Bounty from the cupboard depths

I dug out an old jeans jacket from the cupboard (for a fancy dress party) on Friday and in the pockets I found:

* 1 unopened pack of gum, expiry date 2004
* 1 unopened pack of "Listerine Breath Strips" which i can only imagine must have been free, expiry date 2004
* 87 pence, still legal tender

Now those breath strips were basically poison fresh from the packet so I don't intend investigating them further, but what of the unopened pack of Mr Wrigley's "Mountain Icy Wind" gum? What would happen if you chew a piece of gum that was officially dead in the water three years earlier? Will it crumble to dust in my mouth and choke me? Will it release toxins that render me a dessicated corpse in minutes? Is it full of 1000 tiny spiders?

It's up to you to decide: EAT or DON'T EAT! Following the result, there will be a special blog post with realtime chewing.


ABOVE: the kind of elaborate and exciting hallucinations I predict will result from this dangerous stunt.

Everything's going my way

Huge news. the Wispa has been reinstituted by Cadbury's ("Cadbury"). They had them at the station today! Maybe all my dreams are coming true one by one!



I wonder which of my dreams will come true next?

Goats glorious goats

Yesterday I found out that it's not that unusual for a goat to climb on top of a cow and stand there for a while. This is big news. If this keeps up (and what reason is there for it not to?), goats will surpass donkeys in my animal rankings system to take the number one spot. What do YOU know about goats?

I got my calculator and my slide rule out this morning and have decided, quite arbitrarily, that Ghosts (my most recent book) has not been a hit. I wouldn't say out loud that its sales have been weak, but if they were represented by a man, it would be the man below:



Three people have written to me to say that they enjoyed it, but one of them received it free and their experience may be coloured by that fact.

I suspect that this turn of events tells me the following:

a. The market does not want new Scary Go Round stories (it may be saturated by the current five-a-week schedule)
b. I should use my spare time just to go for a walk rather than crafting coherent tales
c. Bonfire night is coming soon and tinder has never been at such a premium

I am not too depressed as I really enjoy bonfire night.

Take the pennant

Lars Brown has sent me a jam-centric drawing and I present it for your edification below.



Lars is the creator of "North World", the hottest new thing on the comics scene. He's got a book coming out, you'll enjoy reading it (if I know my onions - and I do).

Most haunted

I worked up a new tshirt design this morning. What do you think? (Nothing you say will make me change it unless you can produce a copy of your art degree certificate).



Following the inverse law of tshirt sales to design effort, I predict sales of around 4-7 units.

Autumnus

There's a nip in the air, autumn has arrived and to celebrate, I have finished this poster and will run it hotfoot to the printer for consumption! It's not for everyone but I hope it appeals to a few folks who like both of the concepts addressed.

Efforts

I don't know if I'm sold on this yet but efforts persist.

[EDIT] The finished version is above!

Mystifying concepts desk

I have a lot of sketches knocking around for prints and posters that, as you have probably guessed, I will never make because of certain problems. Here's one that I quite liked, but should really be a poster for a rock show.

For example
THE HEMULENS
+Bob Groke
and Jimmy Giggles



At Manchester Dog & Other Dog
OCTOBER 20th

R.O.A.R

An H and a P

A while ago Gene Ha, America's leading (some would say premier) comic book artist asked me to send him a pencil sketch so he could mess around with it. There wasn't really much to it but this is what eventually came back:



That someone who has worked with Alan Moore would take an interest in my little venture gave me a huge swell head for at least a week. Thank you Gene!

Some thoughts on Apple's new iPod line

For crying out loud, Steve Jobs, if you're going to tuck your jumper in (which is a peculiar move on its own), use some of your millions to BUY A BELT. Sweet Jesus almighty and all the saints, learn to get dressed.

A single yellow glove

Peter Marigold is a fascinating designer whose work has some very clever real world applications. After a day spent basically destroying my living room then attempting to restore order, I found the sentiments expressed in this interview with Mr Marigold very soothing.

I think the enforced gouging and and repainting in the front room is a watershed moment, a call to arms to put childish things aside and shape up, thirty year old man! Maybe next time I'll show you the neat isthmus I made of smashed laminate flooring and underlay. Pleasing.

Good news bad news

A) The Ghosts books are in stock and look great. They are now on sale but...

B) Unfortunately during a routine boiler maintenance visit the engineer discovered a gas leak and I spent most of the last two hours ripping up the laminate flooring in the sitting room.

So when considering point A) please think kindly of me and also consider point B). The good news is, if the leak isn't in the sitting room, I will have to rip up all the flooring in the dining room too! HURRAY!

O REJOICE
LET'S DESTROY
AN ENTIRE HOME
AT MASSIVE EXPENSE

Addendum: OF COURSE that is not covered by my household insurance!

Sketch blog etch-a-sketch mungo

All artists should keep a sketchbook and draw in it mercilessly, until the pages fall into dust and your finger becomes a pencil. I always have 3 or 4 on the go at once - for my ever-changing moods. I like to draw when I'm watching TV! Or waiting for a tardy friend in a public place. If you have a sketchbook, you still look friendless, but at least you're not bored.

Here are a couple of pages from the last month or so that you may enjoy. Or find awful.



I think the above page is good because it captures many of my preoccupations at once.



This page on the other hand is merely testimony to what I was watching at the time. Can you guess what it was? It wasn't terribly good.

A very short series (Ps: MUNGO!)

Influential webcomic artists that no one remembers #1: Scott Thigpen. Have we all lived so long? Scott was extremely nice to me on the way up. His reward is, from looking at his site, a fancy old life.

Mango Mungo

WHO IS MUNGO?
MUNGO!
MUNGO!
MUNGO!

Proving that times have changed and etc, in the University shopping precinct on Oxford Road, there is an outfit offering the full range of waxing services. Now I believe that a person should be allowed to wax whatever they fancy, but I am really not sure about the arm wax. I have never looked at a lady's arm and thought "strong peasant blood!" I'm sure there are a few perma-sleeved werewolf arms out there, but the fact that arm waxing consumes one third of this shop's (wide) frontage really concerns me.

Has daylight been shone in upon magic? Am I naïve? Or has an entirely new neurosis been unleashed upon the lady populace?

Tomorrow: chest waxing - a treatise.

Racing car face

I have finished drawing my Ghosts book, and selected a suitable printer to hand-etch each copy. Hand-etching is carbon neutral, provided you plant a tree for every monk who dies in the process. I will put these on sale once I have a delivery date - hopefully at the start of next month.

Unfortunately I have no other news, as I spent my weekend drawing and my hands are now claws. I can't do a thing with them!

Come fill your cups

Thank you for all the ghost correspondence! I will try to fit as many as possible in. The call for correspondence is now closed. A short poem:

MICROSPECTRE

Ghost on shelf
Is watching me
Died of croup
In '33

FIN

Forget forward-slash and revert to stroke

Wasted two minutes this morning thinking about what kind of middle-aged English man I want to be. Don't want to look like Gryff Rhys-Jones. He seems like a nice man but he's all over the place visually speaking. Iain Duncan-Smith also a serious no-no.

Please can I have some more letters via email about ghosts for my Ghosts book? I will answer your ghost problems or merely commiserate. There is still a page to fill and I want to lay this book to rest by August 22nd. Usual address &etc.

So cruel, the internet

Mere minutes ago, I read a "rumour" that Veronica Mars was going to join the cast of Lost. I rode around the house on an imaginary horse believing everything to be for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Then when I had finished doing that, I read another story that said Veronica Mars does not want to go and live in Hawaii. Then I wept.

No one understands* why I like Veronica Mars, one of my friends said it is for silly girls. Then he said I should go boil my head (he didn't really).

Work on the Ghosts book has been frenzied this week, there are just three pages left to draw. I have decided to lay it out in the style of the New Yorker, and require some letters for the letters page. These should be on spectral or supernatural issues (on which I am an expert) and extremely well written. Send them to john@scarygoround.com, then hold your breath for a month or so. Letters may be edited for reasons of style or brevity.

* I think any breathing, straight, man understands.

We're not in canvas any more

In San Diego, a few ladies asked me about Crochet Today "tote bags". I had never thought about printing on bags and had only scant understanding of the tote concept, so I sent them away with a flea in their ear. But given a morning of tinkering, I came up with something suitable for the lady about town. I'm the new Lulu Guinness! Without the money, the class, or (let's be honest) the lady chromosome. OY OY!