Web Comic of the Week
You know how you keep meaning to do something, but everything seems to conspire to prevent you from doing that thing? Well this is exactly what's been happening with this week's choice. I've known of it for some time, but it was only relatively recently that I read it through and loved every bit of it. I could have kicked myself for not reading it sooner.

This week's choice is Wapsi Square by Paul Taylor.



Now Paul is a bit of a tease. He plays an excellent game of leading you on with each episode, but somehow managing to leave you hanging, waiting for the next episode. Classic episodic technique and is part of why I enjoy reading this strip so much. When you read the archives from the beginning, you get to a point where it's really difficult to take a break from the reading. Just one more strip, then I'll go to bed. Just one more strip and then I'll get on with some drawing. Just... well, you get the picture. And once you've caught up, each strip just never seems quite enough and you can't wait until the next.

The reason why this works so well is that as a reader you really get into the lives of these characters - sometimes it seems a little more than a comic strip. A window on the lives of the people contained within. "Wapsi Square follows the day to day stories and relationships between a group of five post college friends and a school teacher turned bartender." It's easy to read Paul's description of his strip and get the wrong idea - it's certainly no cliche-ridden wise-crack-driven "I've seen it all before" strip. It has warmth, humanity and its own original voice.

Paul has done an excellent job creating Wapsi Square and maintaining its consitency throughout.

RSS feed
As you will see on the right hand side of the blog page, I have set up an RSS feed of this blog. The intention being that I could put a kind of "News Box" thing onto the other pages of the site and perhaps draw people to the blog who only visit for the comic strips. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out how to do this, so far. So if any of you either know how this can be done or can point me to where I could find out I would be grateful.

Jesse's Diets
Today I have mostly been eating...

I'm not 100% sure why, but I appear to have lost a pound - 15st 1lb this morning. Had chicken and bacon salad for lunch and salmon and vegetables for my evening meal. I'm fealing rather positive and even refused biscuits when I visited my parents (I'm a sucker for biscuits). Did a fair bit of walking with my son, Jason, as we spent the day together. I also bought lots of salad vegetables, too.

Life's a bit of a bugger...
One of the blogs I visit regularly has ceased. Life's Like This is no longer live, so I've removed the link. It's a real shame but I know they were struggling to make ends meet and so I guess something had to give. It brings home how fortunate most of us are.

Interview
Just spoke on the phone with the feature writer to confirm the interview for Monday evening. I had to give him directions to my house, but he seemed a little unsure so I expect that I'll get a phone call at some point to say that he's lost. It's happened before. :)

Dieting
I was watching a programme on the telly last night - Horizon - which was looking at how the Atkins diet might work. The conclusion was that it worked, not because of any of the reasons that Atkins himself claimed, but that people ended up eating fewer calories. The reason for this is that protein acts like an appetite suppressant and so that even though you can each as much as you want you don't because you stop feeling as hungry.

The conclusion that I draw from this is that it's probably better to increase the protein without increasing the fat and probably to decrease carbohydrates without cutting them out altogether (you need fibre in your diet) and to be sure to have a good balance of vitamin and mineral supplying food. Now I just have to work out how that fits into a tasty regime.

Comic strips
Due to going out last night with June and enjoying ourselves, there will be no new Dane & Joe strip appearing on the Just Adventure site tomorrow.

When I got in after our night out last night I set about creating today's Smiley Street strip. Thankfully they are simple to produce and it usually takes me about five minutes to put together. I wish all my strips were that easy and then I'd be able to create more of them.

Looks like I'll be meeting with the feature writer on Monday to talk about my comic strip work for the magazine. I'm looking forward to that.

Help and support
I'm no longer the svelt and gorgeous hunk I was in my teens (I wish). In fact I'm rather on the fat side and I'm worried that my sedentary lifestyle is not doing anything to help my health. As there is a history of heart trouble in the family I really ought to do more to get myself slim and fit once more.

This is where you, kind readers, come in. Because I'm easily drawn to the seductive wiles of a sausage roll or a chelsea bun, I nead all the help and support you can give me. Admittedly, much of this would be moral support, but if any of you know of any healthy and tasty recipes that will keep me from succumbing to the lure of the fat- and sugar-ridden snacks and meals, then I would be eternally grateful.

I shall try and chart my progress here as I go. Don't let me forget.

This morning I weighed 15st 2lb. Somehow that seems so much worse written down.

It's a bit late
I've just got in from a lovely evening with my partner, June. It's her birthday today and so we went out for a meal - Indian food - and then a couple of drinks in the pub. There was a quiz in the pub which we nearly won, but just lost out on a tie-break. Still, it was good fun.

Strange but true
Or so I'm told. :)

Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache.

A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysiacombined.

Marilyn Monroe had six toes.

All USPresidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.

Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

Pearls melt in vinegar.

The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

A duck's quack doesn't echo and no one knows why.

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first USpresident whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second was William Jefferson Clinton.

Turtles can breathe through their butts.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.

On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

Ninety percent of New York Citycabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

It's physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.

The Main Library at IndianaUniversitysinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the

weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

A snail can sleep for three years.

No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH."

Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. SCARY!!!

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

All polar bears are left handed.

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

"Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She wouldstand seven feet, two inches tall.

Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Almost everyone who reads this will try to lick their elbow.

Nucomix
I also received an e-mail from Simon Bowland concerning the re-launch of his anthology comic, Nucomix. It re-launches at the end of the month and he's hoping to make a big splash with it. As it will run two episodes of The Sapphire Claw in each issue in colour and at least one Juniper Crescent strip, you can already see it's a comic worth considering. In general the artwork and writing is absolutely top-notch and if it's something that takes your fancy, then why not take out a subscription and perhaps help Simon spread the good word.

I'm nearly famous, I am
This evening I received an e-mail from a feature writer who's interested in doing a piece on my cartoon strips for a magazine that appears in East Yorkshire every week.

"Would it be possible to come and have a chat with you about Juniper Crescent and The Sapphire Claw for our weekly magazine R&R? - The mag's a kind of glossy, leisure and ents magazine that comes out every Thursday as a guide to the different ways to spend your free time."

I almost set fire to my keyboard in my haste to say yes. The next piece is the bit I liked the best:

"We were also hoping you might be interested in designing a cover for the mag featuring The Sapphire Claw."

Now who could refuse an opportunity like that?

Streaking goes wrong
55.1

Three youths who went streaking through a restaurant watched in horror as a thief drove off in their getaway car. Naked in -7C temperatures, the three youngsters huddled behind cars in a car park in Spokane, Washington state, until police arrived.

"I don't think they were hiding. I think they were just concealing themselves," police spokesman Dick Cottam said.

The three entered the restaurant wearing only shoes and hats.

More here.

Thanks to David Gallaher in his forum for that.

This Blog has been reviewed!
ODAAT over at The Weblog Review has reviewed this site and gave it a rating of 3.5 (out of 5). I thought that he was kind and fair and the score is a good one in view of what he said. I'm happy with it. You can read the full review here.

Not just stuff
I was reading the blog, Life's Like this about stuff - posessions - not being important in the grand scheme of things. While I can see that this is true on the whole, some of my things are unique stuff and if forced to flee the house in the case of a fire, say, I'd be distraught.

There are all my original drawings for my cartoon strips.
There are my notebooks and sketchbooks.
There are my oil paintings and my charcoald drawings.
There are my backup discs with all of my writing on.
There are backup discs with the coloured versions of my comic strips.

My god, that's actually very scary.