Dear God, Look at that Photo.

Over there, on the profile. Ye Gods! I usually avoid any recent photos, I haven't taken a good photo in years. But that Wilbur wanted me to put my goatee out there after I told Steve Bright that he and I were sort of generic-looking cartoonists with our goatees and our specs, and I did it as a sort of madcap show of solidarity - and also because I claimed my goatee was really distinguished. But it was late and I had the lights turned down and then I fired the camera at me; and well, it's hard to believe, but that is the best photo of the three I took. Nightmare! As Nigel Sutherland kindly pointed out I have little piggy eyes in that photo - well actually I have little piggy eyes all the time, what can you do?


Actually, I wanted two things while I was growing up, I wanted a round window, like Doctor Strange's window, and I wanted gray hair at the sides, like Doctor Strange. I mean I also wanted to be able to do all the magic and stuff, but I wanted the gray hair more. Well, I've got it now - two out of three ain't bad.

Not To Do List:

I swore I would stop watching TV ahead of schedule after I raced ahead with Dexter Season 2, but I didn't. I've watched Weeds Season 3, (Did you know that cartoonist Tony Millionaire's wife is one of the stars of Weeds? She's really good, very funny) which has the greatest season finale in TV history, and 4 now, which is anti-climactic, but then how could any ending compete with the ending of season 3? And I've seen the Dexter Season 3 preair because I couldn't resist it. I'm really annoyed with myself for doing this. It's just that I really want to see the things and they get here so late, you know, we could all be dead by then.

I've been a Mary-Louise Parker fan for ages. I've admitted that I watch chick-flicks and I have a copy of Fried Green Tomatoes, but whilst I like her performance in Boys on the Side, it's a very sad movie and doesn't work as a background piece while I work. She is utterly fantastic in Weeds and it's such a sustained performance over all those hours. Actually the entire cast is brilliant.

Oh here's a to-do, it is 1.10 am and the pea-brained morons working on Fettes Prep school are using a buzz saw. If they are lucky the police will get to them before I do. This is the front of Fettes, the half-wits are working on the Prep-school round the back. The fictional James Bond went to Fettes and the non-fictional Tony Blair did too. I think the people who refer to it as 'the rich mans list D' are just unkind. Hopefully the students have better manners than their ignorant parents who think they can park wherever they wish - they are the most ghastly people. If this night-time nonsense keeps up I'm going to knock-up the Bursar wearing my jimjams and bellow, 'shut the fuck up - I'm on night shift'.



Oh yeah, do something about My Life as a Life Obstacle. Hmmn, I'm kind of bored with it, but it's a weekly so it won't kill me. I actually have a real strip, just about finished. By which I mean I've done the first 50 strips and I've inked the first 24 of those. I don't know what I'll do with it. I may go the conventional route because I think it is really good - much to my surprise. I say that because I didn't plan it out at all, I just sat down and started drawing in. Hmmm.


Oh, and King of the Hill. Comedy genius, brilliant, fantastic, suuuper. I buy the box sets over here but we are at season 4 or 5 or something. I've been watching season 12, it's funnier than ever. It has to be one of the best things on TV and there is some stiff competition.


And then there's the BBC series, Pulling. You know, I've been watching the entire thing again and they are all completely awful people. The series is utterly brilliant. They are frighteningly real and way, way too convincing as drunks. It was co-written by Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly and stars Sharon Horgan as Donna, Tanya Franks as Karen, Rebekah Staton as Louise and Cavan Clerkin as Karl. Can't wait for season 3.

Before I forget, yesterday's Times had a couple of articles that caught my eye, one was about University students being "taught to get up in the morning". Give Students Lessons on how to get up in the Morning, Business tells Universities, by Times Education Editor, Alexandra Frean; Sounds daft, right? It's not, I went to University 40 miles away from my home and it cost me more than it should have in terms of time, sleep, energy, and, importantly, money, because the majority of students are lazy bastards and the staff of my university in particular, Stirling, were thick. Here's what used to happen when you signed up for classes, you added your name to the note on the tutor's door, and of course the first names on the list were the people who stayed on campus, and the people who stayed on campus avoided ALL the EARLY classes - except on Fridays. If they had to turn up on Friday, they took the earliest classes, so they could get drunk sooner. People like me, who chose not to live on campus, had to attend all the 9am classes which meant getting into Stirling Town in time for 8ish, which meant getting, at the latest, a 7.30am train, which meant having to pay the most expensive train-fare and not the reduced cost for travelling after the 7am to 9am peak period. And on Friday, well on Friday's people like me had to attend the latest classes on offer.

Stirling University is probably one of many that unfairly favours resident students by its policy of a free-for-all when it comes to attending classes.

So here is a thought. The students who have to travel to University and not just fall out of bed and roll into a classroom should get to join up for classes first and the students who live minutes away from the classrooms should get second dibs, and should be "encouraged" to attend the morning classes. I mean its not rocket science, if you spend 4 years avoiding getting up in time for 9am classes actually having to get out of bed at 6am will be a bit of a culture shock.

The only time the lazy shits are "expected" to get out of bed is for exams and of course they also get unfairly advantaged on those days because while the travelling students are jammed-up on peak-hour trains and buses, the campus sloths are getting extra cramming time. To say the University staff were always unsympathetic and unhelpful would be an understatement. Honest to God, the lunatics are running the asylum. I can't link to the article because the Times online search engine is useless.

The other article was a paragraph by Mathew Parris from his My Week column (I can't believe it, I'm on to the cartooning part at last) where he talks about the 5am fire alarm that caused the Royal Bath Hotel to be evacuated at 5am on Monday morning. It's the Liberal Democrats conference of course, so the place is crawling with journalists and apparently the Times Editorial cartoonist Peter Brookes, who unlike the barefooted journalists and pyjama wearing hacks, Mathew spotted wearing a "theatrical black Fedora". Well, what the Editor of the paper should do is take that "theatrical black Fedora" from Peter Brookes head and thrash him soundly with it because his cartoon in yesterday's Times was pointless, lazy, unoriginal, uninspired and stupid - and frankly, a waste of paper. Again, I can't link to it because the searches don't make sense. Put it this way, it's not quite as bad as the Gordon Brown in a Damien Hirst fish tank cartoon that was so unoriginal that the Edinburgh Evening News's "cartoonist" Frank Boyle (very embarrassing work), and others, also used the same dull motif.