Well, shit

(modified late Monday night, after work)

I keep sitting down to do this post, and I've had this constant string of two, three, five minute time wasters keep popping up to drag me away from the keyboard again. It's aggravating because, of course, I'm running under the whip; while my shift at work doesn't start until 11:30, the vagueries of the local mass transit system require me to catch my bus in less than half an hour. So those two, three, five minute time stealers are just PISSING ME OFF.

The last one -- I'd just gone into Blogger to log on when I heard this huge racketing crash come from somewhere behind the apartment.
So I got up, cursing, and went out to the kitchen. Didn't see anything at first, so I laboriously unlocked the back door (it has two locks; opening them from inside is a pain, from outside is nearly impossible, and it's all futile, since the back door is half glass and anyone who wants inside badly enough can do it fairly easily, so we're just frustrating ourselves, but I digress) and stepped out onto our tiny phone booth sized back porch... and still didn't see anything... until I noticed that a large piece of plywood we've had propped up against the left wall was now lying prostrate on the porch floor itself. Well, there's the crash, I thought to myself... and then noticed that the far left panel of SuperGirlfriend's big grill (which hasn't worked for a while now) was smashed into tiny little plastic fragments, apparently by the downward passage of the top edge of the plywood.

The gas tank for the grill is right under that panel. It didn't look damaged. I did what I could to check and see if it might be leaking, but I couldn't hear or smell anything. I guess it's okay.

8:36 am and I have about fifteen minutes...

Mostly, what I wanted to do with this entry was draw attention to the restored link scroll on the right side of this page. When I first jumped from my previous blog A Brown Eyed Handsome Man to this one's first incarnation, I did it specifically to shed a couple of trolls who were aggravating the crap out of me over there. And at first I put up the links scroll, but within a few days one or two people who had been lurking at the old blog without posting showed up and proclaimed how easy it had been to find the new page, simply by using a search engine to look for links I'd had posted to the old one. So, I ditched that link scroll.

I'm on better terms with one of my former trolls now, and the other one recently sent me a note saying he was resigning from the troll business, so I figure, what the hell. It's not like anyone pays a lot of attention to this thing anyway, but I may as well maximize my chances.

If you're a BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER fan, I've got some stuff for you. Slayer's Handbook Part I and Part II are specifically designed for fans who, like me, may have wondered exactly how it is that Spike and Angel can both declare they don't breathe while lighting up cigarettes, or why vampires who can see perfectly in total darkness nonetheless light their underground lairs with torches.

On the other hand, BUFFY fans who believe the seventh and last season was brilliant, flawless and in all ways wonderful should check out my review of that particular season to receive the bitch slapping they so richly deserve.

If you're just looking for a quick laugh, I recommend scrolling all the way down on the right to MISERABLE CARTOONS OF THE EARTH, and checking out the links there. My stuff is always badly drawn, but usually pretty hysterical, especially if you're a superhero comics fan like me.

Anyone interested in seeing any of the stuff I've worked up over the years to try and break into comics writing (back in those heady days before an old college buddy turned pro comics writer libeled me all over the Internet, pretty much torpedoing even the dim, tenebrous, all but nonexistent chances I might have had at one point) should scroll down to Miserable Comics Scripts and Proposals of the Earth, where you can feast your brain on such gems as my Fantastic Four 2099 proposal, which was rejected unread by an editorial staff that had begged its readership for ideas for more 2099 books... apparently, they just didn't want any they might have to pay someone for.

Silver Age superhero fans may well enjoy 16 pages of script for Team Venture, a concept that Mike Norton and I collaborated on long ago and far away.

For grim n' gritty Modern Age fans, here's 7 pages of Amazonia, a concept I created specifically for Nancy Champion and I to work on long ago. There's also a few pages of an alternate draft, , a few more pages of yet another alternate draft, and finally, the Amazonia timeline. Unfortunately, I don't have any of Nancy's lovely pencil sketches or page layouts to share, which would be much more fun to look at than a lot of typing.

Finally, the grimmest, grittiest thing I've ever worked on, Seraphim 66, including not only links to the central timeline and character descriptions, but also ten pages of really badly drawn stick figure page layouts!

And if that hasn't tired you out yet, well, there's MORE. Robert A. Heinlein fans can check out Robert A. Heinlein, Mark Evanier, and Me, or the more straightforwardHeinlein: The Man, The Myth, The Whackjob, or even go straight to Bill of Goods to watch me get the crap smacked out of me by a very articulate Heinlein fan who took great issue with the thesis of the previously mentioned article.

And on the subject of watching people beat the baby jesus out of me in semi-public, you'll rarely find a more unintentionally hilarious comment thread than the one where a bunch of Warren Ellis fans take me to task (behind my back, of course) for dissing their favorite comics stories, and I respond in kind. It's all in JOHN JONES: THREAT OR MENACE, and honestly, it's one of the funniest things I've ever written.

And, on the subject of funny stuff, if you like your humor decidely politically incorrect, you could do worse than read Ask A Bastard, where I make up idiotic questions and then answer them even more so. And, on the other hand, if you're high as a kite on goofballs, or just want to dress that way, you really should check out The Adventures of Father O'Brannigan, an indescribable textual round robin between Yr. Humble Narrator and the Late Great Jeff Webb, guest starring a great many fictional characters we had no right to abuse so strenuously, as well as a certain Eisner Award winning comics writer, who at the time we slapped out this thing was sitting at a computer four feet away from us working on a precis of his own and ignoring our demented chortling, much to his later chagrin.

I'm pleased with everything I wrote under my John Jones, Manhunter from Marathon, IL pseud a few years back. But only a few pieces there make me actually proud. Probably the best of those is Across The Fourth Dimension: The Evolution of the Superhero and the Superheroic Continuum.

And my time for this morning is up; gotta motor.

It's occurring to me that the title for this blog entry may be unfortunately apt...