Joey: You're reading another true crime novel? How can you read all that crap? You're so morbid.
Meg: I'm not morbid.
Joey: You're pretty morbid.
Meg: Okay, I'm a little morbid, but not in any debilitating way.
Joey:.... The only way to be morbid in a "debilitating way" is to be actually dead.

Mary KreetsMotts!

Today is that special day when we celebrate the great martyr, and patron saint of poop: Mary KreetsMotts. In honor of this special day, here's a little history lesson for the kids:

In the year 1873 Mary was a missionary in Germany when she received the "divine call." The Lord spoke to Mary and gave her an important task. So she went on the holy mission to "bring the word of god to those savage brutes."

Mary humbly took up the task and promptly left for Africa. She braved jungle and beast along with her well-paid guide, Mimbutu. They carved a mighty swath through veldt and mountains to reach their goal.

Monkeys.

You see, Mary believed with all her heart that God wanted to convert the monkeys of Africa. Apparently, God felt that conversion efforts among human populations were begininning to see the effects of the law of diminishing returns and He was looking for other markets.

On December 25th of that year Mary found a nice, healthy family of about eighteen monkeys who welcomed her with open arms and offered her and Mimbutu all the fruit and nuts they could gather. Mary thought this was the perfect place to begin her work. Here's where things turn a bit sour for Mary.

Ms. KreetsMotts pulled out all the stops with a fire and brimstone rant that would put Jerry Falwell to shame. She extolled the virtues of heaven and salvation and roared the dangers of hell and eternal damnation. She talked of sin and the devil, and she talked of God and the angels. By the end she had run down the whole pulpit checklist. The monkeys sat in rapt attention until Mary was finished.

A long pause followed Mary's final words. The monkeys seemed to digest her mighty tirade for a time. Then one solitary monkey slowly stood. He calmly, and without ceremony reached a hand behind his back and seemed to be making a face of deep concentration. I imagine Ms. KreetsMotts took this to be a good sign. The look passed and he brought his hand back around to the front. It was no longer empty.

I think we can all see what came next. The monkey began to fling poo at poor Ms. KreetsMotts and her companion, Mimbutu. Quickly his whole monke family joined in the fray. Neither ever saw it coming. Neither were seen alive again.

So, now every December 25th we all rejoice in Mary's selfless and silly sacrifice and reflect on joy and happiness and good will towards men. But not monkeys. No good will for them.

It's customary for celebrants to say "Mary KreetsMotts" to each other in passing and shower their friends and family in gifts which symbolize poor Mary's shower of poo.

So, I say to you, my friends:

Mary KreetsMotts!

I've been ranting and raving about the dangers of TRANS FATS for months now. Those that see me regularly have heard it first hand. For those of you living in Far Off Lands, here's a little science lesson for you.

I've been eating very well lately, so today I splurged a little with my lunch and had a large peanut butter cookie. After I ate it I noticed that it had three ingredients containing "partially hydrogenated oils" which consist mostly of trans fats. That made me regret my splurge.

Once upon a time the food industry figured out that "partially hydrogenated" oils have a longer shelf-life than butter and are even cheaper to make .
Among the rich food-makers there was much rejoicing. Huzzah! But, sadly, among the faceless masses there was poison being fed to us all on a grand scale.

All trans fats are made using very similar means, but here's a little play-by-play on how margerine is made from the book NOURISHING TRADITIONS by Sally Fallon:

First they take vegetable oil, soy, corn or cottonseed, of a cheap quality. The oil may be already rancid from the extraction process. Then they mix it with tiny metal particles, usually nickel oxide, a toxic substance, and then they subject the mixture to hydrogen in a high pressure high temperature reactor. Next, in order to remove the unappetizing odor of the mixture and give it a better consistancy, soap-like emulsifiers and starch are squeezed in, and the oil is, yet again, subjected to high temperatures like steam cleaning. The resulting mixture is an unattractive grey color. In order to make the hydrogenated solid oil mixture look like butter, the original gray is removed by adding bleach and coal tar dyes. Finally, strong flavors are mixed in to make it taste like butter. And this mixture is compressed into tubs or blocks which the consumer buys as margarine.

Mmmmmm. Slap that on some toast, eh?

Turns out two prominent medical research entities in America (CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST and the INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE) had discovered in 1994 that the fats formed in the above process are bad for you in any amount. I will repeat and clarify, in case you missed it. The only safe and healthy amount you should eat is zero. Nada. None.

The initial findings were presented a decade ago. Since then studies have shown trans fats to be linked to and/or contrubutors of diabetes 1 and 2, heart disease, stroke, and even a few forms of cancer.

Last year Denmark passed laws greatly decreasing the legal amount of it in their foods. Two weeks ago Canada outright banned it and appointed a taskforce to help fiure out better alternatives for it's industry. In America we just passed a law that requires "trans fat" be added to all Nutrition facts labels, but the catch is there is no Recommended Daily Allowance, and they refuse to set one, because they can't "Recommend" that you eat any. This is the only legal food ingredient in America with such status.

So what is stopping us? Well, here's the short list:

Oreos, Twinkies, Chips Ahoy, Dunkin Donuts, Krispie Kreme, McDonalds, Jack In The Box, Marie Calledars, Lays, cookies, pizzas, KFC, cakes, danishes, peanut butter, pies, french fries, crackers, buns, breads, cereals, granola bars etc. etc. ALMOST EVERY PROCESSED FOOD YOU CAN BUY!

But, kudos go to PepsiCo, who dropped hydrogenated oils in favor of other means making their Doritoes, Tostitos, and Cheetos safe once again.

My advice is to avoid buying foods that list "hydrogenated" anything. You may find it a little harder to shop, but you'll find you're eating better, probably feeling better, and living longer.

I said, Hot Damn, I love my work!

I'm in the middle of going through music for Barefoot In The Park and I am loving it. In fact, I'm loving it a little too much. I'm spending more time on each song than I should.

But, it's hard not to with this music. The period is the early sixties, 1960-1964 to be exact. This era is filled with songs so woven into our minds, our souls and our culture that anyone of them has as much a right to the title "National Anthem" as does the star-spangled banner.

These are songs that strike a chord deep inside us, and that is exactly why they have stood the test of time for nearly a half century now.

These are songs that we are so intimately familiar with that as we hear them they seem not to resonate from the speakers but from our own memories. We know each note by rote. Every twangy guitar solo, every throaty, crooning wail of the vocals.

From those first, thumping drumbeats at the beginning of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" we know exactly what's coming. And that bit at the end when he leaves you in suspense, leaves you wondering if she'll really come back is never a surprise, but never any less fun either.

God, I love this.

You would think that two people that do the same job in a competitive market wouldn't be so supportive of each other. You'd think it would be a little cut-throat.

Not me and my baby.

Meg and I are both talented sound designers. We are each talented in different ways, so we tend to work well together. but most of the time we work solo. And sometimes one of us has to turn down work because we're too busy otherwise. Today I start work on my latest paying sound design gig: Neil Simon's Barefoot In The Park.

I was referred by Meg.

That ring was the best career investment I ever made.

That was a joke by the way.

Sort of.

Oh, You!

That silly PRESIDENT OF ZIMBABWE is at it again, folks.

This great man who publicly backed the ethnic cleansing of his country in 2000 and oversaw the displacement and even outright murder of thousands of white farmers in his land has now taken further steps to protect his people.

He's officially banned a specific kind of international aid group. Guess which kind. I bet you can! Go on, guess!

That's right, he's banned all HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS. Hip hip, huzzah!

Let's hear it for progress, eh? I mean who needs a pesky thing like individual rights getting in the way of "governance issues" right? That's what the world needs, more leaders like Mr Mugabe who can take charge and tell us all what's good for us, especially when it's probably not. Good for us, I mean.

Hey, wait a minute! Why does that sound so familiar? Hmmmm.....

All sarcasm aside, if we (meaning the United States as an international political entity) are so interested in policing the world and ridding it of "evil regimes" as the current administration would like us to believe, then how come we didn't lift a finger to stop the "etnic cleansing" of Zimbabwe in 2000? And equally important; why is NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC the only major news source that reported on the massacre of 2000? I bet many of you reading this had never even heard about it.

A couple days ago I listed a bunch of stuff on EBAY that I didn't want nor had any use for.

One of these things was a perfectly legal and fully licensed copy of Microsoft Word 2000 that came with a computer I bought in 2000. This version is the full version on a CD with a certificate of authenticity.

I very explicitly put all that info and more into the listing, because I know that Ebay sellers can be shady sometimes and sell pirated copies of stuff. I wanted it to be VERY clear that this was the real deal. I even put the certificate in the picture so that users could see it was legit.

In the first day it sold at my "Buy It Now" Price, and that was that... or so I thought.

Yesterday I got a message from an agency calling themselves the Microsoft NetSafe Team. They operate under the auspices that they are protecting Ebay buyers from the shady people I mentioned, but the fact is they operate to protect Microsoft's "intellectual property." The message states that I am in violation of copyright law and lots of blah blah blah, and the long and short of it is, my listing was removed from Ebay.

I had already been paid, and the package was in the mail, so I wasn't really upset, but I responded anyway. I wanted to assure them that they had it wrong and they need to have human beings doublecheck the data that their automatic searches yield up.

Turns out that I was, in fact, violating a law. Turns out that Microsoft has VERY specific licensing that states that any copy of their software that comes bundled with a computer system is ONLY legal to be used with that system. Any other use and/or distribution is a violation of their licensing agreement that I apparently agreed to when buying the system.

Think about this people. How insidious is that? That CD that I bought with my money is essentially NOT mine after I bought it. Microsoft's license makes it their own de facto property, even after I paid for it. Not only am I never allowed to sell it used, but I am legally not even allowed to install it on any other computer that I will ever own.
WHAT?!?! How and why are they able to get away with this? Can somebody answer me that?

I bought the f**ker! It is mine. If I have no use for an outdated program I should be able to sell it like any other CD that I don't want.

It's times like these that I hope for the biblical plagues of Egypt to teach corporations like Microsoft a lesson.

"Let my software go!"

Lying Liars (Not Al Franken's Book) Part II

Meg and I spent most of the day going around to various free museums (that's right, I said free!) and came home late in the evening to find all of our housemates hanging out in the common room.

All except one: Antti.

Of course, all we could talk about was the events of that morning, and Christian's version seemed to be the more plausible of the two. Two key things made us all feel this way: 1 Christian had evidence on his throat, and 2 Antti is the one who fled the house. If Antti was the victim, as he claimed, then why would he flee from a houseful of friends? Why wouldn't he come right to us with it? Like Christian did, for example.

After much discussion I was leaning toward believing Christian. Plus, I was a tad biased towards him anyway. He and I bonded right off and became good friends. BUT, I was still willing to give Antti the benefit of the doubt.

Then he walked in and sat down in the middle of the conversation in absolute awkward silence. Well, HE was in absolute awkward silence, I had been talking about him as I heard the door open and I seemlessly changed topic to the museums without missing a beat. it was my attempt to minimize animosity in any direction, especially my own.

A mutual friend of Christian and Antti (Andrew) came over and mediated a sort of "family meeting" among all of us.

Whatever benefit of any doubt that Antti had went straight out the window after about two seconds of observing him.

Here's a short list of everything I observed in Antti's behavior over the next hour or so:

1. He closed off his body to everyone by crossing his arms AND legs and keeping his head down
2. He was doing the "hard sell." Meaning he was overdoing the emphatic hand and head gestures
3. Rarely ever did he make eye contact with ANYONE in the room.
4. He ceaselessly fidgeted with his keys showing his agitation and nervous energy
5. He constantly touched his face, yet another sign of closing off the body from us
6. When not "hard selling" it he was doing this fake non-chalance that was totally inapropriate and obviously forced.
7. He had this tight tension in his face, especially in the eyes. His eyes looked pinched.

Even without all that to consider I had one other technique up my sleeve. I kept asking the same questions again and again and kept getting different answers. Beyond that he was also constantly attempting to distract from himself and deflect attention onto anybody but him. He even went so far as to make up nasty things that other housemates had done to each other showing that his mind was nowhere near rational thought at that moment.

He was asked to leave, and the landlord gave him a key to another property down the road. Andrew finally wrenched the truth out of him. Christian was right. He cried and apologized to each of us. I was not alone in feeling that "I'm sorry" is too little too late. No matter how honest and heartfelt an apology he gave, it cannot restore my faith in his self control after an episode like that.

Speaking of "episode" After Antti left I neatly broke the tension by pointing out that so far our little group would make the best reality show EVER. True story.

Lying Liars (Not Al Franken's Book)

When I was in London there was an altercation one morning between two of our housemates.

Two young men, Christian and Antti shared a room across the hall. Not lovers, just roommates. Separate beds.

One morning round about 8 am I was awakened by Christian saying in a loud and annoyed tone "It's f**king eight o'clock in the morning!" It woke me up, but I thought nothing of it and fell instantly back asleep. I say instantly because seconds later I was again awakened by Christian's voice, only this time it was a panicked scream of "F**K YOU!"

Then I heard some scuffling, their door open and slam and then running down the stairs and the front door slamming. A moment or two after that Christian came staggering into our room looking pale and frightened and breathing heavily. I noticed a bright red mark around his neck.

"Antti's tried to kill me."

Here's the whole story from Christian:

Antti had to get up earlier than Christian and was banging about in their room making a lot of noise while he ate breakfast. Christian rolled over and in a not-too-polite way pointed out the time and asked Antti to go eat in the common room. Antti did not take Christian's words too kindly and the two both got a little heated.

Somewhere in the midst of this Antti snapped.

Christian told us that Antti had grabbed him by the throat and was threatening him with scissors. Christian broke free, but Antti was between him and the door. Fearing for his life he screamed the F-YOU in hopes of drawing attention. Apparently, Antti understood that Christian had succeeded in drawing attention and fled the house.

Later that morning we got a similar story from Antti, only with the roles reversed. I was dumbfounded. It was clear that something had gone down between the two, but exactly what that was remained to be shown. I mean, I had known each guy about a week now, and liked them both a great deal, and now they are both telling opposite versions of the same incident.

Somebody was clearly a liar.

Which one to believe?

To be Continued...

I really don't hae much of interest to say tdoay, I just wanted to bump the sad post off the top. I just can't handle seeing it anymore

*********

In lighter news, my comic seems to be going swimmingly. I have a whole little notebook loaded with ideas for future strips, but my executing them is so infrequent because of work.

On days when I work I feel so exhausted all I want to do is something brainless like watch some tv or a movie or something and pass out. My days off seem to see me much more productive.

OH, In case I didn't mention it yet (and I'm sure I didn't) I actually have a special thanks to send out there: Mr Brandon Becker, thank you, sir, for being the first and thus far only reader of WEASELS to drop me a nice little donation through PayPal.

If any of you like what you see on PayPal, please don't be shy. Tell me through an occasional donation, please. Especially if you'd like to see the quality and/or frequency improve.

Also, just clicking on my ads once or twice every visit would help too. I get paid for unique hits on those.

One day I hope to offer tshirts and whatnot, but not until my readership grows... A LOT.

In fact, that's another way you can show your appreciation: spread the word. Show people Weasels, get them to come see. The more unique ISP hits I get, the better.

And, yes, I am well aware that this entire post is all about shameless self-promotion. Just know, that this comics thing means a lot to me, and I would like to see it do well.

Also know that I won't make this a habit here. :-)