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My Facebook Nightmare:

    I was looking at Jane’s  status update. She often posts photos of animals. I once shared a photo of a squirrel that went over well, I think. This time she posted a photo of George, my golden retriever.

    I wrote as a comment, "just wondering Jane, how did you get this photo of George?"

I clicked on the photo and I was instantly in my backyard at nighttime patting George on the head. There was a party inside the house but George and I were in the back alone. Karin and the kids were at my in-laws’ place in Ontario.

A photo of George licking my face was up on the screen and a new 'like' was coming in every second.

    George and I were happily wrestling with each other, falling to the ground laughing  (the YouTube clip went viral)  when I saw a mean dog staring through the fence.

I came out with a really cool image of the dog with a bloody bone in his mouth and leaning over a hole with a bloody human skeleton in it.

I posted it but nobody liked it.

    I clicked on the image and it showed a clip of the dog running to our house. The image stopped with a daytime still of our backyard. There was a screaming sound.

This was on my wall. Someone commented, "George is in the basement."

I clicked on the image and I was in our backyard. George wasn't to be seen. I still heard the screaming. 

    I grabbed a machete out of the garden supply box and walked into the house. The sunlight made a high contrast effect on the slaughtered bodies. Nobody was 'liking' it but the comments wouldn't stop. The bodies[whose bodies? Not sure which bodies…] were all cut up as if the mean dog used a knife... a machete!

    I looked at the machete in my hand. It was dripping with blood. I thought, "It must be the machete that the dog used."

    I had been set up! The policemen were at the door. I could see their red and blue lights flashing through the windows.

    I ran  down to the basement and saw George's hacked up body and started crying.

    "Poor George, nothing will ever be the same without him now.

    Life just won't be good anymore," I thought.

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新年快樂！

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  The world is slipping into darkness while us beautiful people in western culture sleep. We are oblivious to the change that is awaiting. The black water dragon wraps its coils around us, 

yet...we float!

We may make it after all. 

It doesn't make sense for us to prevail but we have this magical ability to float.
How will it end? 
How will it end?

I better put this out before Apple takes over the world and nobody remembers what a Blackberry even is anymore.

What about the kids?

More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0818/p02s01-usju.html

In the future: the insects will be gigantic and vegetarians will be their friends.

Twilight For Toddlers?

    Are they really targeting preschool girls for the Twilight vampire book franchise?

It's Martin Luther King Jr. day

   Martin Luther King Jr.'s words are timeless and universal. They are not just about the African American struggle but can relate to the individual as well as being influential to global policies. 

   Celebrate the day by reading one of his speeches!

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I'm trying to learn french!

    We moved to Montreal and it's pretty darn easy to get around only knowing english but I feel like an ignoramus. Little kids will say something in french to me and I'll have to say, "I'm sorry. I'm from Vancouver and I still haven't learned french yet." Then they'll switch over to english and talk to me. It's no problem for them.

    People aren't just bilingual here either. It's really common to be multi-lingual.

    At suppertime we've resolved to only speak french. I'll learn the language yet!

The translation for the above panel in case you can't read my messy printing is:

    "I've got a first aid kit in my glove compartment."

    "It would be better to call an ambulance."

Frosted Lucky Arms. They're tragically delicious!

    Sadly, only the North Americans will 'get' this, or is Lucky Charms in other countries?

    We, in the Em family have this habit of turning every product or store name into a parody. Perhaps I looked at too many Wacky Packages and read too many Mad and Cracked magazines in my formative years, but I never get tired of such things.

    I used to try to avoid anything that was humorous in my art because I wanted to be a 'serious' artist but I suppose I would have to become a serious person first, and I don't know if I'm up to that.

I was sketching people on the bus...

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    She's not looking out the window because it's so interesting out there. She just doesn't want to look at you, Mr. Hoody Flapped Over Your Eyes, because you're pointing your face in her direction and won't turn away. She's uncomfortable because she can't see your eyes.
    She's afraid of you. Can't you see that?
    No, I guess you can only see the inside of your hoody.
    I drop my pencil down by your feet so I could get a peek under your hoody and you look like you're in your 30s, (maybe even late 30s).
    Just think of the word, 'hoody.' It sounds like a little kid's toy. The 'y' on the end makes it sound cute and juvenile.
    You're too old for that look now.
    You just look like a rapist.

Happy Anniversary to us!

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Thomas Edison: A Highly Successful Career

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    Thomas Edison, the great genius inventor, business entrepreneur, total egomaniacal A-hole...You can say the same for Henry Ford and Steve Jobs too. They were supposed to be A-holes. Isn't it supposed to be the exception when someone has an amazingly successful career and they're not an A-hole?
    I'm going to have to reinvent myself for success in 2012 and embrace my inner A-hole. I'll watch my meagre floor-licking career sky rocket in 2012: the last year, the year to end all years, (that is if those people that were living in that commune in California in the 1970s were right about the future of the planet).
    Success is all about confidence. That's all.
    I should get up and walk the streets like I own the city! I can be A-hole #1!
Success is 1% inspiration and 99% anal sweat! This world wouldn't even be here if I never shit it out in the first place! Anything I want is there for the grabbing!
 
    Unfortunately I can't.
    It conflicts with my New Year's resolution to embrace my Canadian identity more fully by apologizing to people that bump into me.

Snip snip! Happy New Year!

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    The calendar system the world uses in the present day began with the circumcision of baby Jesus eight days later. Did they regard circumcision so highly or was it an attempt to get they peasants back to work?

    "Alright you lazy bums, the year is over so get back to work! You had your eight days off!"

    My wife looked at the painting and asked, "why is Mary wearing a watch?"

    I answered, "Look, I just don't have the time the renaissance painters had for each painting. It took them months of dedicated work to paint those wondrous paintings and I have one or two days tops, (and that's with sleep deprivation). How am I supposed to know that Mary never had a wristwatch? Maybe she was ahead of her time?"

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My thoughts get smaller as they stretch into infinity

They would've reached the moon if they didn't blow away.

The marriage of Heaven and Hell

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"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,

Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.

Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing

from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."

William Blake

Boxing Day!

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    December the 26th is Boxing day in Canada. We celebrate the holiday every year but nobody's really sure what it means. Is it when we are supposed to put all the presents into boxes? Are we supposed to throw away the empty boxes? Is it about boxing fights?

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas-time always means perogy making time to me

    When I was a boy we used to make hundreds of perogies in preparation for the big Christmas eve party my parents held every year. We would make so many that we froze a bunch of them to eat for the rest of the year.

   We made potato, potato and cheese, sour kraut, and blueberry ones. Our little 

fingers were busy filling and folding and squeezing. Filling and folding and squeezing...

    My father always liked to be the one with the cool job of flattening the dough 

with the rolling pin and making little circles with the cup, while my mother would boil them and place them out on the counters to cool down.

    We had a real assembly line happening and the kids as usual being the lowest 

life-form in the room got the most laborious part of the job.

    We weren't stupid and we weren't going to be taken advantage of. Walking 

off the job was impossible. Dad wasn't very quick but he had a rolling pin in his hand. Mum would've seen our scheming anyway and made it impossible. There was no way we would have ever made it out of that door.

    Sometimes the only recourse a worker has is sabotage! I filled every perogy 

I made that year with dough. In Canadian-Ukranian parlance these clumps of dough were referred to as 'sucker perogies.' 

    My brother and sister were on board for the revolution but they didn't commit with the full hearted intensity that I did. I only made sucker perogies and made them really fast because it was way easier to make them when you didn't have to worry about the filling falling out.

    When Christmas eve came about, Dad instantly knew who the instigator was. It was obvious. I made no secret of coveting his rolling pin.

    That year, I spent the whole Christmas eve hiding behind chairs giggling and 

spying on the angry adults trying to eat their perogies. They had to eat every one of those balls of dough. Every last one of them. 

    Ukranians always finish everything on their plates. We can't help ourselves. It's in our D.N.A.

    

    All the adults hated me that year, except for Mike Wolynski. 

    He liked them!

    My punishment was that I had to eat every last one of the sucker perogies that remained. My mother put a lock on the freezer so I couldn't throw any away when they weren't looking. I wasn't finished until February.

    Perogies are serious business for Ukranians during Christmas.

Choose your path very carefully

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    Years ago I was tattooing this design from one of my sketchbooks
onto a friend's arm. I was fine with tattooing the image onto him but
I didn't feel right about branding him with the words.
    I never invented these words. They have a history as do all proverbs and aphorisms. An image often has several layers of meaning but these words were very specific.
    I knew his girlfriend a little. She was such a sweet-hearted girl.
He really lucked out with her.
    I couldn't...
    I tattooed the devils on him but left the scroll empty.
    No mercy...born to lose... Should a tattooist be telling people
what they should or shouldn't put on their own skin?
    I have this awful habit of thinking things to death
and that's what I did to my tattooing career.

The child is father to the man

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