Spent Hours

Collision's Issue 12 is now web-available. Collision tells me:

This one really grew entirely out of an image that popped into my head one day, riding thru downtown Santa Destroy on my bike. The image was Rig broken on the couch, listening to a record and crying a little.

This image sat around for quite a while.

Eventually, it began to play nice with an idea I'd had where an issue would be sort of an anthology, four tiny stories about one day in the High Style. I didn't quite do this--rather, there's a main plot (Jerry crying), a sub-plot (Ak/Dk cleans his room) and my usual pedestrian linking technique (stolen from Slacker, probably) where a character leaves and the reader follows her perspective. Anyways, I still kinda want to get around to the anthology idea, truly do 24 consecutive hours from 4 separate perspectives, but some of these gags only work on different days. Akka can't possibly make coffee the same day he has his rock-ribbed waking up epiphany, and I had to have the coffee scene in there because right now, El Humidor cracking, not an egg, but a Cadbury egg, into his coffee percolator makes me really, really happy.

The rest of the main plot (er, "main" "plot" would probably be more accurate) is a nod to John Shirley. I made the nod explicit by mentioning "agony rock", a joke title he used a couple-three times. I kept meaning to rearead some of his stuff to try to pastiche the music descriptions a little more closely/accurately, but I had a good enough time writing what I did, including the ridiculous(ly) mysterioso lyrics, that I just shrugged, said "fuck it" and went to see was there anything left in the fridge.

Probably my favorite thing about this one, aside from the egg thing, is that DDT drew, unbidden, the central scene/image. Least favorite thing is that I think I butchered the death of Send More Cops. I wanted it to be slapstick, but I also wanted it to be actually funny, and I think I only got the first one there.

I did once see a seven-legged cow, though, at a freak show in western Kansas.