Month: February 2001

Slug that I am, I was just waking up when the earthquake hit.

I didn’t feel the first earthquake that I was in, I felt the next one – 1996 or so in my second floor Capitol Hill apartment. I was sitting in a chair reading. My thought at the time was that it was very strange to feel things shaking, but not have some stable reference point (ie: the ground) to refer to. Not exactly revelatory.

The second was a year or two later, I was reading a book in Elliot Bay Books’ basement cafe & I suddenly felt a little disoriented – kind of wobbly. At first I thought one of my chair legs was shorter than the others, no. I looked around & noticed someone else was eyeing the room confused & I heard the word “earthquake” amongst the cafe chatter. Most of the people in the cafe didn’t seem to notice & for those who did, it only caused a brief blip in their conversations.

Today’s earthquake certainly felt stronger than those past ones, but I wasn’t really scared like some other people seemed to have been. This is no indication that I’m particularly solid or level-headed – as indicated by this gem, pulled from the wreckage of my old geocities site.

Somehow One-Armed Carl isn’t as satisfying as the long lost, super-configurable Jim’s Journal Jenerator.

There’s still a more conventional Jim’s Journal page up & here’s some hate mail.

The friendly Australian entrepreneur says he has it on good authority that Fidel Castro is in poor health & isn’t expected to live through the year. Said Australian insists he’s poised to corner the market on U.S.-to-Cuba tourism.

Mainly I was thinking of first-person-narrative-type travel comics. Justin came up with F. Andrew Taylor’s On the Bus, Joe Sacco’s Palestine & Safe Area Gorazde, & Tom Hart’s Ramadan. I dusted off Goff, Nieves, & Hayden’s Tales From the Heart and Rich Tommaso’s Let’s Hit the Road. I guess I don’t really mean to be compiling a list, I was just kind of feeling like reading some more comics along those lines. There’s always Paul Theroux I suppose.

Here’s a bunch of email from my Europe trip. I’m still cleaning it up a bit & reformatting.

I picked up a neat comic called Marco Solo #2 today. It’s about the author, Shannon Brady, traveling in Thailand. It starts out with a nice series of anecdotes where he’s heading around Bangkok with a friendly & occasionally trustworthy local; near the end the story gets a more grounded and he kind of sets things up for the next issue. I like the artwork – a little cartoony, busy (but not over-crowded compositions), and a nice clean Chester Brown-ish line.

His webpage.

Other good travel comics: Josh Neufeld’s travel stories in Keyhole, Justin’s unpublished Russia notebook, Peter Kuper’s cheesily named ComicsTrips. Tell me if you know of any others.

There’s no way I was the first person to think of this: What would happen if I T-inated my site, then Jesusified the results.

The blind cod (see 1/30) is alive but not well.

Sign of old age & dementia: Set up cup, measure out some tea leaves, & go off to wait for the kettle to boil. Five to ten minutes later, wonder why the kettle isn’t whistling yet, go back to the kitchen, & realize that you never put the kettle on.

Cats become better hunters if they’re forced to wear bells.