Stopgap.

I will post some new pages soon! I'm hard at work doing a five page strip for FutureQuake, but the heat and my arm disability have prevented me making real progress. Yesterday, I got the final, lettered pages back for the Never Strikes Twice strip I've done for the forthcoming MC2 book. So look at that instead. I won't put them all up, just the spectacular splash page. If you want to read it all, buy the book. It's out in October, (I think) through Knockabout Press.Click on it to see it bigger. If only that worked on everything.

Pow! Biff! Part 4.

My occasional series highlighting caption/sound effect hilarity has just grown another episode! First up is a rude name on the front of a drum in an Archie-type comic:

Next up is the effect too much "Jizm" can have on your ears. This is from an old Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Another Archie publication.

The One-Armed Draughtsman.

Generally, it's not been a good week. I somehow managed to royally fuck my left arm up at work. I couldn't lift my hand to wipe my sweaty brow. (I had no problem wiping lower parts of my body, thankfully.) My shoulder just gave way on Tuesday, and so for the rest of the week I was an arm cripple. It seemed to be getting better yesterday, but the bastard is giving me no end of gyp again today. My appreciation of Def Leppard's Rick Allen and Doctor Who's Davros has increased twofold.
The weather isn't helping, either. I think I might have said before that I hate the hot weather. I hate sweating. It's against my religion. It makes me wear shorts so I resemble a cast member of It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. I was shopping with my family today in a big trading park near here and caught sight of my own reflection. It was a man who shouldn't really be wearing shorts wincing as he rubs his crippled shoulder. It was a reflection that shouted "Somebody's Old Dad!" at me.

Reasons I Love Comics (issue#4): Continued on 3rd page following.

I've always smiled at the phrase "continued on 3rd page following." It just meant that the there were two pages of advertisements coming. A printed version of the commercial break. If they didn't print the phrase, did kids think that the comic just stopped? "Stan's just not trying anymore, that spidey story only lasted five pages!"

Generally, adverts suck. I go to the cinema to watch a two-and-a-half hour Superman movie, which is a herculean task for most people's bladders, and they stick 45 minutes of adverts on first. It's always the same old shite. Telly adverts are par for the course, but they are still shit. If I see that little wanker singing 'They're gonna taste great!" once more, I'll find a lookalike of him and beat him up. The thing I hate most about adverts is the fact they just plain lie at you. They make promises they have no intention of keeping.
It's the same with comics advertising. They promised "101 uses" for a portable hand fan. They sold "X-Ray Spex" which didn't work (I bought some once in a joke shop in Kingstanding, Birmingham. They just made my hand look kind of orangey and blurry, and I definitely couldn't see any tits.) They could turn me into a muscleman if I mailed away for a Joe Weider course. The adverts in my childhood comics always intrigued me. I used to wonder what a zip code was. I wondered if Grit newspaper really was a tabloid about gravel. I used to think Sea Monkeys really did look like that. (see image below.) Notice how the daddy sea-monkey's knackers are artfully hidden behind his tail? Notice how his wife's fishy bits are also hidden from view? And the fact that the kids have no genitalia teaches us that they don't grow pudendi until puberty.

Whilst I was reading these comics as a young boy, Britain was going through recession. There were three million people unemployed. Thatcher was at the height of her dark powers. My dad was invariably on the dole. So buying stuff by mail order from the back of The Mighty Thor was never going to happen. The comic itself was a rare treat. (I only got comics bought for me, not by me with my after school wages or pocket money, whenever I was in hospital;it made me think I was lucky for contracting meningitis!) So these adverts teased me with shiny products I was never going to acquire. Then, there were the adverts that made you think you'd got a bonus story in your comic:

They were like a late'70s version of a DVD extra. They were for Hostess "Twinkies" and "Fruit Pies" or Oreo cookies. They were one-page comic strips usually involving an alien menace that could be only stopped by Marvel superheroes filling their enemies' fat faces with American sweets. It just encouraged sports-shunning kids who read comics (ie. nerds like me) to fill their own fat necks with sweets. (Although not with anything made by Hostess; it was probably a Spar own-brand swiss roll.) This also sold me a lie. I thought American chocolate was good enough to stop an alien invasion, or at the very least a bank robber, until a good friend of mine bought me a giant Hershey bar back from the Big Apple. It literally tasted of vomit. It had a bile-y aftertaste which made me want to create my own sick, which would definitely taste better.

Then there are the ads which I look retrospectively on with horror. This ad is trying to sell you "black face"! I mean, Marvel did a lot of good work by introducing several black superheroes in the '60s and '70s. There was T'Challa, Luke Cage, the Falcon, Storm and Blade. Yet they undo all that by running this ad! It still has charm, I suppose, as a period piece, and it shows how far we've come in a short time.

So. Comics are great. Even the adverts are ace!

Reasons I Love Comics (issue#3):"quis custodiet ipsos custodes"

It was going to be on the list sooner or later. Everyone who is even slightly interested in comics has to read Watchmen. It is the Sgt. Pepper of comics. Wonderfully written by Alan Moore and superbly illustrated by Dave Gibbons, Watchmen is the only graphic novel to have won a Hugo award and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time's list of "100 best novels from 1923 to present."
It was among the first superhero comic books to tackle the subject realistically, to present itself as serious literature (saying that, though, Moore had already attempted a successfully 'serious' stab at a superhero in Marvelman {later Miracleman when Marvel comics threatened to sue; subsequently Moore never worked for them again.})
Technically, it's a trade paperback rather than a graphic novel, as it came out originally in twelve issues in '86/'87, but such is the intricate plotting, and the fact that there was a planned finite number of issues, that to not call it a graphic novel seems silly.
If you've not read it, I don't want to spoil it for you. Go out and read it. I'll lend you my well-read dog-eared copy! Each time I've read it, I've discovered something new. Gibbons' art is phenomenal. Deceptive in its simplicity. I've always been a big fan of Dave's ever since his stint on Rogue Trooper (who will probably get his own post one day!). There's no flashy panel layouts; most of the pages have six square panels, but the art has real impact. As I said, deceptive in its simplicity.
Moore's writing is brilliant. The man is a genius. He's the best there is at what he does. He took the bold move, at the time, of writing a book that has no thought balloons, no 'suddenly...' or 'meanwhile...' caption boxes, no sound effects, since then, all 'serious' books have followed his template.
Read it before the (bound to be shite) movie comes out. It's going to be directed by Zak Snyder, the very famous director of the Dawn Of The Dead remake; who took it over from Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) who took it over from Darren Aronofsky (Pi), who took it over from Terry Gilliam (you know who he is!) .the fact that all of those guys tried to take it on and failed shows you how complex and difficult to adapt this book is. Leave it alone. It is a comic, one of the best of its kind, and adaptation into other media will make it rubbish. Look at the adaptations of Moore's other work;Be Warned! From Hell, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine and V for Vendetta were all rubbish.

D'OL on the D.O.L.E.

Ta Ra Dave. Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out. Good riddance. You've turned the once mighty Aston Villa into a circus. It's a shame you can't take the ringmaster Doug Ellis with you. He's taken a club that were once European Champions and changed us into a club that will be fortunate to stay up this coming season. If you love the club as much as you say you do, Doug, do us all a favour and fuck off.
Rant over. I'll go back to wittering on about comics and moaning about sweating soon enough.
I'm sure you don't want to read my opinions on Villa. I could be here all day.

Sweaty.

It's too hot. I'm dripping like a fucked fridge. I'm like a grizzly with a migraine who can't find the nurofen on "normal" summer days, so you can imagine what I'm like today, the hottest one on record. I'm kind of like the Hulk mixed with Modern Toss' Barney. If this carries on, I'll be just a pink puddle by the end of the week.
My day job generally consists of standing by very hot metal things all day, so today was less than pleasant. I have to keep doing Tom Jones-style hip wriggles, to loosen the testicles that are welded to the inside of my leg. I have to put up with colleagues who do that blowing-out-of-cheeks thing, before they tell me that it's hot. I KNOW IT'S FUCKING HOT! SEE THIS FLUID ON MY FOREHEAD?
The company I work for have sort of heard of air-conditioning, but they think of it as something from the future; an impossible dream from the age of bacofoil jumpsuits, personal jetpacks and meal pills.
Also, getting the bus home is about as much fun as french kissing a particularly pungent parrafin-lamp. I reckon the EU should do something about the conditions humans are transported around in. If I was a veal being moved around in cramped conditions in a container that was hotter than 90 degress fahrenheit, people would protest about it. (Yeah, I know veal is calf-meat. I'm being hot!)
I can't take my shirt off to cool down for health reasons. Other people will get sick if they see my pale chubby midriff.
The most annoying thing about hot weather for me, though, is the fact that my nose gets sweaty. Being a spectacle wearer (I wasn't born that way; years of self-abuse finally took their toll {told you I was a comics nerd}, so I started wearing them all the time when I was about twenty-four), this means that my glasses keep sliding down my face. So I have to keep pushing them up, Chris Reeve-Clark Kent style. The lenses keep getting grubby because of my sweaty fingers, so I have to keep cleaning the fucking things. I hate being a four-eyed bastard. I think I should try contacts. I picked up a contact magazine the other day, to gauge consumers' opinions on wearing contacts, but it didn't help, it was just pictures of greying chubby men with their cocks out. I can get that just by looking in the mirror after a bath! I'm not certain about contact lenses, so I need your opinions. I'll post two pictures, one with specs, the other one without, and I want you to tell me which one is better. Cheers. No, scratch that, apparently Blogger's too hot to do any work and won't upload any bleeding pictures. Maybe tomorrow. Oh no, it's working again now, so here goes:
With specs. (halfway down my nose, as usual.)

Without specs.

Second Coming Delayed.

It looks like we'll have to wait a wee while longer for the second coming. The New Adventures Of The Christ, the strip I mentioned a couple of posts ago, has been pulled. Bolt-01, the editor of Lost Property said my art was kinda full-on, and he was worried about a possible backlash. Which I kind of expected. He was very nice about it, and life's too short too get pissed off about these things. It may re-emerge one day.
This has happened to me before, when I did a story concerning an imagined matrimonial murder, and because the victim was female, it was seen as being possibly misogynist. The cheek! If the wife had killed the husband in the fantasy sequence, I suppose that would've been alright.
Anyway, Bringing Up Prince Phillip is still in Lost Property#3, and it was the funnier of the two anyway.

We got it covered!

This is the newly completed cover for theMC2 book out this autumn. The cover is by Michiru Morikawa, a hugely talented artist. MC2 stands for 'Midlands Comics Collective' which is a group of both amateur and professional comics artists, all living in and around Birmingham. We managed to get an Arts Council grant to get this book published. It will be published by Knockabout Press; publishers of From Hell and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. The blurb on the back was written for us by Dave Gibbons, and it says:"If I remember my quantum physics correctly, then MC squared equals energy, and this anthology certainly proves that Einstein knew his onions. From whimsy through teen angst by way of dark thrills, this anthology is full of strangeness and charm. It should set the Geiger counters of the world ticking like crickets!" That's only Dave Watchmen Gibbons! Not only can he dance like a charm, he can say nice things about our book!

Jeez, it's Phil!

These are two panels from my strips for Lost Property. I've mentioned Bringing Up Prince Phillip before, which will probably piss off any monarchists that read it. My other strips for them concern some bloke from Nazareth at the turn of the Common Era. This might just piss people off as well. I'm just surprised at myself for drawing someone well known and actually have it look a bit like them.

Reasons I love Comics (issue#2): "Come, son of Jor-El! Kneel before Zod!"

After watching Kevin Spacey's lacklustre display in Superman Returns, I want to hark back to the happy days of 1979, when Supes had proper baddies to battle with.
When Superman II came out, I was taken to see it by my father, but I'd heard that Superman got beat up in this film, so I flat out refused to go into the cinema. I didn't want to see Superman bleeding! We ended up going to see Popeye instead, the shit live action version with Robin Williams. My Dad didn't speak to me for at least a week after that!
When I did finally pluck up courage, I thought it was brilliant (subsequent viewings as an adult has dimmed this view somewhat. There is a lot wrong with it. People who say Superman II is better than the first one are talking out of their arses.) The main reason I thought it was brilliant: General Zod. (Still the main reason to watch the film today.)
In the comics, General Dru-Zod (his full name) was a Kryptonian equivalent of a neo-nazi. He was sent to the Phantom Zone for his hate crimes. In the movie, he is just a bog standard villain arrested for a few murders, and sent to the phantom zone by Superman's Biological father, Jor-El. Being sent to the Phantom Zone resembles being turned into an LP cover, which is then flung into the far reaches of space. (This bit always reminds of the cover to Queen's Greatest Hits.) Subsequently, Zod and his two cohorts, Non and Ursa, survive Krypton's demise. They get out after having a hydrogen bomb thrown at them by Superman, (He didn't know they were there!)and they try to take over Earth, each of them having the same abilities as Superman.
Terence Stamp is excellent as Zod.He portrayed Zod as a pathologically arrogant aristocrat. When Zod is told that "the whole planet" is watching him, his performance suggests narcissism. At times he seemed almost fed up with his incredible abilities, as new as they may be: "I win! I always win. Is there no one on this planet to even challenge me?!" When Ursa soothed him with, "You are master of all you survey," Zod replied, "And so I was yesterday, and the day before."
In the scene in which the U.S. President surrenders to the three super-villains, he utters, "Oh God!" He is quickly corrected by the general with a curt rejoinder: "Zod."
Zod's line "Come, son of Jor-El! Kneel before Zod!" has become part of popular culture, frequently referenced in other films and TV shows (such as Jay shouting it in Mallrats). It is delivered with such panache! Although, you have to wonder why he wants men to kneel in front of him all the time.
The climactic fight scene between the four Kryptonians is fantastic (although the 'jokes' like the roller-skater being blown backwards and the man continuing his conversation on the payphone once it has been blown over and sent down the street are just rubbish and spoil the tension of the scene.) Zod realises that Superman's weakness is his compassion for other people, and so throws a packed single-decker bus at him!
Zod is brilliant.It is almost certainly Stamp's portrayal that has led to Zod becoming one of Superman's best known villains. Most non-comics fans don't really know any Superman villains other than Luthor and Zod. Zod should take his place as rightful ruler of 'Planet Houston'. We must take his hand and swear eternal loyalty to him, or perish for our defiance. There is only one choice. We must KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!
http://www.zod2008.com/

An Apology.

This from the BBC cult website:"Statistics show that you're most likely to get your own story in a girls' comic if you're a sporty, disabled, artistic Victorian orphan who lives with a violent aunt or uncle, having a hurt sister/brother/pet who you need to earn money for, but don't realise that your best friend secretly resents you, the snobs are plotting against you, and an evil mastermind is attempting to take over your school and you're the only one who can resist her powers. However, this will count for nothing if your name doesn't lend itself to a clever titular pun.
Over forty-three years (Jan 1958 to Feb 2001), Bunty's The Four Marys went through several looks, lots of school hols and a change of headmistress, but the girls stayed in the Third Form throughout. "
You are right, JvS and BB, Bunty was brilliant after all. But it still wasn't as good as Misty. I can't believe I'm arguing with a pair of feminists who are defending bloody Bunty.

Reasons I love Comics (Issue #1): Gaze into the fist of Dredd!

In the previous post's comments, I mentioned I was thinking of listing the reasons why I love comics. Which particular stories, art, panels, punch-ups, movies, animated spin-offs etc., illustrate why I love the medium so much. So, in no particular order of merit, here's the first issue!
This single panel is probably what got me turned on to comics when I was a small boy.
Because both of my parents worked, my brothers and I spent our school summer holidays at my Nan and Granddad's house. My youngest brother was a climber and an explorer, and would spend all day either climbing trees or picking up crusty white dogshit and throwing it at other kids. My other brother was a warrior, who would either play football ("It's not the winning, it's the taking someone apart!") attack nettle bushes with a stick, or attack other kids (with or without a stick, he wasn't bothered) . I was the quiet one (hard to believe now, I know) the 'clever one' who was happy just to read. Two of my uncles hadn't left home yet and my Uncle Paul used to buy 2000AD every week and keep them in boxes under his bed. So when I went to Nanny's I would just bugger off upstairs and immerse myself in newsprint mayhem every day until the egg and chips were ready.
Paul had literally hundreds of the things under his bed, so, every day,I'd go and fish the next one out. (The collection was incomplete though; it used to piss me off when one was missing) I loved RoboHunter, Strontium Dog and I used to especially like Rogue Trooper. I never used to be keen on Judge Dredd, until I chanced upon the work of Brian Bolland. The man was, and still is, a genius with a pencil and an ink brush. It looked both realistic and yet dynamic. His composition of each panel was brilliant. His Dredd was the definitive Dredd. The first time I came across his art was in the four-part Judge Death story, which was brilliant, (it also introduced Judge Anderson) but the sequel to that strip was called The Four Dark Judges and it booted poor old Rogue into second place forever. I think it was Prog 225, but I'm not sure. Dredd was caught in Judge Fear's bear trap and Fear was about to show him his face, which was so frightening it will stop your heart if you look at it. "Gaze into the face of Fear!" said Judge Fear."Gaze into the fist of Dredd!" replies Joe, who promptly twats him in the mush! Fantastic. So much energy in one panel. As ever Bolland's crisp clean brushwork and his excellent cross hatching made the panel jump out at you. From that moment on, both Dredd and Bolland were my favourites.

Epilogue: While at Bristol Comic Expo last year with the comic Stuffed, I was sat behind a table drawing for a very nice, but mental Dutchman. While I was doing it, a middle-aged moustachioed man sat down next to me and starting drawing. He asked If he could borrow a rubber (eraser, if you're american-it's not that type of moustachioed middle-aged men story!) I didn't have one, so he borrowed it from someone else. It was Brian Bolland. My childhood hero (well, after Paul McGrath.) and I was sitting next to him and sketching. And I didn't have a bloody rubber.

(Author's note: I won't tell you what else I found under Paul's bed! That changed my outlook in a different way!)

Ban Bunty.

I came across this article today. It's about how one gets one's girlfriend into comics. Despite the prelim being written by your typical piss-smelling comics-nerd virgin whose knowledge of what a naked woman looks like is gleaned from Rob Liefeld's shitty drawings in X-Force, the ten books chosen make interesting reading. I like some of the books. I'm not a woman (don't let my breasts fool you!). Does that mean that if I was to put down my 'top ten' comic books, girls wouldn't enjoy them if they read them?
There's loads of great stuff out there, and sticking them onto lists such as 'for boys' or 'for girls' is going to belittle an already marginalised artform. My girlfriend wasn't particularly into comics when I met her, but she is now, by reading the stuff I'd recommended to her. None of that stuff was typically 'girly', but she got it. She reads stuff now that I'm not keen on, and vice-versa.To assume girls won't like comics because it's 'all superheroes' is like assuming boys won't like novels because it's 'all chick-lit'. Not that superheroes are bad, you understand. If it wasn't for superheroes, you wouldn't have Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns or my favourite Batman classic:Year One.
Girls generally don't like comic books as adults because the comics they're bought as kids are trite shite like Bunty. I'm like I am because I was bought 2000AD!
Go and read a comic book. It's brilliant.Buy your kids good comics. Or, you could hang on until October and buy the amazing MC2 book, featuring some unknown scruffy chubby brummie's art.

Thank Fuck It's Finished!

When this World Cup started, it seemed like we were going to get one of the best tournaments ever. The group games seemed much less cautious affairs than before, and some of the best goals of the tournament (Cole, Cambiasso, Lahm) were scored in the preliminary round.
Then, when it moved into the knockout phases, it became the World Cup that could've been. There was no one single player like a Pele, Cruyff, Rossi or Maradona who took the tournament by storm. There should've been; there were players there like Ronaldinho, Messi, Henry and Rooney who all could have set the Cup alight and yet didn't. Instead we had cagey, defensive games where the cynics and cheats won, and the massive global audience lost out. Despite noises from FIFA that fair play was to win out, we saw the opposite, and the cup had some very bad referees. We ended up with a final where the only talking point really was a head-butt.
Anyway, for what it's worth, here's my bests and worsts of Germany 2006:
Best Goal:
It's gotta be Cole's volley against Sweden. I know Cambiasso's 24 pass team goal was technically very good football, but it was boring to watch! You can't beat a 40 yard screamer.
Best Game:
Apparently, it was Germany v Italy, but I didn't see that one. The best one I saw was Argentina v Serbia. The Argies were awesome that day.
Worst match:
Switzerland 0 Ukraine 0. The Swiss were so shite they missed more penalties than WE did!
Worst refereeing performance:
Graham Poll. Giving three yellow cards to one player is just amateurish. I know the ref in the Holland/Portugal game had a 'mare, but just look who he was dealing with- The two biggest sets of cheating bastards since the dawn of time.
The Greg Louganis award for diving:
You guessed it: Cristiano Ronaldo. Although, let's be fair, those German super long blades of grass can get entwined round your studs. At it only affected the Portuguese. And having a twisted sock can be very painful.
The 'Lisa Minge-Gynaecologist'(she's real: Google her!) awards for stupid names:
Quim (Portugal)
Zangalanga (Angola)
Fred ( Brazil)
and Lee-el Yung (S.Korea) always made me think Neil Young was playing when the commentators said it.
The most predictable thing that could have happened, ever.
England going out on fucking penalties to a bunch of fucking Oscar-winning cheating bastards.
ITV or BBC?:
BBC, definitely. Even their shittest commentators (Garth Crooks, Motty, Ian Wright) are much better than the squabbling Cockneys ITV stuck on the shit-pump.

And apparently, Theo Walcott has tested positive in a drug's test. They found traces of Calpol.

Bringing Up Prince Philip.

This is episode one of a new strip I'm doing for the new issue of Lost Property. It's called Bringing Up Prince Philip, and it's about the wacky racist antics of the Queen's Consort. It's written by Ed Berridge, and it's funny.

Radio GaGa.

Today was the first anniversary of the 7/7 terrorist attacks on the London Underground and bus network. It was the worst terrorist attack on mainland Britain since the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974. To mark the occasion, there was a two minute silence to remember those that lost their lives in the atrocity. Here in Birmingham, the local radio station, BRMB, stopped broadcasting for two minutes to join in the paying of respects. Just before, though, they just happened to play Going Underground by The Jam!
This is typical of this station. These are the people who married two sets of strangers, they made some stupid bastard sit on dry ice until their arse stuck to it, and worse of all, they inflict James fucking Blunt on my earholes every half-hour or so. I have no choice in the matter, I work in a place where the choice is BRMB or HEART FM, and that's it. It's like having to choose Stalin or Hitler.

Cheaters never prosper!

Wazza and Cris make it up?

I am so glad that those cheating bastards of Portugal are on their way home today. Especially that greasy ballet-dancing little minge Cristiano Ronaldo. This little wind-up merchant will be remembered forever for his performances in this World Cup, but not in the good Pele way, but for his diving, 'injury' histrionics, and demanding to the referee that another player gets sent off. That last crime is the most unforgivable; he's like the kid that reminds the teacher that he/she hasn't set any homework. He's a fucking little snitch. He made me so angry on Saturday that I kicked my telly. (I know it's a bad thing to do, but I'd imbibed. The telly survived; I can't kick for shit when I'm pissed.) I know England didn't deserve to win, I know we were abject. But I can't accept us being knocked out by the Portuguese branch of RADA.
FIFA must punish Ronaldo. Otherwise, it's sending out the message to the millions of impressionable kids watching that cheating is the way to win tournaments. It's like my mom used to say: 'Cheaters never prosper'. (Saying that though, she also used to tell us we were about to have 'shit with egg on' for tea, and Henry and Matthew Kelly were brothers, so I'd take a lot of what she says with a whole handful of salt.)

Klytus, I'm bored!

This post is for Clive. He suggests he's not heard of the magnificent actor Peter Wyngarde. He is probably best known for his (shamefully ignored by the Academy) portrayal of Ming the Merciless' ruthless right hand man Klytus in Flash Gordon (above). He was also ladies' man Jason King in the gritty, hard-hitting TV shows Department S and the spin-off Jason King. His career was virtually finished overnight when he was caught by police having sex with a truck driver in a public toilet. This was back in the dark ages of 1975; It caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst his legions of female fans. His image did not give any clues to his sexual proclivities at all!(see below.)
Also not helping his career was an LP he released, titled When Sex Leers It's Inquisitive Head, which contained the controversial track Rape.

It's about time this leviathan of stage and screen was re-remembered and given the credit he's due.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~waynedavidson/jkhome.htm

Obit of a laugh.

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I pinched this from >Jemima's &BB's blogs. If this is the way I am to shuffle off this mortal coil, then it's what I would've wanted.