Category Archives: comics

13.01.24 [Thursday]
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books, campbell river, comics, library, teaching, travel, vancouver

hanging up a coat in an empty town on literacy day

The other day I wore my Tibetan coat inside the library and was told I looked very urban. Which was funny because I was only wearing the coat inside because I was waiting to go up to Sayward with my boss to see the branch there, which is very rural.

Sayward is about an hour north of Campbell River, and it is a tiny place. It was a foggy drive so I wasn’t able to see as much of the countryside as I would have liked, but there were mountains that appeared when the fog had gaps. And mossy forests that I saw one deer/elk trying to escape the highway into.

But the town itself doesn’t even have a grocery store. If people want more than general store milk and eggs they’ve got to drive an hour down to Campbell River. That seems crazy to me. It seemed crazy to a non-librarian friend of mine that the library branch was in a strip mall, but I had no strong feeling about that.

I’ve had a bit of a tense week because today was Family Literacy Day and it was the first event I’d done to sort of integrate with other community development projects in town. That one of the literacy coordinators was there to help made me that much more aware that I didn’t really take classes in early literacy type things at school. I feel fine doing storytimes and stuff, but really focusing on what kinds of words they’re learning gets a bit wonky for me. My sleep this week was interrupted with lots of inadequacy thoughts I remember from teaching in China. I definitely see myself as a librarian not an “educator” or “literacy expert” though I guess if I keep doing this kind of thing I’ll learn.

But it all worked out. We read some stories, I talked about community and we made “comics.” Nobody decried my event as being terrible and built a rail line to run me out of town on. Now I can relax secure in what I’m doing until my gaming for kids events start up.

On Saturday I’m heading into Vancouver, where one of my awesome librarian colleagues is visiting from Calgary. It means I miss our library’s post-holiday potluck party here, but it’s been almost 3 months since I was in the Lower Mainland. ‘Tis time.

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12.04.18 [Wednesday]
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comics, games, library, sports, vancouver

all these events – i feel so social and poor

Post-school life is starting to come together (though I kind of need a job). I mean, I have classes coming up again in May, but now that all my friends have graduated it kind of feels like I have too. I’ve also gotten to play a new game and go to a conference and be part of Jamie’s four-night trivia blitz.

For a research project I’m working on I got to interview a former National Librarian of Canada last week, and she was adamant that going to conferences without having a job to do is pointless. I think that makes sense. This Saturday I’m going to be doing some liveblogging for the North Shore Writers Festival, which should be fun. I’m going to be a convenor for the BC Library Conference in the middle of May and I’m volunteering at VanCAF. I mean, I had fun wandering around at Emerald City, but I do like having something to do.

Also, when Sean comes to town in June the Vancouver Canadians will be playing. It works out that we’ll be able to go to a baseball game in the afternoon and then the Bombers-Lions CFL season opener in the evening.

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12.04.02 [Monday]
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books, comics, games, travel Aside

I’m back from Seattle and Emerald City Comicon (ECCC). It was my first big mainstream comics convention and it was pretty fun. I saw Wil Wheaton do readings, indie gamers do their thing, met a bunch of webcomic people I’ve followed for years, bought some books, watched an amazing reading of the Star Wars radio play by a pile of voice actors, saw Marian Call sing and a pretty great night of improv. Good times.

clicked my ruby heels and here i am

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12.03.19 [Monday]
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comics, music, school

march is not a terrible month

It was my birthday last week though I didn’t do anything special for it. Earlier in the week I went to see Fred Penner perform at UBC. I went with library school classmates and afterwards Jamie and Nicholle got him to sign their ukeleles. I didn’t join in the picture taking because I’ve seen Fred Penner in enough situations over the years where he’s just another guy (high school, Quinzmas, church) that treating him like a celebrity seemed weird.

Getting close to being done my homework for the term. My best assignment is undoubtedly my book trailer (see above) but I’ve had a few other things to finish as well. I saw a sentence on my Twitterfeed the other day saying “If you aren’t doing something you love, you’re wasting your time” In no way did I feel I was wasting my time making that video. The rest of my homework is not quite so inspiring.

I’ve applied for a job in New York to be a librarian at DC Comics, which would be crazy neat. It’d be a special library where I’d help research the first appearance of minor characters and do interlibrary loans with the studios in Burbank. It’d be a bit different from being a teen librarian but it’d be all sorts of cool. Probably won’t get it, but would have kicked myself for ages if I hadn’t applied.

And it gave me a reason to talk to people at the comic publisher booths when Jamie and I head down to Emerald City Comic Con in a couple of weeks. I wonder what kind of library a place like Oni or Dark Horse has, and how they get used. I’m the kind of person who can’t just go up to people and start talking, but having a real question I’d like to answer will be a way to kick myself into it.

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12.02.11 [Saturday]
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books, comics, sports, tv

sometimes i watch sports

I love baseball. True fact. But this past week I read The Complete Essex County and it was about small-town Ontario life and hockey played a big part in it. Today was Hockey Day in Canada so while I worked my afternoon away I took the opportunity to stream NHL games and feel a bit more stereotypically Canadian.

There is something about the way a hockey game is called that is calming just because of its familiarity. While baseball commentators on TV or radio can annoy the hell out of me (Buck, McCarver, Morgan) because of the inanity of what they say, I barely hear the words coming from the hockey game. I know friends of mine have strong opinions of who is damned good at their job in the booth hanging over the ice, who should never be allowed near a mic and who should have retired fifteen years ago, but to me hockey all sounds the same. It’s just this chanting cascade of names in succession (Tanguay to Jokinen to Iginla to Jokinen shoots Luongo saves), and it’s soothing as all hell.

Sean, who preferes football, and I have talked about the American ability and proclivity to mythologize the fuck out of things (he’s better at explaining it than I am). Listening to these games today I was thinking about how the announcers’ hockey chant is less a mythologizing than a ritualizing. In the game itself there’s no room for much more than the names, while baseball announcers have epochs to tell stories between pitches. Baseball’s got sagas while hockey’s doing rosaries.

Kind of bullshit, I guess, but something I might keep in mind. For future refinement.

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11.05.07 [Saturday]
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australia, comics, travel

hostels and comics that are free and otherwise

I’ve secured a lease on an apartment for Madame Holly and myself. And because of that I think I’m going to be able to start enjoying Sydney again. I’m not the kind of person who can relax and have fun with a big unresolved issue looming. On Monday though, I’ll move in and that’ll be a lot of worrying off of me.

In preparation for moving in, and because I’m going to be spending more time hanging out at Prosentient (but not working), I switched hostels today. The place I’d been at was out in Potts Point, near the King’s Cross subway stop, which was a longer trip into Ultimo than I would have liked.

I stayed at the Blue Parrot on John’s recommendation and I have to follow up with him about why he thought it was so great. Not that it was bad. It just didn’t generate any great allegiance in me. Most likely that’s because I didn’t really participate in the hostel-bonding experiences of drinking at whatever local bar dressed up as a national stereotype or dressed as a lady for free drinks or whatever.

The Blue Parrot staff were more friendly there than at the Sydney Central YHA where I am now, which is a much more professionalized hotel-like hostel (that charges for WiFi – boofuckingurns). But they also had terrible radio stations blaring in the kitchen all day long.

Enough about hostels.

Saturday was Free Comic Book Day and I went to a couple of places to see what was happening. Kings Comics had a 20% off sale (50% off back issues) plus the aforementioned free comic books. I picked up the paperback edition of Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth and managed to refrain from buying anything else. This was kind of a big deal for me. I learned I’m actually two trades behind on DMZ and it took so much not to complete that collection. But something like that would have to come back to Canada with me to be fully useful. Jimmy Corrigan I can read here and possibly get Holly to read because it’s awesome, and if we don’t have room to bring it back to Vancouver it would make an excellent gift.

I also went to a Kinokuniya Bookstore. I know I’ve read that name before but didn’t know what kind of bookstore to expect. It was quite large and had a bunch of artists there for Free Comic Book Day, including a couple of indie zine-type self publishers. I bought a really cool black ink on black paper thing about Leviathan and Moby Dick and other fish. Once I get a few more zines and things the plan is to send them over to Caitlin at the Schulz.

Tonight I went for a walk around Darling Harbour, which reminded me of the Kowloon boardwalk where you look at Hong Kong Island (I think I’ve got those geographical references correct, but since I’m not paying for WiFi they are being written without fact-checking and I might forget to check this before posting it). The climate and general appearance of Sydney reminds me more of Los Angeles if LA was a walkable size. Despite the city’s expense, I think I like it.

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11.05.01 [Sunday]
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australia, comics, games, library, travel

lazy sunday

Today I woke up to the snores of an Irishman. From across the room in the hostel, but still. Very loud. The Americans who woke up to the noise were vocal about their displeasure. I merely lay there waiting and figuring out how to spend my day.

See this is the thing about being in a country that isn’t cheap when you have no real money, you can’t just head off into the void and do whatever, confident in your ability to make it out financially unscathed. Relatively I mean. If you go ahead and crash a scooter even in a country where they’re as cheap as Armenians well yes you do have to pay a bit even then. You need to plan out your day so it’ll work.

Having not a tonne of money in Sydney means I’m spending a lot of time in parks and libraries. It seems a waste to just hang out here at the hostel reading, but too expensive to justify going to have afternoon beers by myself. It’s nice out, 20 degrees during the day, so it’s no great hardship to go sit in the sun. Today I found the local branch of the city public library (as opposed to the state library I was in yesterday) and read some comics.

Also, I got a SIM card and now have a phone number. Not that I use the phone part of my phone very often, especially when I don’t know anyone in this city, but it’s probably good for my future employer (assuming the visa comes through eventually) to have some way of contacting me.

Yesterday I found a really swank comic shop and a decent game store. I’m going to wait until I have an apartment before I start buying books/comics/games, but gamers are the only community I feel any confidence in dropping into. My first forays in Vancouver were to game stores too.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I’m really looking forward to when Holly arrives in a couple of months.

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11.04.14 [Thursday]
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comics, library

near-sighted monkey sighting

One of the perks of being in White River Junction when I am is that Lynda Barry was here for a couple of days doing a workshop with the students. Last night there was a bit of an afterparty with Ms. Barry at the bar which Caitlin and I could go to (we weren’t invited to the workshop, being librarians as opposed to cartoonists).

Lynda’s a very good talker and it’s kind of neat to listen to a person who’s famous talking about her friends and acquaintances who are people who’ve always just been names in books (like Charles Burns, Ira Glass and Matt Groening). People were interested in the gossip, sure, but there was also talk about the notion of language and culture being a part of biological evolution, synchronicity and all sorts of good stuff. She sketched a sleeping dog while she was talking.

I stayed out of it mostly, after a couple of Canada references at the beginning. I mean, the students are the ones who’re there to learn from her, to soak up her methods and whatever. I’m just the librarian intern. Not “just.” It’s actually really fun to have such a specific role in town here. Caitlin introduces me as “her intern from Canada” and yeah. Since I’m here a short time, being pigeon-holed is exactly what I want. It makes interaction easier. I have an in to just sit there and listen to people talk about linework and getting their pages done and I really enjoy it. It’s all so much more interesting than geeking out on tagging or social media or whatever crap I animatedly talk about after school with a couple of beers in me. (Do I talk about library stuff when that happens? Maybe I don’t.)

It was also pretty funny because last night was also 50¢ wings night at the bar, so it was packed (evidently they used to be 25¢ wings and they needed to thin out the crowds a bit by doubling the price) with regular townsfolk, who for the most part are distinguishable from the cartoonists. One of the students was talking about coming out the door and a bunch of guys were driving by yelling “Woo! We’re gonna go fuck some chicks! Fuck’em! Woo!” Those guys were not cartoonists.

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11.03.13 [Sunday]
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australia, comics, library, school, whining, writing

brain-weight

I am always completely amazed at how much better I feel when I have written. Today I finished off the first draft of a cataloguing paper (about the challenges of cataloguing webcomics) and while it’s nothing crazy impressive, I learned some shit and have some stuff written about what I learned. And my mood? So much better than it was yesterday, or all last week when I hadn’t written anything on this and was just dreading it.

A while back I was trying to figure out why I was so much less motivated this term with a month left than last term. And the answer was completely to do with the whole leaving for China the day after classes were over. I needed to get everything out of the way so I did. This term there’s cool stuff happening after classes are done (going to Vermont and then to Australia), but nothing I need to push myself right now for. And no Holly waiting for me right on the other side. (She’ll be coming to Oz in July.)

But today I feel good. I wrote a post for Closed Stacks (another library blog I’m contributing to) and a book review. I’ve got business cards in the mail. Tonight I’m going to do some real writing. Oh, and Reyn’s a dad (I saw it on his sister’s Facebook), so congratulations.

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11.01.24 [Monday]
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comics, library, school

library niches / distractions / poem

I finally got the work I wanted to get done this weekend done today. Which is fine. Monday is still part of my weekend in this term’s schedule. But I can’t help thinking that all of this schoolwork is distraction from doing the stuff I should be working on. I don’t know. I feel like things are going along, like they’re working, but that in the end I’m working towards something I am not sure if I want.

I mean, yeah, I want to be a comics librarian, but what is that going to look like? It’s not the same thing as wanting to work at a university, or even be a YA librarian. There can’t be that many jobs that would be for me (which is part of why I’m so excited to do my practicum at the Schulz Library, it being pretty much my dream job). But if those jobs are even fewer and further between than regular library jobs then maybe I’ve got to be making that job myself.

One way I could see doing that would be to turn Librarianaut into something like Fleen. But while Fleen is journalism about webcomics, I could make a library for digital comics. Not just a directory but a research tool. Last week there were a pile of interesting reference pictures flying around Twitter from comics people. What happens when we collect those tools somewhere and make them useful for people who didn’t see them on twitter? That’s what a librarian is supposed to do. Improve society by giving people informational tools. I could do that for my niche (if indie digital comics can be considered my niche). I think I could.

This is what I’m thinking about tonight. I want to use these skills to make something. The way Holly makes poetry.

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