Another little rambling post with a comic over on the other site. I'm thinking about writing something here about the pope, but I can't quite think clearly.

Double Whopper With Fries for the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Research Degrees at the University of the Arts, Head Full of Thoughts | Cute But Sad

Hand-Printed Letterpress Cards

I have made a limited edition of ten copies of this poem on water-colour paper, hand printed using a letter press. I love using the letter-press, the time spent type-setting and the slightly unpredictable results tat come out with each print. Also, once they type has been put away, you’ll never be able to make the same print again. There’s something quite beautiful about this process that is missing from digital printing, not to mention the lovely textures you can print on.

If you’d like one, I’m asking for five pounds for each print, it comes numbered and signed on the back and in a nice red envelope. As there’s only ten of them, I won’t put them onto the web shop in case they all go and people are disappointed, but email me directly on hhardiman at gmail dot com to get one and I’ll post it to you or I can give it to you in person. I’ll have them with me at the Alternative Press Fair on Saturday, so let me know if you want it then, it might make a nice Valentine’s day present for a lonely bedroom wall.

Nine left, one’s gone, get in touch if you’d like one or if you’d like to send a token of desperation to someone who likes typesetting and textures.

Tyrannosaurus Rex comic!

Here's a little link to a comic and a few thoughts about wandering around the Natural History Museum last week that I'm hoping might brighten up your Sunday morning. I quite like this one, although it is a little bit weepy. Head full of thoughts; I got through the data protection report stuff from the police in Leeds yesterday and it had a M. O. report for the murder I witnessed, so that brought back a whole pile of strange, sad memories, but it's really comforting in a way to have proof that it actually happened. Have a good Sunday, my lovelies.

Natural History Museum Tyrannosaurus Rex - Webcomic | Cute But Sad

Advice, please.

A little over a year ago, I looked after a dog that belonged to a friend's mother. He was a nervous rescue dog and was a delight to have in the flat, although he was anxious he was obedient, attentive and joyous. Last night, while my friend's mother was taking him for a walk, he was attacked and killed by another dog.

Obviously, my friend and his mother are very much shaken by this and, I admit freely, I am too. It sounds like such a horrible thing to have happen and the police have said that they're limited in what they can do directly against the dog and its irresponsible owners who allowed the attack to happen. Apparently, they may need to get a solicitor involved, which might add to the general distress. If the attack had been against a human, the dog would be destroyed and its owners taken to court, but because the victim was a dog, the law seems less clear.

Can anyone recommend a solicitor in south-east London or perhaps help with a little bit of legal advice to help clarify the position a dog owner (who herself was indirectly injured, aggravating a back injury trying to get the dog away from her pet) is in. She would like the aggressive dog destroyed before it kills again.

Sad, sad news.

Clutter-brained

Tum-ti-tum. I think I want to sell my car. It's really not doing anything other than eating money and stopping me from downloading the streetcar app for my iPhone, which is obviously the main reason to join that kind of a scheme.

I'm back at the physiotherapist's again tomorrow, got trouble with my hands again. Same kind of stuff. Not particularly amused by it. Same deal as before, my posture's slipped and so now I'm trying to correct it, my back and neck hurt. Hopefully they can kick it into shape tomorrow.

Still working through some of the stuff from the murder. Waiting to get the documents back from the police that should let me then access the court records. I'm slightly relieved to hear from my friend who was there at the time with me that her memory of it all is really quite hazy, too. I feel less like I'm not dealing with it as well as one should.

Speaking of that, went to the Psychiatrist on Monday to talk about therapy options. It's interesting how much the physical explanations that have come up in the last year or so have made a lot of sense of things we'd not been able to diagnose. It sounds like ADHD and my comedy migra-lepsy explains a fair bit of the mood stuff I've had for ages. Dealing with that's meaning I can now start to unpick all the mess from all the years of not knowing what was wrong. The analogy I made to Paul earlier was that my brain's a house where there's been a wiring fault so the lights go out a lot, but now that's fixed it means I can see how messy a house gets in the dark and it's time to do some moving around of the furniture, some redecorating and maybe a bit of chucking out.

What else... I've almost finished doing the digital colouring for the new dinosaur comic I'm getting printed up. I should be getting proofs through soon for a couple of short stories I've written, I'll keep you posted about those.

Um. Yeah, that's stuff I didn't plonk straight on facebook. Do carry on.

The Pope is Coming, Get Your Wallet Ready!

Executive Summary: Please join this petition to request that tax-payers are not asked to pay the £20,000,000 cost of the Pope's visit to Britain.

So, now that's the twittards dealt with in 140 characters or fewer, let's have a look at the Pope's visit. Now, he's praised Britain recently for our record on defending civil liberties, but has said that he's upset that we are going against natural law to try to prevent homophobia within employment for those in jobs indirectly related to religious duties.

I know it's nothing in comparison to banker bonuses (for the banks we own but seem to be able to expect no returns from other than a hamstrung welfare state, health service and higher education system), but that's still a fuck of a lot of people who will not be able to get out of poverty this year, or, you know, a lot of nurses or a lot of university lecturers. Or, you know, enough to clear a lot of undergraduate students' debts.

Hmm, sorry, I'm getting side-tracked a little there, but anyway.

For all that it's been quite comical to compare the new pope to Darth Sidious or point out that he was a member of the Hitler Youth, those things are slightly beside the point as far as I see it.

When members of the Westboro Baptist Church wanted to come here to talk about how God Hates Fags and so on, we prevented them from entering the country. Now, another person wants to enter the country and has stated explicitly that he intends to use his visit to criticise our liberal attitudes to homosexuality and has condemned Britain as going against "Natural Law." More than that, there's an expectation that we foot the bill for all of this.

I know I'm probably all namby-pamby art school at the moment, but I really think he needs to clarify his terms. I mean, is he saying that homosexuality is against natural law because natural law is the propagation of the species? Isn't that a rather narrow interpretation of Darwinism? To say homosexuality is against natural law is to say there's no evolutionary advantage to have non-reproductive members of a species.

Oh, hang on, no, that's not the natural law he means. What he means is the natural law that has nothing to do with human reproduction because laser beams from the sky gets nice virgins pregnant.

Either way. I don't want to pay for the privilege of having someone come to the country to attack me. That's not what I think the government's there for, so please sign and perhaps look at other ways of making sure there's other ways of saying that perhaps we're not so keen on having this guy come at our expense.

Thanks, zombies.