I hate titles

So, I found this article on the naked capitalism blog and I think that everyone should read it.

It blows my mind that the sheriffs office just goes and sets up an auction for whatever house the banks tell them to without checking to see if the bank that makes the request is even the issuer of the mortgage for the house, or that the name on the notice even matches the name of the owner in the county records.

The Jerks comic is coming along quite well. I'm really pleased with it. Angela's art is just getting better and better. And my stories, which began with poop and vomit jokes, are actually moving toward less potty humor which you'll see in a few weeks.

I re-started playing WoW last week after Angela and I spent an hour being nostalgic about it. My favorite feature of the game now is the random dungeon finder. It usually doesn't take more than about 15 minutes and most of the groups have been excellent; friendly people, competent playing, willing to work with the strengths and weaknesses of the group members. It's also really nice that I can play for an hour or two and actually *DO* something in that time. EQ2 has gotten to the point where it takes hours and hours to get anything done and I always logout feeling like I wasted my time.

Wow, I got distracted by webcomics there, stopped mid-sentence and just came back after like 45 minutes.

--Abe

Here is some yarn for you...

First, check it out - I made Abe a toy. I started this, no kidding, in July of 2005 and finished it in July 2010. Go Ravelry for keeping that information for me. I am crazy, yes.

Two weekends ago, we had a good ol' time. Saturday we went to my mom's and met my brother's new girlfriend, who seems nice. My mom and I spent most of the day washing 10 lbs of wool in her yard. That was a lot of work. Then I brought it home and I have been washing it even more. Boil it on the stove and dry it in the oven. I am done, and it only took 4 days to wash all 10 lbs! Now I have to card it and then I have to spin it. And probably dye some of it. I spun up a test of the 10 lbs of shetland(?) that I had already washed and it is a creamy lemony color. The one I am currently washing is quite white. And filthy. Lots of poop and bugs and grains (their food) and even pieces of hoof.

I also found this car on one of the blogs I read. Holy Cow. I would consider driving that, but not in the rain...

Maybe this is what we need to have a less jerky comic.

Uh...

More recently, since it seems I haven't posted in a while, we have The Jerks up at the Blowing Sands Gallery in Ballard. Our stuff should be up until about Aug 11. There are free stickers and some small comic books for sale. We hung out on Saturday night and hula hooped a bit. I don't know if we will sell anything, but a couple of the people there liked our stuff. The president (Mary Beth) of Cartoonists Northwest thought they were cute and liked the humor. So there are other people out there that like poop humor.

At one point, we also had a pinata, which was pretty funny. It was a mermaid that Mary Beth'd had for a while and put fresh candy in. We didn't have a place to hang it so they tried just tossing it in the air, but that didn't work. Then a lady with a cane let people use her cane to whack at it like a baseball. Eventually, no kidding, little Tootsie Rolls started coming out her butt. I was nearly doubled over with laughter. Good times.

I also started working on a Positions Swap for the Harry Potter Crafts group. I am pretty excited. I think the items are going to be great, when they are done. I hope they ship ok!

I've been doing the Tour de Fleece (spinning every day that the Tour de France is running). I was supposed to start on Saturday when I went to Mom's, but I got distracted by washing all the wool. But Sunday and Monday I spun up a couple skeins. One is teeny tiny. 2-ply lace yarn. The other is the fourth of five skeins of Monkey Farts Corridale from Spunky Eclectic which I really like. I somehow messed it up, but whatever. Hopefully the next one will go better.

Day 3:

Day 4 (from knittyandcolor in the Dragonskin colorway which I got in a Phat Fiber Box):

Day 5:

Day 6:

Day 7 (the same knittyandcolor but all spun up and plied; I also washed some of the Monkey Farts to make sure the color wouldn't leech too much, and it didn't!):

Day 8 (wool mill ends and carbonized fiber - I spun this while watching the very weird movie Krull):

Day 9 (from Xtreme Spinning in the Princess Bride colorway from the Phat Fiber box):

I forgot to take a picture of my spinning on day to. But I was just plying the singles from Day 9 and didn't even finish. I drew Arthur and Georgie stuff until about 9, so I didn't have much time. The backgrounds are getting more and more detailed, so I am needing more time.

Funny Video

This is really funny. It looks like any other pair of talking heads at the beginning but you'll soon realize that they are mercilessly lampooning the state of the worlds economy :-)

Angela went to Portland for a few days with a friend so I've been playing Dragon Age which was actually a christmas present I got for myself. I had started playing it when I first got it but I was not enamored of the party mechanics and I got frustrated with micromanaging stupid bots and gave up. This time I made a group composed entirely to support my main character who is a rogue and I'm having a great time.

I've got to say that the voice acting gets pretty tedious the second time through though.

Last I checked I had about 22 hours in to it and the game says I've completed 33% of the game. I'm doing every quest I can find and I'm exploring and talking to everyone so I expect it'll be a hefty chunk or time before I'm done with the game.

--Abe

Coming Changes

So, there are some changes coming to the blog in the near future. For now, the only thing that's going to change is that http://www.the-jerks.com is NOT going to automatically take you to the blog anymore. Instead you will need to go to http://adventuresinjerkiness.blogspot.com and, because I'm nice, I'll set up a page on http://www.the-jerks.com with a link to the blog :-)

In a little while there will be more changes and I think you'll enjoy them.

--Abe

My heart bleeds for them

Those poor unfortunate rich folks. It's such a tough world that they're worried that they won't be able to continue getting richer.

--Abe

Volcano pics

Check these out! Straight from Iceland. Those pictures are just amazing.

We're headed to Stumptown this weekend. Going to drive down to Portland in the morning and drive back that night. It's going to be a really long day but should be a lot of fun too.

I've been working on one of my stories a lot lately. I'm super happy with how it's coming along. So happy that I want to talk about it and tell everyone about it but instead I'm going to just get back to work on it. You all can read it when I'm done :-)

I thought that this interactive chart was very interesting. You don't often see this type of unemployment data broken down by metro area. According to that chart the number of people employed in the Seattle area has decreased an average of 4.63% per month for the last three months. That's just scary.

--Abe

Funny and terrifying

This out http://crackshackormansion.com/ It seems that Vancouver Canada has been having a little real estate bubble. I thought the crappy run down houses with asking prices in the 300Ks in Seattle were ridiculous!

--Abe

this is awesome

Take a look at this. That's just crazy!

--Abe

Monday blah

I got busy writing and doing things around the house and forgot to post. We went to Bellingham this weekend to celebrate Isaacs birthday. It was fun.

Also, Anita helped us to take the inks of "Harrowing tales at the Bus Stop" and turn them into a book. She also printed up like four copies for us. We gave one to her and Jim and one to Isaac and kept the other two for ourselves. It looks fantastic! It was really fun to see her work. I'm so thankful for her help. She made it look so professional. I'm also super proud of Angela :-)

Take a look at this article on zerohedge. It's an analysis of the costs of living in america right now. Interesting reading. Last month 6900 people filed for bankruptcy every day. That's more people than in the depths post-crash madness back in March.

--Abe

A little news for you

Kyrgyzstan is burning. News at elev-- Oh yeah the US media doesn't seem to be covering this. The single reference to it on cnn.coms front page is "Troubled Kyrgyzstan vital to US" which refers to the fact that a very important air base is located there. The lone picture in the article is of a woman kissing a baby.

--Abe