Any Irish people?

I don't know if I have any Irish people at all who pass by the blog but, if I do, you'll know all the crap going on at the moment. You're probably sick of it. For those who don't know, the gist is this:

The country is down the crapper. The banks got us down the crapper and the government pushed us right in there by then pouring money into the banks - paying private debt with public money. Now, the government is looking to get funds from the IMF, which will cripple the country, and make the poor, the young and the middle classes pay for those bank debts and new IMF debts while destroying the economy. The current government will be voted out in January, and yet they are being allowed lock us into this crap so the next government can't do a thing other than bitch about how the previous government got them into trouble.

And they'll do it because Irish people have a nasty habit of just accepting shit and moaning about it in the pub.

Don't accept it.

It's not too late. It doesn't have to happen. Every economist on the planet says this is not the way to go. Says that there are other options. Politically, there are also other options. The parties could prevent the budget going through and force a general election. If these other options aren't explored, we are screwed. And our children are screwed.

Moaning in the pub is not going to help.

There is a demonstration tomorrow, Saturday November 27th, in Dublin at Wood Quay, 12 noon. It was started by some union I don't support but this is not about unions. It's about every person in Ireland. So please make the effort to get out there and make your voice heard. The people of this country can change it.

Don't let the gobshites chuck a grenade before they leave.

Get well soon, Susan!

Susan Schechter, author of the excellent blog, 'If you're going through hell, keep going', sent me a message to let me know she is in hospital. I don't have many details but there is a post here from one of her friends explaining the situation.

Susan is a regular commenter here, a very good blog buddy of mine and an all-round fantastic person so the news that her kidneys have failed is really alarming. As said on her friend's blog, "26 years on Lithium has taken its toll". Thanks Pharma - you guys rock!

No, really... you don't.

Susan, my thoughts are with you. I'm hoping for a speedy recovery and hope to hear more from you very soon. We need to get you out and back blogging again. Get well soon.

Must... sleep...

So, so tired. Not a night goes by that I don't wake up at around 2am and that's me up for a few hours. Then there's the usual pre-7am wake-up call by my very own flesh and blood alarm clock that is my daughter.

So tired.

Anyone still come by here? You know, just to poke my corpse with a stick or something? Oh, by the way, I have just joined Twitter. Em, I think it's here - http://twitter.com/BitterAnimator . I haven't yet tweeted much but, if you come across this, why not follow me and see if I tweet some more? Go on. You can always unfollow me if I'm rubbish at it.

So how have y'all been? I miss you blog guys and girls.

Edit: Wow, blogger just chooses my font sizes entirely at random. Thanks blogger.

One thing I found...

Thanks so much for the kind messages in the comments of my last message. I have been archiving stuff on a new hard drive and found a whole bunch of unfinished Medicated Life stuff that I never posted and thought I may as well put some up for you to see.

This is a few pages of a full-on story based on the time I discovered Flash animation quite a few years ago. You should be able to click on them for larger versions. It sort of went like the above images.

The last panel is unfinished but I decided that, as he had discovered some sort of mystical ability to make cartoons in an hour, he deserved a superhero outfit.

He didn't like it.

Maybe at some stage, when my career comes to a crashing halt, I'll do a little graphic novel about my experiences in animation. Not saying it will be any good but it will pass the time. There's more where this came from so I may put up a few oldies as I find them.

Rise!

What the hell happened to June?!

You know guys (well, me, because I'm likely the only one around), I've been thinking about retiring the blog. I'll explain why.

I started this blog a few years ago simply to get stuff out there that I couldn't really say without the protection of an anonymous web space. I honestly didn't expect anyone to read it. But some did. And, as I went on, I found much more to say. And then I found a little less to say.

I was hit with a realisation about a month or so ago -

I'm in a business that has zero value (well, I know that and you know that because I've told you but I have only recently taken it in completely). It's not even a business because businesses make money. In spite of what I feel is an area of expertise and experience, I'm not making a huge amount of money. Or even an average amount of money.

All I can do, every skill I've built up over the years, is effectively valueless.

And I need to make some money.

So I'm hiring myself out as a rentboy. Well, not yet. That's plan B. But what I am doing is trying to focus. For a while, trying to dump the projects that won't bring me in anything. You know the reason I take on most projects? Just to show I can. There are some projects, as I've mentioned here on this blog, that I see as really important. Contributions. Good for children. But others? No, I take them on to show I can and then lose interest.

That's pointless.

I'm learning the art of quitting. Quitting isn't a bad thing when the things you're quitting only serve to distract from what you should be doing.

And what I feel I should be doing is focusing on finding a way I can deliver something really good for children, for parents too, that has a value to it. That will make me some money. And, given the state of this industry and the planet, that's a pretty tall order. Next to impossible. Everything right now is going against it.

But I'm damn well going to try it.


This blog is not one of those pointless distractions. Yeah, it doesn't make me a penny but it has worth to me. It is a place I can talk about things that would otherwise just be thrown around inside my head until they damaged me. And, having a look through my archives this evening, I realised, even if I do say so myself, that there's some pretty good stuff here. I surprised myself a few time. I like this blog. It's a sort of home for a certain part of me. The Bitter Animator.

But it takes up a lot of time.

An amount of time that would probably surprise you. The drawings don't take all that long but the combination of text and images mounts up.

With me trying to work hard on finding some new strategy, some new aim, and not always having topics jump out at me for the blog, it has been left behind a bit.

And so I've been thinking about retiring the blog. My thinking was that it's probably better for those few of you who still check it to know if it's done or if there will ever be a post again.

But I'm not sure I can retire it. I think I probably need it.

Posts, however, are going to be pretty thin on the ground for some time. I hope that's okay. That's the right expression? Thin on the ground? Expressions aren't my strong point. If I do make some money, I'm pretty sure it won't be in the expressions industry.

...

I was just checking this posted okay and saw the image below it. Me looking out at a blank space. I looked out and saw nothing a month ago. And, well, I think that nothing was an opportunity. I have taken on the challenge to fill that space. Looking at that image, it actually seems so obvious. That's why this blog is important, I guess. Sometimes it knows more about me than I do...

Oh, one last thing, a guy called Ryan contacted me and I went looking at his site. Well, Ryan's introduction on his home page really touched me. And, while Ryan is dealing with some things I haven't had to, the more I read his posts, the more I could identify with them. If you get a chance, check out Ryan's site, My Chemical Imbalance.

So what now?

Dead flies

I was looking at a graveyard of splatted flies in front of me and couldn't help wondering about my own life. Our lives.

I don't know how many flies there are but there's an absolute shitload of us. And we die all the time. We're born and then BAM! Dead. That's it. Two generations later, we may as well never have existed.

Our atoms, those things that made up each of our parts, are still there though, right? We're all just made up of bits. Not all that different to the flies. To a chair. Anything. Just a bunch of stuff that came together and made a form. Could actively move those atoms around.

Isn't that amazing? That we can group these parts together and move them around in space actively, with our own thoughts? Which, in turn, are some incredibly complex organisation of these parts and impulses from one to another. It is amazing. In many ways, it's totally and utterly unbelievable.

Am I to believe this is an accident?

That our self-awareness is little more than an accidental curse? A by-product of a random system created by millions of years of chaos?

That looking down on Earth, we're nothing more than the movement of atoms brought together by gravity?

Doesn't sound quite right. It actually doesn't sound all that likely.

If it is, it's not likely that we'd be unique. The only ones here. There must be others like us (at least in some ways) in the Universe. You know, now that I think about it, it's weird to think that there is so much life, has been so much life, all over our planet... and we're the only ones writing books? Painting pictures? Wasting our time on blogs? How is it we have come so far and not one of those millions of other life forms on our planet haven't?

There's not just one life form that can swim. Not just one that has camouflage. Not just one that can light up. Not just one that can use sonar.

But there is just one that can make a television. Build a car. Flip a burger.

That just doesn't sound likely to me.

There's something not quite right about our whole existence. It just doesn't sound likely to me.