02.26.07/01:25  no need for a post                     

But I'm doing one anyway.  Some would call it progress.  Plus, I know that the suck of this post will soon be wiped clean by the onset of March, which will come with the archiving of everything you see here right now.  So it all works out.

That's what the 'logo' for the new comic will sort of look like.  The background will be white, so it will be a little more integrated into the flow of the comic.  Also, the size is only at 75 percent, so the detail will show up much better.

As for life in Japan, there's not a whole lot to tell you.  My intense drinking-and-clubbing lifestyle is starting to wear on me a little, so I think I'm going to take it easy for a bit.  It's hard to stay genki every day when you come home at 7am.

02.20.07/15:22  pooping in the dark                    

After long enough, you start to see it as a metaphor for life, and that's depressing.  My lightbulb burned out, and it took me a week to get a new one.  Now I can read again.  It's a big relief.  Oh...right...the update.  So, I finally got around to doing something with depravity's edge.  If I like it enough, I will give it its own site.  Here's the look I'm thinking of.  Let me know what you think.

And I tracked a song for Quinn yesterday, but it didn't turn out so well.  I miss the convenience of my old recording studio.  Also, the scanner and printer were nice.  It was nice to have stuff in my past life...

[suspended (matt nathanson cover)] .mp3 file

As for Japan, there's nothing to tell you.  Japan is very Japanese, work is very workish, and my Japanese speaking ability is very suckish from never being able to speak Japanese.  I did go to that Roppongi place this weekend, and it didn't disappoint my expectations for horribility.

02.07.07/16:02  in the works                           

There's a lot going on this month.  Monday night, I took my guitar to the Pink Chameleon and jammed with the staff and the regulars.  Though they're all far better than I am at this puzzle called guitar, it was good times.

The other night, Yoshida-san brought back some presents from Tokyo Disneyland, including this goofy white hat for his girlfriend (?) and strawberry chocolates.  We all took turns wearing the goofy hat and posing for pictures.  Good times.

And in other news, there's been this Coca-cola promotion involving 80's style glass bottles with YO-YO's INCLUDED for only ONE DOLLAR (125 yen...)!  So I've been stocking up on them and giving the yo-yo's to my young students and teaching them how to do yo-yo tricks. 

And, let's see...what else...?  Ah, yes, there's been some progress made on the new album.  While it's not quite ready to see daylight, the curious amongst you can go check out the current status of the project by clicking here.  I warn you, lots of links are not done yet and most of it's not been tweaked.  Good luck.

Aside from the new album, there's another project in the works, one I'm not ready to say much of anything about yet, except that it's fomenting in my mind and sometime soon it will burst forth with new imagery and fantasticness, the likes of which have never been seen this side of the milky way.  Or I could be exaggerating...but it's unlikely.

That's all I've got for today.  If you happen to live in or near Pittsburgh, bundle up, I hear it's cold there.  Yesterday it was something like 55 degrees F here.  Not bad for the coldest month of the year, right?  Throwing those beans for setsubun must've helped.

02.01.07/01:52  the dreaded mumaneko                   

They're a type of cat demon prevalent in Japanese folklore.  They appear in the dreams of people who fall asleep near shrines, cemeteries, or otherwise haunted places.  As you can see, they have shaggy white fur and large, human-looking eyes.  Instead of a cat nose or whiskers, or even a mouth, they have two slits in the middle of their faces.

They avoid bright lights, and only move when you're not looking at them.  Trying to touch one brings a fierce swipe from inch-long retractable claws, a swipe you won't see because they move too quickly.  That being said, it's obvious that pissing them off is unwise.  But they're very rare.

You may have noticed that it's not really February yet.  There's just too much good stuff going on this month that I didn't want to lump it in with the suck of January.  You can relive that horror and others by visiting the archives.

In other news, I'm about 5 songs into the next album, which will be called nocturne digitalis.  A nocturne is a musical movement reminiscent of night, and digitalis is a mildly poisonous plant that grows on the fields of the internet, deriving nutrients from unfinished mp3 downloads and deleted spam e-mails.

Today also yielded two discoveries:  a whole area of hitherto undiscovered bars and clubs near my house, and, even more importantly, Hellsing numbers 1 and 8, two new prizes for my manga collection.  This brings us up to two books, from...zero.