Comments screened, post anonymously if you want. (If LJ doesn't block it this time)

This is just to satisfy my curiosity - but I'd be interested to see responses from people who don't normally respond on my LJ. Comments might be used in a follow up post, but won't be made public or anything like that.

How confident are you? You can break it down into categories if you want, but if you feel that you can aggregate your confidence that you're doing the right thing, that you're progressing in life, that you are a good person into a single phrase go for it.

Second question. Do you think that people who meet you (not who know you, but who perhaps spend a few hours talking to you one day) find you more or less confident than you find yourself? Is this due to any deliberate design on your part or just how things pan out?

Looking for something else, just now, I came across Bernard Levin's piece from 1994, just after Tony Blair had been elected as Leader of the Labour Party, about three years before the general election which brought him and his party to government.

By God, the man could write.

I'm just curious as to whether - even with all the faults of the Labour Government - anyone would currently write something even vaguely similar about the current government.

Anyway, this was how the piece started... (Remember, this was written while John Major was still Prime Minister)

The Times, September 23, 1994
3,000 cheers for a man who can end this sorry era
Bernard Levin

Labour at last has a modern leader ready to sweep to power and end this sorry era.
The longer and more frequently I contemplate Mr Blair, the more I like the cut of his jib. This has nothing to do with the alternative; I long ago concluded that the present Government was worm-eaten, exhausted, dishonest, incompetent, lazy, mendacious, ignorant, rotten, false, disreputable, deceitful, unsavoury, squalid, abominable, soiled, piratical, shifty, discreditable, infamous, improper, obscene, hateful, impure, degraded, dilapidated, shabby, grovelling, discredited, renownless, tarnished, disgraced, shameless, creeping, abject, two-faced, unscrupulous, villainous, treacherous, untrustworthy, prevaricating, sinister, crawling, insincere, fishy, spurious, unclean, felonious, infamous, venal, base, vile, bribable, rancid, disloyal, scheming, unsavoury, sickening, fetid, nauseating, putrid, defaulting, mouldering, evil, vicious, damnable, maleficent, wrong, ineffectual, mean, inferior, contemptible, superficial, irrelevant, expendable, powerless, pathetic, nugatory, impotent, jumped-up, cheap, insalubrious, flea-ridden, unsound, nasty, baneful, foul-tongued, cursed, unwarranted, execrable, damned, abnormal, unreasonable, virtueless, peccant, sinful, unworthy, hopeless, incorrigible, tergiversating, brutalised, nefarious, culpable, scandalous, worthless, flagitious, gross, indefensible and unpardonable to say the least.

But Blair, as far as I can see, is to be found on his own feet, not measuring by the scabrous (I missed that one) Lilliputians now arrayed against him...

[More in link]

I suspect that for readers under the age of, say, 25, it'll come as quite a surprise to see by how much the Tories were genuinely and passionately hated by some by the mid-90s... And I wonder again whether people disappointed with the current government will ever hate this government in the same way...

Playing mafia last night got me to thinking about the role of confidence in a lot of things. I like observing people, there's psychologist in my blood and I notice that the correlation between confidence and competance is weak at best. That means that you should like yourself more (this applies to more of you than not - if you already thought you were awesome please disregard this notice). Anyway, I'm going to go on a bit of a mental meander through confidence in mafia, roleplaying and this real life I hear so much about. I'll bold headings so people who never want to hear another word about mafia can skip it. I think I'm going to cut for length before I start since I'm in a rambly mood, decide that it's too much trouble and move onto the next post...

( Now )

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2008-05-12&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida

Dreams of hot gay violent twincest. I am turning into apiphile. I'd paint you a mental picture, but you'd get locked up for three years for possessing it.

F**king B*****D AR**ING W**K**G HAYFEVER

Got the sniffles last year, for the first time...

This Year it has hit me full pelt....

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/288582115/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=50597

* Friday night - After Liz & Isaac went to bed I went out to the summer house to do some sanding/filling on my repair guitar. We had some amazing thunder & lightning that went on for a while - at one point the power went off for a few seconds (spooky when you're out in a shed and there's no streetlights etc nearby). After a while of huge rolls of thunder and crazy lightning I thought I ought to go inside and make sure Isaac was ok. On the way in I noticed the battery powered clock in the kitchen showed that it was about 12:03am. I went upstairs, burst into the bedroom asking if Isaac was ok and woke him up - he'd been sleeping through it :( Weirdly I noticed that the alarm clock was flashing 12:04 meaning the power must have gone off at almost exactly midnight!
Once I was happy they were ok I played The Darkness on the Xbox for a while - close to completing it now. Accidentally stayed up til 3am playing it.

* Saturday - We went to Pembrey Country Park with Julie & Calvin. We walked on the huge beach and through the woodland type area. Liz and Julie played with Isaac while me & Calvin plotted the death of The Adenoids (by killer robots).

* Sunday - We took Isaac swimming for the first time. I think he enjoyed it but seemed quite thoughtful. He seemed to enjoy watching the other kids splashing about. That's the first time I've been in a swimming pool for about 16 years. In the afternoon I did some more work on the guitar, I finally got some black paint on it and it's looking pretty good. The black will be a basecoat for some of that colour changing flip-paint.

I’m sure we were planning a reasonably quiet weekend.
( A storey of BBQ’s, pubs, trees, motor racing, romance, football and imperial intrigue. )

Today bits of me hurt, which is as it should be.

Leaving for Charlottesville in 2 and a half hours... and had no sleep.

I never get much (if any) sleep before flying, or indeed before going away by train, or car.

I may just about be able to drop off for a couple of hours I guess, but I'll probably feel worse for only 2 hours sleep than none.

Drums fingers on the desk, sighs, looks at clock 3:00am

Anyone back from Leipzig yet?

http://www.explosm.net/comics/1275/

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic.

Well no matter how many guitars I ever think I’ll need I don’t think one of these is going to make it onto the list.
It’s just a bit silly really.

Spoilery query after the jump; hope someone else hasn't posted about it already.

( Do the writers even watch the show? )

Hal Spacejock Just Desserts (book 3 in the series) was released in January 2007, not much more than a year ago. It's a bit soon to do a recap - much like a 15-year-old publishing their autobiography - but I'll give it a shot.



This was my favourite cover by far. Hal's bemused look of resignation, the glorious reds and yellows, the mercenaries with their OTT guns, the Tastee bars peeking out of Hal's pocket, the crates, the coffee, the racing cars and the crazy dress uniform all relate to plot points and gags in the novel.

The good news started in January ... Hal 3 was a number one bestseller at Fantastic Planet, the first Hal Spacejock novel to hit #1 anywhere.

In July Fantastic Planet posted their all-time top 100 bestselling authors, and I made it into the list at position #34.

Then, in December, Fantastic Planet published their top 50 bestselling books for 2007. (Do these guys love to please their authors or what?) Hal Spacejock Just Desserts was #23 on the list, an amazing achievement when you look at the big names.

During this time there were a number of great reviews for Hal 3, many of them on blogs, and I'd estimate that 85% of the feedback indicated this was the best book yet.

All three books have their fans, each willing to nominate their fave title as the best of the series. The challenge is to write new books they'll enjoy, while remaining fresh AND not coming up with anything so wildly different it's not even Hal Spacejock any more.

Finally, earlier this year Hal 3 was nominated for the WA Science Fiction Foundation awards in the 'Best Long Professional Work' category. Known as the 'Tin Ducks', these awards recognise Western Australians. Much to my surprise, Hal Spacejock Just Desserts won the category.

Artist/cartoonist, Nicole Kenney, started a new Polaroid project [with her pal, KS Rives] called "BEFORE I DIE I WANT TO..." asking people the same pertinent question and taking a picture with old Polaroid film for each participant to document their answer upon. Nicole swung by DEEP6 studios last week and got some of us to contribute to her project. See if you can spot me, Joan Reilly, Tim Hamilton, and DEEP6 intern, Steve Fuentes:

http://www.beforeidieiwantto.org/

Please head on over to:
http://activatecomix.com/23-1-6.comic
To read a brand new instalment of
“Adventures of the Floating Elephant.”

Follow the below link to read it from the start:
http://activatecomix.com/23-1-1.comic


Thanks so much for stopping by!

Hope felt a bit sick today (for which there a multitude of reasons - travel, germy convention-goers, etc), so we took it relatively easy. I got a good night's rest and avoided "Con Sunday Syndrome", feeling bright and rested as I got to the show. But Hope felt ill, came for a few minutes and couldn't hack it. I only stayed a few hours and packed in early to nurse her back to health.

I only bought one thing at this con: a GETTER 1 REVOLTECH robot toy. I am very stoked about it.

I also had a chance to stop by Urban Outfitters and pick up a totally awesome Japanese Tony the Tiger Frosted Flakes t-shirt.

Thanks to everyone who came out, and sorry to anyone who missed me late in the day after I'd left. Fortunately, it was a much slower crowd than yesterday, so I'm not too ashamed. Most of you got to me on Saturday.

Con exhaustion has caught up to me, too. I feel half-dead, and we're waking up at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow to sit in airports and on planes all day long.

According to schedules posted at both TVGuide.com and SciFi.com, there will be no DW episode Memorial Day weekend (F5/23).

The next epsiode ("The Poison Sky") will air on the 30th instead.

Haven't seen The Doctor's Daughter, so allow me to nitpick a something in The Sontaran Stratagem.

( Tiny spoiler )

Shortpacked!@TNI: Impenetrable without YouTube.
Shortpacked!: Beginning of a new storyline!

Confused by the TNI strip? Educate yourself. After seeing the poor dude humiliate himself over something so mindbogglingly simple, I couldn't resist. Because I'm a jackass. Apparently "Waspinator," one of the members of our forums, posted the video response! I have never been so proud.

Here's the skinny on Shortpacked! Book 2 preorders so far. I've raised enough money to afford a print run of 1,000 books. That's how much I produced of Book 1, and I gotta tell ya, it's not gonna last much longer. I'm feeling the drain as my remaining Book 1s escape through my fingers, and I haven't been to more than two small conventions, much less a full-fledged Comic-Con. Buttloads were ordered just in the past few weeks, along with preorders to Book 2.

1,000 books of Book 2 would cost me roughly $6500. I've gotten that plus all the money I need for postage to mail the books out to y'all. That is an amazing show of support from you folks, and I am incredibly grateful. However, for another $1000, I can order TWO thousand books. That would mean I'd have these things in stock for quite a while, and peeps won't be disappointed when they come to see me at Cons and I'm all sold out. Now, to get that $1000, I'd have to get preorders for 76 more books. I think that's possible, and I think we can do this in a week.

Call it a Book 2 Drive, if you will. I've even got the prerequisite thermometer fund raiser graphic on the right.

To help put a dent in the numbers, I'm gonna put that Batman/Mortal Kombat original art I showed you at the beginning of the weekend up for auction, and dump whatever I get for it into the Book 2 funds. So even if you've already preordered your book, you can help this process along in another way.

It's weird, having upwards of $7,000 sitting in my Paypal account from preorders, because none of it's actually mine! I don't see any of that money. It all goes right into the book and sent to you. Some day in the future, I may make a profit from this book. Probably (hopefully) at San Diego Comic-Con, after everything's all paid off. But first, I have a duty to you folks. I gotta take care of ya. And in the weird fabric of things, I need help from you to do that.

So if you've hesitated on preordering Book 2, please take some time to do so now. It's heartily appreciated.

EDIT: Shortpacked! Extras are SOLD OUT! I'm leaving a few slots open for those who promised to pay for them through snail mail, but otherwise, they be gone. There's still oodles of the normal ones, though!