Semiotic Cohesion Comics & Art

Well Sebastian, well well well. I can blog about the past too. Only in my version, the past happened just last weekend. In Scotland.

Yes friends, I broke a habit of a lifetime and stopped being in a place that wasn't Inverness. I paid way too much for a train journey and a reasonable amount to host a table at Hi-Ex and then let one of these events follow the other.

It was quite nice. I mean that in every way possible. I'm smiling while I write it. I overused the word 'nice' that weekend. I brought great shame to the ghosts of my English teachers, who are probably all dead now. I think they may be used to the dishonour after years of watching me use a comma splice in just about every sentence I write. The poor old shades. Go get some rest!

So I didn't take any photos at all because I lost my camera somewhere downstairs after a particularly successful fondue. But other people are less into that sort of thing and they have by now compiled some vigorous reports and Flickr compilations and what-have-yous, so I'll forego the whole damn report and link to their stuff, even though they seem to have not spent the whole weekend writing alarmingly romantic dedications upon the back cover of Semiotic Cohesion Number Ones recently purchased by teenage boys. I cribbed all the romantic lines from Sebastian, by the way. And the guy from the art supplies table gave me the pen. So I'm really quite far removed from the whole process.

Here are some picture photos taken of the event and Inverness in general from a dangerously delightful and suspiciously talented lady who goes by the name of Melody Lee or, for unknown reasons, TPCat. Her comics are full of animals eating and then/also fucking each other, all lovingly pencil-rendered in a painstakingly soft and whimsical storybook style. Some people wish they were James Bond. I wish I were Melody Lee. She's a lot more useful.

Also, she took a picture of my ass.

Those blogs I mentioned? There are here. Forbidden Planet UK has manifested one, as has Graeme Neil Reid, a fine young man whom I helped load his stuff into the hall on that frosty Saturday morning because I am polite. I didn't actually help him all that much, actually. But you can still go and read about him. I'm sure he's pretty interesting.

And Mr. Jeremy Briggs from Down The Tubes apologised for the spelling mistake his site had made many years ago, chatted for a bit, scooped up all the latest goodies from my table and then I found that he didn't write about me at all. He does have a pretty great picture of a cold dog in his report though, so I can deal.

Now I must go. I am disgustingly ill, with snot and sweat and everything, possibly due to various moral outrages I have committed. I should have got the flu jab this year. Apparently it was a really good one too. The flu jabbing guys were really proud of it. I'm sorry, flujabbers. I should have listened. I thought you were just showing off.

Sincerely,
Tom McNally

I firmly remember being sixteen* when my neighbour drove past me and some friends hanging out on the pavement outside my house. He had about ten years on us and had allotted a decent portion of them to experimental drug use. It was the only time that I have ever seen him excited.

He slowed to a halt and told me that he had just come from acquiring the new version of Reason 2.5 and asked if I wanted a copy. I said 'yes' not actually knowing what Reason 2.5 was, but noticed that I was excited as he was. His disapproval of sharing emotions kicked in and he quickly decided that he was wasting time even talking to me and drove off almost ashamed at having let a genuine emotion show.

An hour later I went round to ask for the disc. He was visibly annoyed with me for following through with his offer and at himself for letting me know that he had a copy (he takes pride in refusing to inconvenience himself). Within half an hour I had installed it on mine and my brother's computer so that my two friends and I could split up to cover as much ground exploring this program as we possibly could.

My team did not have any luck. Neither did Julian's (who was working alone). Julian told us knowingly that you would need to be a qualified computer engineer just to begin to understand how to use the program. Julian is now a qualified computer engineer. He unfortunately does not make use of these qualifications for their correct purpose, which is Reason. Earlier today I phoned Julian for the first time in maybe a year. I offered him R800 to pose naked while my ex-girlfriend oiled him up. He declined my offer.

The other witness to that day was Thomas. I haven't seen in him a long time. He always exhibited a healthy misanthropic attitude. He balanced it out with a genuinely brilliant and powerfully passionate creativity. I'm talking about the type of creativity that is maybe inspired by real psychological problems. He also chose not to harness Reason 2.5 and instead turned to isolation and then marriage. I've tried to contact him recently to no avail (Thomas, please get in touch with me).

I played around with the program for a bit and quickly worked a few things out despite my lack of a computer engineering qualification. And despite strongly negative reactions from every goddamn person that I pressured into listening to my stuff, I believed it to be special and innovative and continued meddling and mangling. I lost all of the earlier masterpieces because a power surge or something fried my PC. That was until a few days ago when whilst going through and throwing out a large mass of junk that was being hoarded in my house I discovered an old harddrive onto which my brother had backed up a bunch of data, including mine.

I quite enjoy the stuff actually and I think that you could quite conceivably enjoy a few of these here songs if you happened to be one of those people. I present to you an abridged version of all the music I've made since I was 16* ordered chronologically.

The first few songs are loops because it took me some time to figure out how to use the sequencer. But don't think of my crushing musical inability lacking technical background as detrimental though, think of them as being the absence of yet another set of filters carving away at pure aesthetic expression. For me.

Here we go:

16 - 19 years old (48mb)

My first album, titled The Mighty Moe Soundtrack. (Age 18) (29mb)

19-21 years old (17mb)

My second album, titled Laser Mice (Age 20) (27mb)

Hypothetical Album Cover

(*Reason 2.5 was only released when I was 17.)
(I also found a stack of rap lyrics that I had written at about the same time. I'm not going to post those. Ever.)

- ssssssssssssssssssssSebastiannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Last week contained a Down The Rabbit Hole Day. A day where every weblogger in the entire world weblogged in a way that was novel to their weblog. South Africa's timezone is one week behind the rest of the world, which is why the delay. My name is Sebastian and this is a typewritten page I found amongst my dad's notes on the metaphysics of Kant from when my dad was a dominican Monk in the 1960s.

PEE YES: I did another day of hourly comics. It is at the same location.

- Stebastian Steborckenhagen

I attempted hourly comics day yesterday. I only actually found out half way through the day that it was happening. I then spent the rest of the day trying to catch up on the backlog. It took me as long to draw as it did because I wanted it to be drawn well, but it isn't.

This is the place to go.

(My moniker is Sebastian. Get it?)

- Sebashun.