Hello reader. I spent most of the month reworking my website from scratch and HERE IT IS CLICK ON ME (there’s a secret page that you can access by clicking on the dots between the top header sections—feel free to share the results on your channels (as well as anything else from it, or from these newsletters)).
There’s very little new, but I like this more personal-exhibition-style presentation much more than the standard portfolio affairs we’re all expected to have. I mainly kept the things I like, and got rid of almost all of my sellout work. You can drag scribbles, too.
CLARICE UPDATE
This little idiot jumped out the window in the middle of the night, but thankfully she’s fine, if a little more cautious now, and overall a better cat. I’m not saying that I’m glad that she fell out the window—just trying to be positive after all the drama and the vets and whatnot.
PSYCHOPATHIC OP-ED TIME
I’ve often noticed that the nicest people/animals are the ones who have been traumatized, but managed to recover from their trauma without becoming dysfunctional or turning into abusers themselves. There’s no universal measuring stick for this of course—Kafka’s dad put him on a balcony one time, and that was enough, somehow. Unlike Clarice, he didn’t even fall, and still wrote quite a lot in response. Clarice has so far produced nothing of any value.
ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL
I’ve been imagining a Philip K.Dick/Ballard type scenario where a state-sanctioned Trauma Bureau administers a controlled shock to every single person at a time when, according to their algorithms, the benefits of the intrusion will outweigh the physical and mental damage. Everyone lives in constant fear of that shock. I’ve been thinking that once I’m done with my current graphic novel, I’ll take a break before starting the next one and make another series of short stories like I did before Duchamp, so I can explore very disparate styles and narratives, and maybe this will be one of them. Anyway.
IN OTHER NEWS
I really loved Sam Riviere’s Dead Souls, and I really didn’t want to. The audacity of borrowing the title from the great Russian novel was more than enough to fire up my skeptic tank, but this is a excellent book, and the borrowed title is entirely justified. It’s vicious and funny, and very well written. So, there, I don’t hate everything—I have lots of love for other authors who hate everything.