Halloween!

I like Halloween. I think it's the whole pretending to be something else thing. And I actually think it's probably good for kids. There are a lot of scary things in the world and I think Halloween allows children to make light of scary stuff. Probably a coping mechanism.

Though I'm sure there are some children totally freaked out by that.

Around here, the children go wild for fireworks though and I don't like that. Partly because, every year, some kid loses a face or some fingers and partly because it freaks dogs out and I like dogs.

Anyway, happy Halloween!

They have it coming

Babies

FACT: BABIES CRY BECAUSE THEY HATE YOU

Many scientists increasingly believe that this may be true. It is especially true at the weekend, after you've had a long week at work.

The good news is that I have Monday off, the genius that is Saw IV is in the cinema and I'm still alive.

Watch for the signs

A few subtle clues. If you find someone like this, there is a good chance they are suffering from depression. Or are already dead.

I wasn't found exactly like this at any stage but I've been close and drawing it really made me wonder just how scary it is for the wife/husband/gay life partner/aquaintance/rent boy who has to live with someone who is prone to depression. Having been through it a few times, I like to think I'd know the signs myself and see it coming but I know the last time I was hit bad, I didn't have any idea until I was completely in the mire.

I'd say people like us are a pain in the ass but I guess that's why it should be recognised when your wife/husband/gay life partner/aquaintance/rent boy sticks with you and helps you look out for those warning signs.

Thanks guys!

Happy Birthday!

It's my one month bloggiversary. Yay.

The Aftermath

Thing is, you don't even care if I had a good weekend, do you? Nothing pisses me off like being brought into conversations that not one party cares a damn about. Small talk is utterly pointless.
Even a simple 'good morning' on a Monday can send me into a rage.

Others include:
Hello, Lovely morning, Heard the forecast? See the match? Why aren't you wearing pants?
And I can assure you the last thing I want to hear about is your fecking boyfriend. That doesn't just apply on Monday. That's every day of my entire, probably short, life.

Puh-lease. Mondays. Leave. Me. Alone. Especially if I so obviously look like shit. By the way, if there was a third panel to this image, it would be me punching her in the face.

I wish I had drawn a third panel.


Edit: Oh what the hell. Here's what the third panel would look like:

The thing about a shit weekend...

...is that you spend the whole week thinking, "If I can just make it to the weekend, I'll be fine." Then the weekend hits, sucks totally and then you just end up back in work Monday morning. Only the next week, you have nothing to cling to. No promise of a relaxing weekend.

There is no sanctuary left. Unless I buy a plane ticket to some hot country and just live on a beach somewhere, just catching fish to live.

But I hate fish.

Winter is here

If ever you need a reason to heat a studio, this is it. You see, either I'm drawing with numb bare hands, in which case I'm shivering and doing shaky drawings or I'm wearing mittens. It's bloody freezing here. Studio owners - heat your studios!

Anyone got SAD yet?

Seems that lawsuit is coming quicker than I thought

As well as the usual cancer-causing and sterilising waves from mobile phones, Apple's iPhone has the added bonus of containing hazardous compounds. Phthalates in the headphone cord are known to interfere with sexual development. Brominated compounds make up 10% of the iPhone. They create dioxin when burned, which causes cancer (there is no known 'safe dose' of dioxin) as well as severe reproductive and developmental problems.

In short, it's a dangerous bastard and when you feckers throw it away, you're going to be contributing to the downfall of the human race. An over-reaction? Not in the slightest. You only have to look at rising cancer rates across all age groups (especially the young) and rising fertility problems.

That's all aside from the usual mobile phone emission problems.

The Greenpeace report can be found here and you should Google all of the materials they found. Lawsuits are already beginning. And rightly so. You should know about this. You should care. Every single one of you.

That Monday feeling

Seems like every day is Monday. Weeks are just flying by. Did you know it was 2007 already? The Space Year 2007AD? Whoever thought we'd really be living in the 2000s?

And where the hell are my silver jumpsuits? My flying cars? My robot butlers? Eh? Eh? What the hell went wrong?

No, it's 2007 and I'm just going to work like people did back in 1977. Or 1937. Or 1877. Except that last group of people are now dead. Too many Mondays can be fatal. Each Monday brings you one week closer to death.

There's a cheery thought for a Monday morning.

Those other side effects...

Hmmm... I've been playing around with formatting and this image has turned out much smaller than it was supposed to be in blogger. If you click it, it will bring you to a bigger version I think.

Anyway, yeah, delayed... ejaculation.

You wouldn't believe the work I have been putting in to getting those little swimmers out. Dear lord it's a full-scale workout. I just keep going and going like one of those energiser bunnies in some battery porn. And that final push is a killer.

I hope you ladies appreciate the work.

Hypochondriacs Unite!

I know I'm not the only person who does this. I have been convinced since my teens that I would die a hideous cancer death. Initially I thought it was the dodgy microwave that would do me in. That may still turn out to be the case but I think now that my fate is sealed by all you gobshites and your mobile phones. The day I can sue for second-hand mobilisation, I'll see you all in court.

As a bloke, my chance of getting cancer is one in two.

1 in 2 (for those of you who couldn't take the time to read it in words).

I have just as high a chance of getting cancer as not getting it. For you ladies, it's one in three. Still high enough to be pretty damn scary. Most form of cancers, you won't even know before it's too late. I could (and probably do) have bowel cancer right now and wouldn't know about it. Especially as a side effect of many anti-depressants is gastrinal bleeding. You could shit blood and think it's just a side effect. Two months later you're dead.

One in two. I'm doomed.

The people I work with just don't care

That bugs me. They're watching YouTube videos and chatting on instant messaging thingies while they're supposed to animating a television show that could be really good. But probably won't be because they don't give a shit.

That's the real bad side to using computers in animation - too much distraction. I'd love to throw them out and get them all back to the drawing desks and see how long they last.

The flip side

When I was first diagnosed with depression, I was told not to do anything life-changing. It would create too much pressure. On top of that, I was in no place to really make rational decisions.

And that's the really tough part. Because there can be outside factors. When you are diagnosed with depression, you start to question yourself - am I unhappy about a certain thing because of the depression or because that something is wrong and should make me unhappy? The difficulty is that, in times of depression, there is no way of knowing.

If I had acted on my feelings at the time of my first diagnosis, I would not have the lovely wife and child I have now. I would have nothing.

Yet now, I'm medicated and there is one part of my life still not right. Sometimes the pills don't help. Because sometimes, you really do have to address parts of your life that plain suck.

And life does suck a lot.

Just as well I don't use my real name

An employee fired for blogging - http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=322407

She's not the first either.

The clear mistake she made was posting pictures of herself. Looks like I'm going to have to go underground and disguise myself.

The pissing contest

Willy waving over depression drugs seems pretty common. Well, I refuse to pull my lad out and let rip. You see, I'm only on Lexapro right now. And just the girly 10mg ones.

They worked fine for me before but this time they seem to have come with some side effects. I'm itchy. That's at the bottom of the list for Lexapro side effects. I've also had a couple of others I won't go into right now. Some of the side effects listed are great:

Diarrhoea, Constipation. I hate to think what happens if you end up with both of these at once. Bowel explosions or something. A lot of clean-up involved.

Increased sweating. Pit stains alone are liable to cause depression. Nobody likes pit stains.

Mania, confusion, agitation, anxiety, depersonalisation, panic attacks and nervousness. Hang on, aren't I taking this to get rid of that stuff?

Wallace and Gromit TV movie

Couldn't cut it on the big screen, guys?

Ponies, tricks etc.

Oh, and what happened to that Tortoise and Hare movie you were making?

Why I am medicated

I wasn't in a bad place this time around. I had been off the pills for a good few years and was doing pretty okay. But I could feel a little downward slide. Just a little.

But that wasn't the main issue. This was the main issue:

I had neve been so prolific in all my life. I was bombarded with ideas, stories, characters. All great stuff. My mind was racing at 1000 miles per hour. It was amazing and something I should be really thankful for.

The problem was that I couldn't shut it off. I tried. I tried all sorts of methods. Even hypnotherapy. But I couldn't sleep. My head just kept on going at a steady 1000mph. And I couldn't sleep. Eventually, it became too much. I had to risk the loss of productivity for some calm in my life. Having been through this several times before, I knew it was related to the condition. I knew getting on pills for six months or more would just slow down my brain.

Did it work? Yep. But, as I feared, the ideas have slowed. Some of them are still there but I need a lot more effort to dig them up. I still don't know if the trade off was worth it but I'm enjoying the ability to sleep.

Depression

Maybe I should give a little introduction to depression. I'm talking full-on clinical depression here. That's what I have. Or I should say, have had, though I consider it an ongoing condition. I have had two major incidents of it but I'm always on alert.

According to Wikipedia, clinical depression affects 7-18% of people some time in their lives. Okay so Wikipedia isn't exactly the most reliable source on the planet as any idiot can edit it (and many do) but it's a good place to start.

It mentions Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which is feeling down in the Winter time. I actually thought I had that once. When it lasted through Summer and into Autumn, there was a problem. Turns out, what I had was Depression with Melancholic Features.

Oddly enough, I didn't really feel sad as such. I felt totally empty though. Completely disconnected from life and the world. I felt like I wasn't really me. I wasn't sleeping and had a bunch of other symptoms that led to the diagnosis. It was the first time I was diagnosed, though I had it years before and only knew what it was when I finally got that diagnosis. So, according to Wikipedia, here are the main symptoms:

"Melancholia is characterized by a loss of pleasure (anhedonia) in most or all activities, a failure of reactivity to pleasurable stimuli, a quality of depressed mood more pronounced than that of grief or loss, a worsening of symptoms in the morning hours, early morning waking, psychomotor retardation, anorexia, or excessive guilt."

Try living with this for 6 months. Or a year. Or every year. That's what people with depression live with.

Some people get to such a stage that you can't miss it. But there are a lot of people out there living with it that you just won't know. They plaster on a smile and get on with their day, secretly dying inside. You just never know what's going on with people.