Seeing as I'm not in the market for any dink-greasing, I may as well do the ol' nervous resume thing. Recently won "best local journalist" for the third time - this one meant the most. I also won a contest to name Exclaim!'s punk section: No Future. I have several weekly columns about politics, music and videogames. I do and or have written or shot or cartooned for: U of A's Gateway; SEE Magazine; Vue; Edmonton Sun; Edmonton Journal; ed; Montreal Gazette; Toronto Star; Exclaim! national music monthly; Penguin Eggs roots mag; Rue Morgue; Beat Route; Art Magazine; Maxim; CMJ ... plus I get picked up by various Sun papers nationally, including Winnipeg. Thanks to glam photos for various bands and the Loyal Loot Collective, my shots have been in magazines and newspapers around the globe (eg. England, Germany, lately Sweden's Plaza), and I was interviewed by CBC for the umpteenth time, this time about Ezra Levant. I once drew a US/Canada/UK-distributed comic called Uberbabe and later illustrated a book called Monsters of the World written by Darren Zenko, though quit both because I'm a bitch and won't comprimise my good name for any reason, especially when it comes to creativity. I'm the oldest continuous Gateway volunteer (since 1989) and my strips Space Cat and Varsity Happenings have there run on and off since '93 and '95. Sheesh. I'm also secretly another paid cartoonist in town, penning the news-related Eh-political. What I really dig most is manual labour, though, like building steel grain bins.
I have a massif load of dead Star Wars toys I never peer at, and have roamed the world from Japan to Indonesia, through western Europe, Mexico and of course that insane bitch, the United States. Spain and Switzerland are new arrivals and there is no city as captivating as Barcelona.
I've interviewed Merle Haggard, David Suzuki, Ron Jeremy, C-3P0, Metallica, Frank Black, Alice Cooper, Ministry, Shania Twain, Worf, Franz Ferdinand, System of a Down and even shaken hands with David Bowie (paid gig) and Bill Clinton (had to buy his book first - DAMN). Sometimes my hands smell funny.
My grandpa was a captain in the Russian Army during WWII and when some of his own soldiers showed up drunk on the front line, he SHOT them. Ironically, he was well-known for his boozing and loud poetry in later life. All I know is that he didn't shave enough and that I loved him and that he died coming home from his best friend's funeral, hit by a truck outside the Transit Hotel. His real last name was Zoz, which I use of the gaming column.
I thankfully escaped a soft nihilism brought on by David Suzuki and Carl Sagan's repeated descriptions about the scale of the universe, both in terms of time and volume. I still loved you, it's just that in a 15-billion-year cosmic effort, it was hard to believe anyone would notice for long. Still, the vastness soothes me.
I miss Sailor a lot, but Walnut's been an exceptional cat. And lest we forget Lady Dara, who I'll marry before you know it.
UPDATE: 070707, Bowman's farm. Be there.
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