Apparently, I'm the sort of businessman that goes into town, has a few beers, tries to find somewhere reasonable to eat, tries and fails to find some entertainment of any variety and so retires to his room with more beer and a dvd, seeing if late night porn exists on one of the hotel tv channels.

Just so you know

Alright! I give up. I've just spent the past half hour looking over the site and I might as well stick a large sign over the top shouting about how it's been abandoned. I keep sticking fresh blog posts on the front page every so often but it's like I'm just adding a coat of wax onto a stuffed otter.

Cthulhu, George, Comic, Roleplay all are woefully overdue for an update and don't even get me started on the Manchester page. My wonderful plan of updating everything into php format worked really well but it was the last time i really had a look around.

The problem comes with the fact that this site is a creative effort from my brain and when i'm not feeling very creative or funny then I don't get much down onto the page. And I've just not been feeling very funny or creative recently.

So what does this mean for the website, i hear you scream? I honestly don't know. I know I'm damn well not going to give it up, there's too much here to give up on, but I am finding the time to do it difficult. I might redesign, i might rip sections out, i might even create an evil empire and take over the world. But at the minute i don't know. I'm sorry.

I still enjoy talking to you like this and so I will be doing for a long time to come and you're always free to e-mail me anytime you like. I just think i'm gonna go sit on a mountain for a while and meditate.

Catcher later bods.

What the fuck is up with the French now? You can call me ignorant and xenophobic and whatever you like, but I really have no clue what it is that's pissed on their chips. I knew something had gone on over the weekend and last night there was a little more. Well, if you can count throwing molotovs around and burning cars a 'little'.

But while I've been listening to the radio news and watching the riots on TV last night, I have yet to spot any reason for it. It's either that the news crews have no interest in telling me where the problem was or they have no clue themselves. Maybe I'm being ignorant, but I'm still sitting by the phone waiting for the demands list.

Ah, that's what it is that's been bothering me. Not why the riots had started, but the point of them? What is it they're after? Nobody seems to know. Is it something as easy as a fish supper with a bottle of wine each? or something more demanding like the abolition of the government? possibly even the return of the welfare state? or a free umbrella for every man, woman and child? Possibly even for the French to stop being the butt of every xenophobic joke on the planet?

Maybe they just want to get rid of every motorcar in the country. Now there's a cause I could get behind. No cars would be a great idea, and we'd all have to sit on our arses all day drinking booze wondering if a bus is gonna turn up. Fucking Marvellous.

Of course, I'm more one for peaceful protest myself. Not because I'm not psychopathic, but because I'm too lazy to do more than sit and argue with people. I could plan though. I'd probably fuck up the sewer systems and the TV stations so you couldn't have a comfy crap or watch tv... bet you'd get some results then.

So I got home last night and did 5 comics. I've not done that in a while, I'm feeling quite proud. Which I've set up to go from tomorrow until next friday. Enjoy. I might even follow them with more after that. Possibly even get as far as comic 100. You never know.

Anyway, see you in the funny pages

It's hot. It's cramped. It's sweaty, horrible and the smell alone is enough to turn your stomach. It's a shopping center on a Saturday afternoon.

With the late opening of shops nowadays, the early weekends, the holiday allocation of any job and internet shopping, then why in gods name do so many people have to shove their way into city and town centres on a saturday afternoon?

All I had to do was go from one side of town, through the shopping centre, down the highstreet and into the pub to meet some friends. I am 6'5" tall and wear steel-toecapped boots. How it took me twenty minutes I can only pin on the fat bastard in the santa suit. Out of the 50 million parents and children all shoving each other to see this 'childrens entertainer' arrive for his stint for Christmas there must have been a full 3 people who were glad to be there.

The children were crying, the parents were harassed and the everybody annoyed the crap out of me. Teenagers lurking about trying to look dismally stupid and succeeding with flair. Old people walking around at two miles an hour wittering about shite. And mothers that like to take their precious darlings for a tour of all the toys they won't be seeing under the tree this year and slapping them for breathing.

If I ever have to do my christmas shopping on a saturday afternoon, kill me. If I have to do it in a shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon in December, kill me and make it slow. I hate people. So should you, they deserve it. I'll get to how to go about christmas shopping properly later.

Of course, if you want to practise flicking people on the back of the head with spoons, then there's your chance.

Use Amazon. If you can trust them to get to you in time.

I buy the Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear games on the day they come out. I have to, it's a need I have. But I've been thinking now for the past hour and they're the only two games that I care enough about. Anything else has to wait until I'm ready and I'm not just talking about games. And I'm not so sure that that's a bad thing.

I bought City of Heroes cos it was on offer cheap and not long after I did City of Villains shipped and most people jumped ship onto that leaving the poor, the old lags and the excessively eager. And me. I've been having a laugh, but it's nowhere near as crowded nowadays. I'm crossing territory already well worn and since there's no rush, I can go at my own speed. The only problem with doing my own thing is that when dealing with friends they shift from level 20 to 30 while I go from 10 to 13. But at least I have fly now. Which is nice.

I never play any Final Fantasy game within the first year or maybe 2 of it coming out. And I've still never actually completed any of them. I've not got into the Legacy of Kain series yet, and I plan on picking up HALO at some point when I get around to it.

But the one that struck me today as worth consideration is the Internet. I started Vaguenet in January 2004, many million years after it became popular and wrote a blog long after LiveJournal made Blogging a hanging offence. I started a comic in January of this year, when there are already over 10,000 different comics out there and you need to have been going at least since 1999 to make any impression now. I'm certain I don't have a huge following and I know I've not spoken to or e=mailed from most people that read this, so the question comes down as to why I did, and why I still am doing it.

Well, what ego started, pride continues. As ever I felt the need to become rich and famous, and the opportunity to have a new audience. After a while you discover that fame and fortune isn't that easy and making people happy on the internet is an impossible task. So I take pride in what I have acheived, and what I have published, which is not an insignificant amount. I'm quite proud of my comics, and my writings and even those bits that don't get updated very often, or at all. It proves that I was here.

Now my friends and collegues that do publish and write for the internet are getting bored with it, and so comics and blogs are getting left without updates and sometimes entire sites drop off the map. That's not their fault, but I'm comfy here, I've got my own little corner of t'internet and it's my own, I've spread out a little and put a few sofas in, hung a couple of pictures and lit the fire.

Next time you're passing, drop in, say hello and I'll get you a drink while you browse the shelves for anything you've not read before.

Gin or Coffee?

Jon. Big Bad Jon. Big Jon. Incredibly Scary Jon. TrakkerJon. It's not hard, people. The Name is JON. That's J - O - N. There is no H. I tell people. I spell it for them. I reply to their e-mails with a gentle reminder.

When it comes to me sticking a large and incredibly blunt pool table into your eyesocket will you get the hint then?? My name is not John, neither has it ever been. It's Jon. one J, one O and a singular N.

I swear to god. There will be no mercy for the next person that calls me John after being told.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Ahh, the grand designs. The mighty plans. The wonderful murals I can picture in my head. The fact that I've got nothing done in months doesn't stop me from planning it all.

The biggest problem is probably to do with the size of the site. It's that bloody huge at the minute I'm scared to change anything in case it works out badly.

What doesn't fucking help is when one of my primary functions that I've been using for months and months starts to fuck up and I can't access the archives to anything properly.

It better not be my fault or somebody is going to pay for this. Well, bang goes my lunchtime.

[EDIT : Being dragged out for lunch. Back in a bit]

[EDIT 2 : Back again. Found out the entire site is fucked. Nothing is working]

[EDIT 3 : HA! It's not my fault... the server's been set up wrong. Need to give tech dudes a slapping over the phone]

[EDIT 4 : Working. I am great]