I'm doing something a little different this week, since there was good reaction to the expressionistic shading on one of the strips last week. So, it's not a comic strip now, it's a DRAMATIC ADVENTURE strip. Woo! Which also means a larger format to better see the finer linework.

So, at what point to you exceed mere broad caricature and pass into the realm of grotesque, hateful stereotype? I'm gonna have to say about fifty miles back.

Boy, I'll bet you've never seen a strip about a street crazy wearing a sandwich board before!

Hey it's another highly cliched standard issue cartoon situation! Make of that, and it, what you will.

Wow, here's an idea that's positively incandescent with originality! Ah, well, at least it's on time. If you pretend that last week never happened.

Okay, so my temp agency contact gives me a call today (I did as recommended and laid a guilt trip on her yesterday) to talk about a possible assignment. The hours are a bit strange, 10pm to 6am, but that sounds alright - I haven't done graveyard too much before, but I tend toward nightowlish. The location would be great, too. The Austin Convention Center, which is easy walking distance from the house. At this point I start to get a little apprehensive, because I know that the CC is being used to house survivors (NOT REFUGEES!) of the Katrina flooding. Apparently, my duties would be to just be a 'presence' in one of the six rooms where people are being sheltered. I wouldn't be security - no weapon, no badge - just there to answer questions and make people feel safer. I probe for some further info about this. Would there be security? Yes, the APD will be there. How many people are going to be staying in this room? She doesn't know. What would I be able to do if they need something? She doesn't know. She keeps using the word 'presence' to describe what I'm doing.

Eventually, (and I'm reading between the lines here, so I could be totally mistaken) it sounds like I'm keeping these people from leaving. I'm enforcing curfews. I'm being asked to be a fucking guard at what amounts to a concentration camp.

I turned down the job. I need the money. Maybe if I was there, I'd be taking the place of some other guy who wouldn't be so nice about the whole thing (although my niceness has been known to disappear without much warning, so...) Maybe I could use this as an opportunity to sketch and document these folks, and get some art out of it, and help cheer up kids who have lost everything by showing someone is interested in them for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that they've suffered this terrible loss. Shit, maybe I could write about the experience and pitch it to the Hat. But nothing was able to get me past the idea that I would be there in a repressive capacity, not to help. That's something that I just don't want to do.

I just came home from a shift got the news that Chessie Bear, aka Cheesey Chessie has had a stroke. I've been in the kitchen, where he's lying down, talking to him and trying (and failing) to get him to eat some cheese (his favorite treat) and mostly crying. He'll sometimes lift his head up to look around, but he won't pull his right-side paws away if you handle them. The most he'd do for me is lick at an ice cube I held to his lips. He doesn't seem to be in any pain, but he's got all his toys right next to him and won't nudge or chew or lick them at all. He's lying on his right side, and his left eye will sometimes dart around, but it's so beady and black it's hard to tell where he's looking.

I've watered a spot in the back yard to soften up the soil. I'll start digging in the morning. Jude, my landlady, has had him for a long time, but we don't know exactly how old he is. Probably 15 or 16 years.

Well, it's in before midnight, you gotta say that for it.

More self-referential bs.

Whaddaya do when you're all out of ideas? Cynically rip off Create a loving tribute to one of your heroes!