How we listen to music / Welcome back, Helm!

Hi. I'm back from vacation. I had a nice time, though ridden by minor injuries.
I wrote something for Illogical Contraption before I went off my merry vacations, I'm glad to see it's online. You can go read it over there.

It has to do about how we listen to music. I like this picture Shelby put on it so I'm using it here as well. This must be one of the few times in the last three years that I've used header art on the blog that isn't mine.

More news below the jump.
1. Somewhat ironically, due to swimming I got a clogged ear a week ago. I woke up and decided to poke at it with a q-tip (more like fifty of them) and made things worse. Drastically worse. You know that feeling where you're messing with something and you're only making it worse, the mounting panic? I apparently pushed in wax and compacted it so the ear was completely closed. I was deaf from the left side. Furthermore I felt *massive pressure* inside my brain. I don't want any of you readers to ever have that experience, it was pretty awful. I couldn't get used to it, either. And it really gets old to ask "say what??" every time someone speaks too. Helm learned a life lesson: living with even minor disabilities sucks. Cherish your eyes and ears and arms and legs, guys.

So we go to the doctor to unclog my ear. You don't want to see what comes out of your ears. The doctors that deal with the icky stuff are weird, I mean, why? Like orthodontists and ear, nose and throat doctors are the worst. Wait, no, proctologists. Anyway, now I'm fine. In fact, I'm better than ever, upgraded my firmware. I can hear frequencies I had apparently forgotten existed. Lots of high-end that makes everything - especially the Heavy Metal music of death I so enjoy - have extra bite. If you like listening to music then, I now append the top list with another item:

Clean your ears

Haha, yes I know that sounds just like a dad would say to their son when he heard the noise he calls music. "But dad, I want to clean my ears to enjoy the noise even more!"

The other injury was bumping into rocks-trapped-in-concrete (sloppy masonry, I hate you!) on my very first outing in the sea with my girlfriend. I took a slice off of my left big toe almost clean off, only it held on by a little bit of skin. I tried to basically duct-tape it together with the rest of the toe and pray it mends but it got all pus-ridden instead. Strangely it didn't hurt much, I guess toes are resilient, I even swam with it. Really icky sensation to try to swim with the legs and feel a bit of toe flapping against the currents! A few days after the skin underneath grew back and I snipped off the extra toe with clippers. Fun times!

But on the upside, I had a long vacation (can you tell?) that I really needed. I'm full of ideas for art and music and words, words, oh god so many words. You'll see, soon.

So how were your vacations, humans?
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See the rotting corpse, it walks again!

I return from my Polish vacation. It was wonderful, probably some of the best time I've had abroad. Here's an overdone photo of me inside the Eye of Algond.

Click for manly size.

Regular comic posting will occur in the next couple of days, let me just gather my brain-bits. Until then, here's some drawings and an impromptu tutorial comic I did while in Poland:

This is actually Geometry Girl just with a different hair style and color. She's been released apparently, so she's doing better. Still playing chess alone though, contemplating the 8x8 grid... You can't ask for miracles. Inspired by Scotch, who played chess on his own during the Polish vacation.

Then here's the abrupt tutorial comic I did for Davy. This is he below:

He's a wonderful human being. I woke up one of the mornings and went to the common area to find that he had drawn his female character (who doesn't feature in his meat machines comics) a few times and had written 'I can't draw breasts :(' below them. My heart wept, hence impromptu trail comic!



These are pencil only because I didn't take any inking implements along with me to this trip. I usually do, I am not sure why I decided against it this time! Let's close with this random creepy drawing:



Whom my friend Chrille informed me after he saw, that looks very much like the singer of old punk band Magazine of whom I really didn't know anything about until then! I checked them out and they're pretty awesome though, so thanks, subconsciousness!

Here's a condensed paragraph of Polish impressions if you're interested: Warsaw proud, Krakow friendly, Zakopane cold, beautiful women of debatable gender, longhairs are exotic, striking scenery, fortuitous snow, germ towel, long debates, communal laughter, absurd quotes going in a little absurd quote book, they played 1000bwk without me, warm showers with good water pressure, the chewing gum murderer... good times.

I guess this is it for now! Back with a few leftover comics from the newspaper era in a couple of days. Start visiting the blog again, humans!

-Helm

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