong, if you still think feminism equals man-hating and wanting all males castrated...then get out of the fucking gene pool. YOU are the problem.

I have laid a lot of scorn, anger, and accusations at my ex-wife's feet the past few years, but I'd like to think I'm also a person who will not shirk my own mistakes...Hell, it's been accurately accused that I practically BATHE in them daily...and that I will always admit when I have unfairly wronged someone. After listening to and mentally chewing over Neil Gaiman's recent commencement speech (reblogged EVERYWHERE, but here's a convenient link if you, like me, are one of the handful who hadn't heard it yet: http://vimeo.com/42372767 ), I think something she once said that effectively killed my drive to write anything for YEARS and is a HUGE contributing factor to my ongoing creative issues...was taken totally out of context by me.

Back when we were still in the early days of our relationship, back when she still could stand to be in the same room as me, I was working on a super-hero comic called "The Storm Riders"; at the time, I felt comics had gotten too bogged down in navelgazing and deconstruction and military-style antiheroics and, after watching stuff like "Independence Day" and other big-budget blockbuster movies, felt the same aesthetic could be applied to comics as well. Huge stories, huge scenes, huge stakes, huge drama...the story I was working on involved a rogue angel attempting to trigger Armageddon and a group of young heroes trying to stop her, culminating in them actually fighting the animated Statue of Liberty in the heart of a celestial hurricane around the blasted ruins of Manhattan and having to sacrifice one of the young heroes to stop her. My plan was to one-up the freakin' "Dark Phoenix Saga" in sheer spectacle...

...and her response was "Alright...why should I care?"

I was destroyed. This was supposed to be a HUGE story, something to "shake the pillars of Heaven," a story intended to "make the gods notice us again" in scale, and she totally dismantled everything with four words:

Why.

Should.

I.

Care.

I never recovered...every story I wrote since then were SHORT, carefully measured exercises in pandering to an already-waiting audience (ie. gratuitous fanfic porn, even if it was of my own characters). The one time I let myself go balls-out, "Omega," was when I was so consumed with my own chemically-enhanced grief that I didn't give a fuck what I wrote. I'd start projects, create characters, get responses...and drop them and move to the next thing. Everything I actually put EFFORT into was fan-work, right down to the K-Girls, just so I'd have an already waiting audience, and once Shin started cutting off the support to them, I lost interest since there was now actual RISK involved. Hell, it's why I refocused on drawing instead of writing, because then I could get the quick fix, give the audience what they wanted, and run before I could be hurt, distracting them with the next picture.

I chickened out. Of EVERYTHING. The increasing instability of everything else in my life just made things worse, to the point where every time I try and do something creative, I hear those same four words screaming in my ear.

Why.

Should.

I.

Care.

...thing is, I never actually paid attention to what else she said. I was too distracted by hearing my grand dreams, my pretensions, being deflated like a noisy balloon. She wasn't saying it to hurt me...she was saying it to try and get me to start putting the story into perspective. I was so wrapped up in the HUGE that the characters were cyphers, hollow comic book archetypes instead of, y'know, actual CHARACTERS. She wasn't insulting me, she was trying to get me to realize what the readers themselves would say, and she'd try and bring it up again whenever I'd try another project.

See, that's the whole POINT of being a writer. That's our entire fucking JOB. We are supposed to hear someone say "Why should I care?" and answer "THIS is why you should care!" We craft these characters, we plot out their lives, we tell these stories to GET the audience to care, and, if we can't, then WE SHOULDN'T BE FUCKING WRITING.

By reacting the way I did, all I did was prove that I wasn't capable of actually being what I'd wanted to be since fucking kindergarten, that I had talent and ambition, but no discipline, no drive to actually succeed.

I get it now. It took me, what, fifteen fucking years, but I finally GET it.

And, to the woman I wrongly accused all these years of destroying me...I'm sorry.

...why is it that, the more time passes, the more I realize that I didn't actually start becoming someone worth being around until after I lost everything that ever mattered to me?

My old one is infested with ass-clowns. Any recommendations?

Unrelated: geez, this new FA interface is ugly as fuck.

Yeah, the more I look at things, the more it seems my best bet of getting any artistic mojo going again will probably involve getting with the program and buying an art tablet. So, does anyone who uses one have any info or recommendations they can give me on them, like prices or programs used for them or preferred brands or anything?

http://www.bleachhentaiworld.com/im......html?id=51510

Not sure what needs to be done, but I felt I needed to get the word out.

See it.

...you'd think I'd have learned not to write these in the middle of the night at work...

So...for the past six and a half years, my life has been an unending struggle against suicidal depression. No surprise there, I regaled my ever-dwindling "fanbase" with this fact constantly. To be fair, it's been more like five years of suicidal depression, then a year of getting my head on straight after going cold turkey off of my obviously-not-working depression meds to...this. Whatever "this" is.

Seriously, I'm...kinda at a loss as to what kind of state I'm in these days. Barring the occasional emo moment like a couple of journals ago, I feel like I'm in some kind of Limbo. Before, it was a matter of finding whatever little slivers of joy or, at least, distraction to claim some respite from the never-ending onslaught of doom and depression, interspersed with constant sleep in order to escape the pain of my futile existence.

And now...I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling and remembering the plots to old cartoons I used to watch. I assume it's an improvement, since I'm no longer craving "the sweet, rapturous release of oblivion" (seriously, that IS how I used to refer to it...BTW, is Nickelback looking for a lyricist? I got notebooks of this stuff). I feel like I need a vacation, but it's not like I even know what to do with myself anymore. I dread going to work, but I've come to dread my days off almost as much. I've become painfully aware of the fact that I have no hobbies, even video games and movies, my ever-reliable distractions, hold no interest for me anymore, and writing and drawing are simply reminders of how much I still owe people and of how little I actually have to work with towards reclaiming some sort of future for myself. I mean, between the years of despair during my marriage and the years of despair OUT of my marriage...when there's no more despair, just anxiety, what's next?

Actually, that's a good way of describing this feeling: one long, endless "What's next?" It's like I'm at a crossroads of some sort, and I'm one wrong turn away from careening down the same old road to destruction as before...but, at the same time, I'm also aware of the fact that there is, somewhere, a light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like some kind of lame cartoon character robot saying "Is this what you humans call...hope?"...but it's been so long since I've felt anything BUT my own "inevitable" doom that I'm honestly uncertain WHAT to call it. It's a different feeling than the stress and worry I still have to deal with, and it certainly FEELS different than the never-ending spiral of self-loathing and existential horror, but I kinda thought hope would feel...I dunno, happier? More rainbowy and singy? Few more cartoon animals at the least? Eh, you know what I mean...after a decade-plus of darkness, I just kinda expected beating my demons to feel less like a draw.

Maybe I should go ahead and make that Thunderduck puppet I was thinking of...damned if I know what the Fuck to do with it when it's finished, but at least it's SOMETHING...