John Aegard

seven years of wedlock

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:44:42 GMT

How can this be?

I remember so much of it with this weird clarity that makes it all feel totally recent.

Didn't we just meet like last month?

Wasn't it last week that Midge tried to overdose on prescription painkillers?

Didn't Plan Biology begin yesterday afternoon?

I love our whirlwind, sweetie. Long may it whirl.

suck my facebook

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:42:48 GMT

This is that "random 25 things" meme and I'm reposting it from the other place.

This is supposed to be about me, but I guess it came out to be more about other people.

1. The Colonel and I grew up together. We were world-weary even as teenagers, and we spent many nights reminiscing about the good old days, back when Spinal Tap was real and Iceland was fictional.

2. Later, when we were grown men with lives and responsibilities, the Colonel and I hiked the Arctic. Before we set out, the Colonel made me swear an solemn oath that I would not, under any circumstances, cremate him.

3. When he succumbed to the cold, I burned his body with gasoline from his snowmobile.

4. Don't judge me. I invite you to take a corpse and a handy accelerant and go sit on a glacier in the full view of the Northern Lights. We'll see how far your civilized values take you.

5. The Colonel's boy was so devastated by his father's death that he curbed all the family possessions and fell in with Trash Gnostics.

6. Posing as a Gnostic from a remote monastery, I tailed my surrogate nephew, vowing that he would not be mistreated or swindled.

7. The Trash Gnostics draw energy from the human love contained in discarded things. Their most potent artifact was Buddy, a corduroy-skinned teddy bear they'd dumpster-dived from an orphanage.

8. They denounced me and chased me off when they discovered I could not not power so much as a cool-burning xmas light with Buddy.

9. Afterwards, penniless, I wandered for a time, until I impulsively applied for work with a crew of abattoir berserkers.

10. I still remember that job interview quite well. "What, would you say, is your weakest quality?" the pretty young HR girl asked. "Sometimes I'm not genuine," I told her.

11. The was much to like about that gig: the 24/7 speed metal, the ritalin-soaked lumber remnants we chewed on, the night jousts with the golf-cart bandsaws, Bacon Pie Night....

12. ...but after I learned that they were a Tory outfit, and that their raids on other slaughterhouses were really just anti-organization thuggery, I felt my conscience rise. I emptied their bank accounts, sabotaged the machines with sugar, and slipped away in the night.

13. Determined to enjoy my riches before I suffered the berserkers' inevitable revenge, I bought a caboose and spent a glorious summer caboosing around the country.

14. The most prestigious train that one can caboose is the 85mph United Parcel Service super-expresses, the ones that carry the Treasury department's critical infrastructure endorsement. These are preauthorized to run down anyone who grosses less than $286,000 annually.

15. On Labor Day weekend of that year, I pooled the last of my fortune with some other enthusiasts and we leased a transcontinental all-caboose train.

16. What I had envisioned as a grant festival of the like-minded was instead an awkward, lonely disaster. The hobby draws solitary people. Many never emerged from their cabooses, prefering to sit inside and read Facebook.

17. To add insult to injury, our train ran barely seven hundred miles over the whole holiday weekend. I had foolishly promised that everyone would have their fair turn as the True Caboose. To accomplish this, our train had to waste many precious hours shuffling around bleak suburban marshaling yards.

18. Glad to escape the railway, I resumed my academics that fall. My new advisor, the Dame Professor, was a coffee drinker and a delight. Outside the lab, she was wonderful enough -- sly, sharp-witted, and playfully caustic. Within the lab, the pure glee that experimental science kindled within her was blindingly apparent -- and contagious.

19. After spending just five minutes in her presence, I knew I would love her forever and that I would rather airdrop a burning supertanker into the last rainforest than risk her disappointment.

20. I believe these feelings were reciprocal. But alas, her academic career had stunted her somewhat. She could only express herself institutionally, as if the University was her exoskeleton. She feasted me with grant money and always shielded me from the capricious investigations of the administration. It was love -- clumsy, poorly-executed love, but love nonetheless.

21. One night, late in fall quarter, she summoned me to her laboratory and told me that she thought I seemed melancholy and lonely, and perhaps lacking something special. As my heart rose and my blood roared in my ears and my mind spawned daydreams of the loving bliss to come, Dame Professor clapped her hands and presented me with my intended.

22. Seeing it, I thought that it could be charitably described as a 'good effort.'

23. Had this observation been spoken out loud, Dame Professor would have suffered an intolerable loss of face. Thinking only of her, I took my intended's hand and did my best to act out the expectations placed upon us.

24. My only consolation during those bleak days -- and I dwelt on this constantly -- was the hope that Dame Professor would someday do more than watch us dispassionately from the window. I tried to subtly invite her, variously turning the blinds open, tying back the curtains, brewing strong, fragrant coffee, and finally leaving a friendly post-it note begging her to join us. She would only observe.

25. On one count, my intended functioned as designed. No matter what combination of lightning bolts and mood tonics had been applied to it -- for Dame Professor was endlessly tinkering -- it sincerely wanted the best for me.

26. After it stepped in front of the poultry euthanization-wand, downswung by a bounty hunter in the pay of the abbatoir berserkers, I mourned it sincerely and left the University.

27. And so, today, being at loose ends personally, with my feelings strangely tangled, my convictions put in question, and my person hunted in earnest, I have signed up for Facebook.

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:56:07 GMT

Giftwise, my birthday party was ne plus sweet. I got a flask full of Irish moonshine and a Braille issue of Playboy, which will be a comfort to me when I drink myself blind. Also received some D&D figs -- the rare Voracious Ice Devil has already slotted himself into an upcoming encounter -- and a cute little box of wine, and a Poopa Troopa, who I am going to seal in Lucite for personal reasons.

Morgan and Scopp rocked the youtube some, as they are wont to do, and I saw

for (I think) the first time.

(actually, maybe not the first time -- because waiting on a hillside for a spaceship to drop off a sweetie does seem like an accurate forecast of my teenage years, so perhaps I assimilated this video young and was just acting it out in high school.)

Also, J. took a picture of me at the last party. It showcases my ~~two~~ three best features, so thanks man.

I love my friends. Getting older ain't so bad when you do it in good company.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:51:02 GMT

I moved to Seattle in 1999, just a few months before the WTO meetings.

Since then, the sound of choppers overhead has always made me think of the night when the cops rampaged up into my neighborhood, firing off pepper spray in Exxon Valdez quantities.

Last night, when I got home from Seth's house at around 11:00 and heard choppers east of me, over Broadway, I knew they were good choppers, looking down on something special.

From now on, when I hear a helicopter, I will think of being packed in with varina8 and desolina and (hundreds? thousands?) of other lovely people at the intersection of Pike and Broadway, dancing to Don't Stop Believin' while total strangers pressed cheap beer into my hands and the police looked on peacefully.

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:41:49 GMT

I'll be down at APE, the Alternative Press Expo, this weekend, hawking Comfort Guides and Greeters. I'll have a couple brand-new non-Greeter non-CG things as well.

I'll share those here shortly, but right now I want to mention that I've donated all 2008 proceeds for the Matrimony Comfort Guide to the No On 8 campaign, and I encourage all you people out in friendsland to kick in as well.

There are people out there who think that the world will be better if they can destroy George Takei's marriage. These people need to be taught how to fucking behave. No On 8 is doing their last-minute ad blitz right now, and can definitely use some extra bucks.

kids = all right

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:47:18 GMT

Apocalyptica was completely awesomelyptica, exceeding my already sky-high expectations. Their covers were fierce, their originals seductive, their stage antics charming, and they gave us four encores.

And remember back when I asked what could be more metal than Priest's double album about Nostradamus? At the time, I thought it was a rhetorical question, but tonight I got my answer before Apo even took the stage. We spotted this one kid, standing alone in the middle of the madding pre-show throng, serenely reading a library copy of THE FOREVER WAR, which he held up at eye level to catch what little light there was in the room.

I'm sorry, but even if your parents named you Belial and you like to blow up hospitals while drinking a bitter mix of wine and ash from Jerry Falwell's purloined skull, you are less metal than that kid. That kid is pure.

Oh, here's a pic of the band from 2005:

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:14:31 GMT

Inspired by the Confurvatives, the Conservative Furries...

"We shared the dream again last night. As always, she comes at me like a Stuka, but this time, while the pack scatters, I am steady, my feet rooted in the muskeg. Her bullet, which like her is gentle and irresistible and absolutely real, takes me in the breast.

"Wings flashing, she soars overhead. In the slow-time of dream death I can see past the tip of her rifle barrel, behind its scope to her amber eyes -- canine eyes, so close to my own. We are so alike, she knows me so well. Especially, she knows what I need, in that moment, and she kindly grants it.

"In that one gesture, so brief and fleeting and yet so authentic, I learn I have no use for the material world anymore, except for my lungs and my throat and my lips, because they are howling grateful tribute at her, telling her that my Heaven is this moment, forever: my howl and her wink.

"She tosses a flare from the plane, to mark my place for when she comes for me. I breathe in its acrid smell deeply, trying to fix myself in the dream, but you cannot stay in a dream past your death. I must be content knowing that when she comes to find me, in our dream-Alaska, my paw will be raised for her."

(confurvatives found via Metafilter, and yeah, I posted this there too. No favorites yet, but the post was pretty stale by the time I got there.)

The Official Quote Of Today Could Be Different Than Yesterday

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:07:16 GMT

I spent a little bit of time at the Obama state HQ in Columbus yesterday. It was jaw dropping. They had taken over an old mega-church.

next session, puppies

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:17:20 GMT

(I apologize, but this will make no sense to people who aren't huge dorks like me)

I am DMing Keep on the Shadowfell for our gang. D&D4E is a fun game in general, but Shadowfell is rather dry, with flat NPCs, a next-room-next-monster rhythm, and a general absence of wow.

Here's an example: (SPOILER WARNING) the module includes a spiffy poster-sized battlemap of a dragon tomb dig, complete with a skeletal dragon curled round some treasure. Very nice stuff. The associated encounter requires that the party prevent an Orcus cultist from ... retrieving a semi-magical hand mirror that was buried with the dragon?

Zzzzzz.

In my own private Shadowfell, the Big Bad Undead Daddy is digging that dragon skeleton out so he can frikken REASSEMBLE and ANIMATE it into a howling reptile death ghost. I decided to use this as my troubleshooting encounter, the one I would bust out if the party got into more trouble than it could handle.

Last night, they totally got owned by Irontooth. But instead of TPKing them, I drugged the four survivors up and sent them to join the involuntary labor force at the bone dig. Then I told them they had to individually choose between rolling on an escape skill challenge or a sabotage-the-ritual skill challenge. And they couldn't dither about it, because all the while, the dread cold-lightning radiance of the surrounding abyssal thickets would be leeching away their souls.

(Thanks to John Harper for his cool continuing-damage skill challenge rules)

I think the guys were a bit rattled by Irontooth, because only one of them was tempted to be a hero and try to screw up the ritual. The rest organized a fast escape into the wilderness. That night, while they huddled against the spring chill, they saw a blaze of light from the direction of the tomb and heard the unholy shriek of something ancient and terrible being reborn...

Damn, this is fun. I just hope that no one feels abused. The Irontooth encounter was rough, and the undead dragon might have looked like me doing a victory lap. So yeah, next session, puppies.

rent-a-ruminant!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:54:00 GMT

They are using goats to tidy up the grassy freeway-abutting areas near our apartment.

It was odd seeing the disaffected city people clustered up against the fence and cooing over the goats. Normally people in this neighborhood only behave that way around a serious car accident.

Midge wanted to go visit with the goats and perhaps put them in a formation.

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:06:55 GMT

Normally one should treat a youtube page titled "D&D Fan Film" like an animal striped with yellow and black. But this is an exception:

The moment at 1:54 is pretty damn choice.

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:19:40 GMT

Following up on my last post, regarding Judas Priest's Nostradamus...

HOW COULD THIS BE MORE METAL? HOW COULD IT??

itsmrwilson asserts that this is a rhetorical question. But it is not. Because I just discovered that Rob Halford sings the chorus to "Pestilence and Plague" in LATIN. Latin is how you make something more metal.

[edit, long after the fact: uh, it's Italian, not Latin. but it's still pretty metal.]

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:30:53 GMT

Judas Priest's newest release is a double-disc concept album about Nostradamus.

HOW COULD THIS BE MORE METAL? HOW COULD IT??

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:13:15 GMT

Hellboy was all scattered but I approve of it nonetheless because I automatically approve of any movie where Elric gets beaten up.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:14:13 GMT

holy crap. It's been a decade since I went to Clarion.

YOUR FUN IS STUPID

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:12:56 GMT

Headphones on this morning, so I can ignore the cluster of twenty or so PMs who are fussing loudly over a new iPhone in the next cube over.

Apparently supplies are tight and the guy who got one is a bit of a hero. Are they not making any more after today?

rocking the lonely dorkfun

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:48:16 GMT

First, the General Interest part of the post: If you google imagesearch for 'haeckel plates' you will see the crazy beautiful.

The context, which is less general interest: Wil and I are gearing up to play a mini-campaign of Starmada. I love Starmada. It's simple but tactically rich and has a very nice light set of campaign rules. And it doesn't come with a setting, so you can field ships from whatever race you can imagine. Last time out, my guys were the Machine Socialists, and they named their ship classes after experimental musicians. So I had Sun Ra class missile cruisers and Beefheart class escorts and Super Zappa smart missiles and Link Wray fast carriers. Like I said, fun.

My new guys are the Weaponized Migrators. Their original Migrator ancestors were peaceful, long-lived spacedwelling megafauna who were content to travel their 1.75My galactic migration cycle, sustained by the space dust that filtered into their biological total-conversion furnaces. But some other race saw the Migrators as a useful tool, and they poisoned a pod with a retroviral / nanotech cocktail that transformed them into breeders of slave warships.

That war is long over and forgotten. Both sides were wiped out. Now, the transformed Migrators have regained their independence. They are seeking the waypoints of the forgotten migration cycle of their ancestors.

Along the way, they must necessarily indulge in a little piracy to sustain their needs. Thus, conflict.

So if I'm gonna play tabletop with these guys, I need some counters. I love making game tokens out of found art on the Internet. After a few hours' poking around jellyfish images, I asked V if she could recommend some funky looking animals to use for spaceship art. Thus, Haeckel. How can that stuff *not* be in space. I'm going to have trouble picking which images to use....

EDIT: Looks like wikipedia has a huge collection of Haeckel plates

vs. Olympia Comics Fest 2008

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:08:52 GMT

Oly was the exact opposite of Emerald City. Instead of a big, frenetic room soaked in howling 60Hz florescents, we got a nice, intimate nightclub with big windows and mostly natural light. It was very chill and I had more opportunities to visit with readers and fans than I usually do.

On the way down, I thought, "hey, I'm going to Olympia, I wonder if I'll run into Jackson Tegu from story-games.com?" And blam, there he was, on stage as the bass half of a drum-and-bass duo that did a short set to start off the con. Very sophisticated, and a nice touch. Had a good visit with Jackson after the set and sent him away with some goodies.

Aside from Mr. Tegu, the highlight of the show was meeting Terrence Nowicki, a fiercely goddamn talented political cartoonist -- he's sharp, funny, and his line art is badass.

(I apologize that these are watermarked all to hell, but that's what the MCT campus syndicate gives to nonsubscribers)

There are more Nowicki cartoons at MCT Campus Syndicate.

My own sales were bigger than I anticipated -- 33 CGs and 7 Greeters, which is not bad at all for a $14 table. I don't know how many attendees there were, but I'd put it somewhere between 100 and 200, including exhibitors.

I wore the Maiden t-shirt from Monday's show and made at least a couple sales when people came over to talk to me about it. Lesson: dress in something that will start conversations.

Thanks to Chelsea and her team for a great show -- I'll definitely drop by again next year.

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:41:28 GMT

Some goodhearted Canadian shot some pretty decent-sounding footage of my Maiden show and posted it on youtube. The future is fucking awesome!

At every great show, a song will leap forward. I'll be meh about it before the show, but after the show it'll be a new favorite. The Mountain Goats' Letters from Belgium is like that; so are Nick Cave's Hallelujah and Concrete Blonde's Happy Birthday. The Iron Maiden version is Revelations:

The little dig at the Osbournes is funny. Bruce hasn't moved on from Ozzfest, I guess.

I wore my Maiden t-shirt to work today; two people on the street threw me horns. Bruce is right to call it a family.

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:14:51 GMT

Congratulations to George Takei and his fiancé!

Tim Hardaway must be heartbroken.

(via jeliza)

UP THE IRONS

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:17:04 GMT

Y'know what the best part of a great metal show is? the part where the show pumps the crowd up so high that you're high-fiving total strangers.

Bruce Dickinson can still sing like a 21-year-old. He's up against a billion watts of amplified guitar and drums, and he dominates. To think they once thought they'd even be a band without him.

And while he's wailing from the very pit of his abs, he's also capering around the six-acre bi-level Maiden stage. There is some serious aerobic fitness going on with that man.

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:24:09 GMT

Courtesy of the good people at promasque.com:

Yet another reason soccer will never be as good as hockey: less pufferfish content.

♥ mastodon ♥

Sat, 17 May 2008 17:20:36 GMT

Legoish spaceships, Mr. Roboto masks, druid capes, dinosaurs, world sandboxing, nuclear test footage, twilight-zonish framing story...I love it when bands pander to Twelve-Year-Old-Me.

For extra deluxeness they even kicked in some wiggling long-tailed trilobitey guys and what looks like a rhino, so Victoria will like it too. Family friendly!

As well, the guitar lead at 0:28 is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. And the video sync with the breakdown at 2:57 is choice.

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:10:38 GMT

Emerald City
Comic Convention reports
rendered en haiku

vs. Emerald City 2008

Mon, 12 May 2008 03:07:48 GMT

First, I'm horrendously indebted to Ron Chan, Paul Tobin, and Colleen Coover for squeezing me into Fort Periscope and then listening to my pull my own string over and over and over and over again. Thanks guys! I registered today for ECCC 2009 so I won't have to do the embarrassing couchsurfing thing next year.

Greeter sales were 46, exactly the same as at Stumptown. CG sales fell, though, to 174. The positive spin is that it's nice to see the relative share of Greeter rising as I figure out how to sell it. I sealed at least five G sales with a new pitch line: "It's like if Harry Potter were making minimum wage."

I met a few folks who'd purchased G's in the past from me and were keen to see the G3 continuance, so that's awesome. I also had one all-table sale. It was a good one, too. The guy was browsing all my offerings very slowly, and this normally indicates that I've got a nonbuying reader on my hands. Just as I was about to quote my price list at him—that's my usual move-along prompt—he asked softly, "How much for everything?"

Also had a goddamn near-stampede when three guys who'd picked up Restrooms and Matrimony at ECCC2007 heard the corner of my pitch and rushed over to grab up the rest of the set. That was unbelievable. It was like Altamont, though nobody died. LESSON: I'm starting to get a reputation, so a big, flashy, prominent presence will really help to move product. I had no flaming loo this time out, due to the space crunch.

Starwatching: sold a Matrimony and a Pirates to Gigi Edgley at the very end. I gladly would've comped her, but that didn't come through the usual vocal paralysis I get when I try to tell a Farscape actor how much I loved their show. When she had a bit of trouble locating the final dollar for me, and I was struggling to tell her that she didn't need to pay, her handler immediately swooped in and donated one. Nice perk, that.

Didn't see JMS, Jamie Bamber, Wil Wheaton, or any of the other celebs around. Bummer; I wanted to show JMS how I totally ripped the G3 cliffhanger from a Babylon 5 episode.

I did see synabetic and I yelled "STEVEN SAUNDERS" at him in my best theater voice, but he was being squired around by geekmachine and her sweetie (whose LJ handle I am not certain of) and he did not hear. Steve, I've got product for you! Send me your snail address and I'll set you up!

Moneywise, the ECCC gross was about 70% of the Stumptown gross. Since there were 4x as many people at ECCC than at Stumptown, this needs to be thought about:

1) The competition for the fan dollar was super intense. There are huge names at the show, limited edition prints, sketches to be had, stacks and stacks of collectable toys.... Especially early on Saturday, people were unwilling to commit money before seeing everything. I gave at least 100 business cards to people who were shortlisting stuff on a first pass through the floor.

2) spanambula and I were working the same table. Typically I get my own space and he sets up with Periscope, and we double our footprint. This time we were both in with the Scopers. At a con where we couldn't possibly pitch to everyone, a double presence would've helped immensely.

3) ECCC has a much less indie crowd, more a Spiderman and Batman kind of crowd. People were there to see their faves, not shop for new things from weird locals. Especially early on Saturday, the congoers would racewalk down the aisles with their eyes fixed at the level of the name placards that the con had taped to the front of the tables, looking for famous folks. Lesson: put funny jokes down there.

4) The limited frontage of my Saturday table made it difficult for folks to browse, so I couldn't pitch to as many people as I usually do. Plus, normally I lay all my CGs out flat so people can look at them without picking them up. Some people are reluctant to pick stuff up at a con; that's a tiny step towards committing to buy it. Having browsables out is a great way to get people over that hump. Only problem is that browsables consume an enormous amount of table space.

I had a full table for my stuff on Sunday and sales increased slightly from Saturday even though the Sunday crowd was at most half of the Saturday one. LESSON: register early, goddammit. Which I did today.

By APE, if all goes as planned, my browsables will overwhelm my space, so I'm going to have to build something that'll display browsables above the table -- there was a guy behind us with a very nice PVC pipe framework and curtains that turned his table into a puppet theater. Maybe I'll put something together like that for APE. Jumbo-size laminated CG gags and selected Greeter panels that fit together like a trailer might be the way to go there, with some kind of arcade-game marquee directly overhead. Maybe 12V xmas tree lights too. Call it the Comfort Cathedral or something.

So the spring con season is pretty much over. I'll be down in Olympia next month for the Oly comics fest, but I don't have to reprint or do anything new for that show, so it'll be very chill. I need a tiny vacation from comics. Not a long one, tho -- the G4 script needs to be finished, and from the sound of it I'll have three new projects debuting at APE -- G4, plus another Comfort Guide, plus a minicomic that spanambula and I have been talking about for awhile.

Speaking of artists -- thanks so much to spanambula, porkshanks and Kat the Greeter Artist for working on my stuff. I really really really love selling comics at conventions, and without you guys none of this would've happened at all.