They’ve released a (meandering, kinda pointless) scene from Alien: Covenant. But there’s an incidentally gay couple in it – just two blokes, not spaceship interior decorators. Weird that this still feels like a breakthrough.

EDIT: One of the commenters on that page made a good point: This is supposed to be a colonizing spaceship. So, yeah, sending a gay couple to help populate a world doesn’t make sense. Maybe they have some sort of essential skills… like decorating. Oh, God.

I made a wee friend the other day. He was freezing to death on the path in front of our house. I went inside to get some food for him, and, on returning, found him on his side, seemingly perished.

So I took him inside, where we warmed him up, made him a wee nest in a big plastic tub, and fed him. He made a full recovery!

…Then escaped during the night and is now somewhere in our house.

Oops.

Cribbed from an e-mail to a friend…

My clicky-finger was hovering over the ‘Deactivate’ button on Facebook just a few days ago.

I hesitate to share anything there because I don’t want to deal with the volume or possible negativity of others’ reactions. Yet, as a creative person who’s enough of a wank to need applause, I enjoy having someplace to share things where I know people will see them. (Twitter used to be that, but I have a weird feeling that Twitter is dying.)

If I thought anyone would ever see my blog, I’d just stick to posting there, because that’s my space, and I have some creative control there. I don’t particularly want to advance Facebook’s thing. (Especially when I’m on my phone and it recommends horrible pages by horrible Americans saying horrible things.)

I wish I could just ignore Facebook, but somehow it has a gravitational pull, especially in those empty moments when I’m spent. But when I do pull myself away and read or even just look up, life feels better.

This is a long podcast interview between cartoonist Chris Schweizer and educator Jerzy Drozd, discussing non-violence in comics — but it really extends into every story in our culture, and the way violence is so often presented as the de facto solution to every conflict (e.g. Marty McFly is a chicken unless he punches Biff in the face, and his doing so instantly resolves the situation).

This is an idea that keeps coming back to me lately: “What is peace?” How can we be peaceful, especially when faced with an opposing force hell-bent on violence, or unwilling to engage with the level of thought and empathy that makes peace possible?

As John Lennon said:

When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight! Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.

I’m grateful that my work gives me the time and space to listen to long-form discussions like this in the background!

Chris Schweizer and Jerzy Drozd on non-violence

Thanks to the ramp my mum bought, Dad was able to visit our house yesterday!

Apologies if you haven’t watched “Stranger Things”.

This was me getting back to inking for the first time since my accident.

It’s much more risky than drawing in pencil, partly because I have to wait for sections to dry, and waiting is not my specialty; partly because it’s so much more permanent to commit a line to ink.

I’m also not so familiar with the pens I’ve got, ’cause I changed pens just before the crash.

I’ve got to take the leap, though, and work with the tools and skills I’ve got right now.