In lieu of proper content, here are some shots from my favourite Book Off find (remembering the days when Vancouver had one – forever sleep, dear Book Off).

I’m all moved into my place, now – more or less unpacked, but still waiting for the new arrangement of objects to settle into cohesion. I think books look especially weird for the first couple of weeks, placed in a strange new order on strange new shelves. Like when you pick up an unfamiliar animal and try to perch it in your lap, and it just sits there all stiff and anxious (and possibly kind of hating you, because who the fuck are you anyway?).

As you might expect, I am obsessive about setting up my space. It feels like working on any project, where incorrect words or lines or colours feel intolerable. They harass you constantly, until you put them right. And in that sense, a home is like a summoning circle for whatever other work I do, here. If that pentagram has holes in it, then the demon either isn’t going to appear, or it’s going to show up and escape my powers and eat me right on the spot. Which is a good analogy, actually, and explains why it’s often just easier to shirk everything and eat peanut m&ms in front of the same fantasy novel you’ve read thirty five times already.

Anyway. Thanks to a basement full of grandparents’ furniture, and (even better) a patient, generous father with every large-scale power tool known to man, I am mostly well-equipped. But there are still a few things I need or could use, so an apartment want list will probably have to be my next order of business.

I have already written about this jacket, but it deserves a post of its own. And for me it is, perhaps, THE impossible jacket.

It’s made by a label called BORNE – long-defunct, now, but forever amazing. This one in particular is the Siren Suit Jacket, but you must accept my authority here: this designer had some kind of deal with the devil going, jacket-wise, and every single one she made was flawless. FLAWLESS.

And I YEARN for them. Let me quote myself from an old post: “my real ambition in life is to find this designer, and implore her, weeping, with fists full of cash, to make me another one, please, just one more.” And it’s still true. If I could travel through time (like a terminator), there is a lot of shit that I could fix – things that ought to take priority. But no. I would return to the winter of 2006, sell one of my plump young organs, and buy two of every jacket in this line.

I expect all of us (or at any rate, those of us who are lucky enough to spend time being wistful about absurd shit like this) can remember a particular pair of pants which were THE ONE. I should hesitate to write “the one pair to rule them all”, but I won’t. Because perfect pants call for tired-out Lord Of The Rings references, and you only live once.

Anyway, moving on unedited, my personal perfect pants were these: a pair of Acne jeans in a style called “Hug”, in a wash called – I can’t believe I remember this – “So What” (you might presently be asking yourself, “so what?” In which case, gentle reader, this is really not the website for you).

So these jeans, I assure you, were fucking perfect. They were the sort of crisp (no stretch) close-loose cut that only works if they fit you with total precision. Total precision! Which, for jeans? Impossible. But these did fit like that, in my case. Then eventually the knees gave out and ripped, first one then the other, so I cut them up into shorts. INTO SHORTS. LIKE A FOOL.

And I have thought about these pants so often over the past four years, it must prove what my doctor tells me every time he takes my blood pressure, which is that I don’t have enough stress in my life (though I promise you, doctor, that cannot be the issue). But here is where all my plans for this post fall apart, because when I was searching the internet just for a picture of these specific jeans in this specific wash, I actually found them – one last pair of them, though they are at least five years old, in exactly my size and inseam – on a Danish website, hugely reduced in price, practically tossed out in the street for anyone to pick up and take home. So with limited help from Google translate, and a very dubious idea of my ever actually receiving them, I ventured an order.

I refuse to change the title, however, because this could all be a giant let-down. They may yet be impossible. Though wanting things that I CAN have is distinctly un-Hchommish, and I hate to disappoint people. But at least there is an Impossible Jacket waiting in the wings – impossible for-serious, this time – which will set everything right.

And in a last-minute attempt to add some actual content to this post, I’ll mention that I’ve been doing my usual late-winter clearing-out of the inbox. Which pretty much just involves closing my eyes an deleting everything, rather than facing any individual emails. None of which are scary in the least, but somehow they combine to form something that pins me down with heavy, heavy sick-making guilt. And I can’t remember any of what’s in there, I just have a vague notion that it’s all important, and I’ve failed everyone forever. SEE, DOCTOR, MY BLOODPRESSURE MEANS NOTHING. So my point is, if you have emailed me and failed to ever get a response, please write me again if you can stand to do it.

So I can announce, now, that I finally have an apartment.

And you guys, I am motherfucking BUYING it.

Four weeks ago I was biding my time, languishing away across town from poor Brandon, still waiting for a second rental to come up. If you had told me that I’d soon be buying property, I would have laughed in your face. And I would have been rude about it, too, because how dare you taunt me with something impossible.

But now, without getting into the details of how the idea came up, and how the market is at a most tempting low, and how my parents offered a crucial contribution, and how I realized that, holy dear fuck, I was going to pull it off (it had a lot to do with suddenly being in a real adult job, and how banks, apparently, really like that [so don't fire me just yet, nice job-providers]), yes, without getting into any of that, here I am. I have just bought a small apartment in East Vancouver, and very soon a second place nearby for Brandon (separate apartments until death do us part). There will be mortgages and taxes and strata fees, and I will yearn for the simple days of double-rent through a gauzy sunshine mist, but I will make it work, because these places will be mine.

I have always wanted to be one of those people who can keep their shit together no matter where they’re living, requiring no consistency or security. Those people, I’m certain, are way more awesome than I am. Just being stuck in limbo between my parents’ basement and Brandon’s place while we wait for a suite has me utterly paralyzed, as pathetic as that is, with no ability to make plans, or settle into work, or get on with life. Like I’m camped at the frozen edge of the Gobi desert, watching my dwindling supplies, speculating to myself about how the Jeep that was supposed to arrive six months ago for pickup probably hit a ditch and exploded. Not to get dramatic, or anything.

A strange side effect of knowing that I will soon have a home is that I am drawn here, suddenly, to Hchom. I want to tell you guys about the absurd pants that I wish I could get. And, oh DUDE, I came up with the best new category for posts: RecHCHOMendations (it’s true, my genius is a burden). The basic survival of a Marian seems to hinge upon staking out a space that is my own, in which I am unassailable. And Hchom is all about that. Fueled by it. Because the best way to feel unassailable, I always find, is to feel motherfucking cozy. And to be wearing a fierce jacket.

I’ll be moving at the end of April, with all sorts of plans to tear down tiles and cupboards and make a big, unnecessary mess (it will soon be mine, but it does not yet reflect my tastes). So posts might be rather DIY-interior-design themed while that’s going on. We shall see. In the meantime, the world is my tasty shucked and buttered oyster, and I needn’t bide my time idly for I have pants and jackets to whine about.

I will just roll onward with this, minus any preamble about how I haven’t posted in foreverandever. So right now, fresh from my eternal loop of rotating teenage boy-or-girl phases, I am into witchy stuff, and I’m yearning to style myself towards some perplexing combination of that scary white-haired, bloody-egg-cracking, womb-clutching woman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (fine, fine movie), and my personal eternal lifestyle icon, Aughra from The Dark Crystal. But slightly more mannish, altogether.

So, with that inspiration in mind, here is my Cribbers wish-list (part one, with any luck).

From left to right, top to bottom:

1. Tree sprigs and herbish bundles of no particular (apparent) use. Rowan of the Red Berry!

2. Vancouver store, Marché St. George, stocks a variety of rough-woven woolen things in the most appealing spectrum of many greys. I like best the ones that look like they might work as little rugs, maybe, or wall hangings? Wall hangings are pretty witchy, I think.

3. Smooth, black river stones.

4. My sister and I, some while back, were discussing the comparative secrets of certain shiny things. She wrote that one of the shinies had “I like a boy” secrets, while the other had “I know how to make a potion that will kill a man on a night with no moon” secrets. My sister is so smart, and also I want that potion.

5. Darkest autumn honeys – full of all the year’s secrets, speaking of which.

6. Hand made dark-glazed and raw-clay ceramics. Though really that’s just me trying to couch my mundane domestic whatnots within other, cooler themes.

7. Shinies, opaque with iron.

8. Newt friend.

Hchom posts, needless to say, are always easier intended than accomplished – particularly now that I’m working a full-time job. I’m thinking of starting a tumblr, because that seems like it might be an easier way to get content out, without feeling any pressure to arrange things just so. I’ll announce that here, when and if it happens.

I’ve gotten bad at this, haven’t I? I’m trying to get in the habit of bringing my camera around, but my photogenic freewheeling pastry lifestyle isn’t what it used to be. So while I figure my shit out, here are a couple of interviews for you. I’m extra pleased about these, because last winter I bombed, like, five interviews, and I was expecting nobody would ask me for one ever again.

The second one isn’t about comics, but rather modding. I haven’t talked much about modding, here, but it’s like my secret obsessive other job.

Sequential Highway

TESAlliance

Plus, check out those new shinies. That is rough black opal, on the left – most pleasing purchase of my life (all jackets notwithstanding).

This goblin is supposed to be decked out in, I guess, some kind of Ursula/Shepard-gentleman cosplay? It made sense in my head.

So I’ve been yearning to do lots of fanart lately – who knows why. It must be a self-soothing mechanism.

First of all, here is Ursula the Sea Witch. This is actually my response to a thing I’ve been seeing all over the internet, where some people did these fashion-y versions of various Disney villains for a make-up line, or something (I can’t find a link to it, and I don’t really know what I’m talking about, so hopefully you have seen this around too and can fill in the gaps), and they made Ursula all skinny, and replaced her tentacles with a purple skirt. How dare they not do that godly chin the sweet justice it deserves! I remember being a kid, and having a kind of terrified fascination with Ursula, who had weird bloody-mollusc lipstick, and knew what “the men up there” liked. I owe her this one.

By the way, if you’re going to cover up Ursula’s awesome tentacle body, at least give her an enormous, ripped and stained and seaweed-knotted tulle skirt, or something. GEEZ guys.

And here’s the Mass Effect comic I did a while back, which I might as well post here while I’m talking about fanart. It was eight pages long, but way too embarrassing to publish in full! I crafted it out of my raw, tender emotions, you understand, which does not necessarily lead to the best and most polished writing.
You should also check out Yuko’s Mass Effect comic - extremely pleasing. She understands about these things.

You can buy the originals of these pages on McConnell Art.

Finally, I should mention that I mercy-shot my poor old Facebook account. I hadn’t logged on to it in a couple years – so if you you ever wrote me on there then I definitely missed it, and I’m sorry that I never got back to you!

Go figure – now that I’ve found a nearby source of (fucking amazing) allergy-friendly muffins, I’m obliged to move all the way across the city. So much for equilibrium ever being restored.

I missed last week’s post amidst the moving preparations, but with any luck my scanner will be accessible by next Wednesday, and all should proceed as usual from there.

Here is the unreasonable half of my birthday list. I’m aware that my lists always contain the same stuff over and over (and over) again, but when it comes down to it, there aren’t really very many things that I want. Just things that I want a lot.

I have managed a few upgrades this year, however. Like, why stop at one giant shiny? Make that shit into a whole shiny forest. And also, check out my fantasy adventure island. I feel bad for the real, live human NPCs who have to live in my fantasy town, selling fantasy stuff and giving out quests (I’m lying, I don’t feel bad at all). My sister also compounds for a Treasure Island-style hermit, marooned, with nothing better to do than move buried treasure from one location to another.

My birthday is in less than two weeks, so it’s time for our annual list. This year I’m dividing it into two parts, reasonable and unreasonable, since it always seems to fall naturally into those categories anyway.
So here is my reasonable birthday list. Very reasonable indeed, except maybe for the sunglasses, as the only ones I can ever seem to get interested in are impossibly expensive. Why are cheap sunglasses always terrible? In fact, no, here is my theory: some people just look good in glasses – whatever shitty pair they happen to pick up. And some people (I’m talking about myself, now) look terrible in glasses, and need a really exceptional pair to compensate for that. Which means, realistically, that I live in a squinting, sunglassesless limbo.