Man Made Magic

In the last 2 weeks I have proven to myself just how motivated and badass I can be. As I'm sure that you can tell, if you have read my comic, I am a pretty skeptical person. But I can honestly say that lately I have even made myself proud.

Last Monday was a great day for Barely Alive. I printed the first silk screened covers for the very first issue. And they look absolutely AMAZING! I am so happy and pleased with them. It had taken so long to get the covers printed that I had finally given up, but then luckily I got to go to a good friends house and print my screens there. I had so much fun just being stoned and zoning out pulling print after print. Altogether there were about 200 prints, with 2 colors. So I pretty much was printing for 8 hours straight with drying breaks. But I was pumped. It was so worth it. I felt this caffeinated adrenaline just rushing through my brains out of sheer excitement and content feeling of being finished. I wanted nothing more than to keep going, and Mel helped a bit. But I pretty much did most of the work on my own.

It was magical seeing the covers, seeing what I had visioned in my mind for months, finally be pushed out onto paper. It's almost like watching your brains visions just appear right before your eyes.

Today was the marathon folding and stapling session. I managed to spend all day putting patches and comics together and yet and still you would think I would be too tired to write it all down here. But it's so important. The process, and documenting the emotions and all of it. I love that people will be able to come here and scroll back to the day I put together the first 200 copies of my first zine, and fell in love with it as fast as a mother would a newborn child. I am so excited I could literally just shit.

Now for zine fest....

Miseducation and Miscellaneous Hold Up's

So I am sure at this point that (if anyone reads this blog at all) I'm sure your wondering, " Hey, where is your comic?" Well, let me tell you. At this point in time I am sure that Barely Alive in Cubicle 5: Issue #1 is cursed. I'm sure of it. After so much has happened to discourage me from making this comic. First a few pages went up missing and I had to re-draw them, then the pages I re-drew were almost ruined when my bf spilled wine in my purse, then I found the original drawings I had made that we way better. And with the printing of the cover, first it's been put off for months because of conflicting schedules and my own personal lack of knowledge on illustrator. Forgive me but I look at myself as a traditional artist. I like to draw with an actual pen to my paper, I like to sculpt and actually cut my own blocks when I print. I don't believe in the photoshop, illustrator mumbo jumbo. In fact if I could do an awesome screen print with as minimal computer usage as possible I'd be a happy camper. Anywho, after all the months of missing the printing, finally I go to get things done this weekend. And I am as happy as a button. But there are just a few small things that wind up being a lot bigger standing in my way. First, I had orginally selected Teal and Pink for my zine colors, and apparently so did Endless Canvas for their 3rd zine, who happens to be the group that I'm publishing barely alive with. SO I had to change colors which was annoying but not horrible. But next, my disc was the one that was magically lost in limbo, which meant my screen would not be burned because I had no vellum copy. SO, no biggie, get some copies right? Or even better I'll go get transparencies, and I'll print them on my computer and have them out in no time! Right? Wrong! Couldn't find a place that was open that had transparencies for computers at an affordable rate. I only needed 10 at the most, not 120. So we think HEY, we can just print out copies on my computer and take them to the copy store. Right! Wrong AGAIN! You know why? Because your printer doesn't work you fucking idiot. BUT IT'S OKAY! Because there is still hope! You can just email it to yourself and take a back up copy with you to the copy store and print everything out there, right? WRONG YET AGAIN! Because damn near all the copy stores are closed because it's SUNDAY, and one of the files that you need so desperately is corrupted on your email account as well as on your Flashdrive. So you get to go all the way home and drive all the way back to Berkeley from West Oakland, after putting everything on a disk. But it's okay, everything is cool right? NAW! Because even though you were just there literally 15 minutes ago, now they no longer have a working hub that can black and white copies on the computer. So now your lucky self gets to go to yet another Copy store, where we run into the same computer problems all over again. Except this time they have a MAC, so it ends up working out randomly.

As if the rest of the day hadn't been annoying or frustrating enough, we get to the final copy store no one hardly wants to help us, and the guy that we ask to print our transparencies tries to give us the shittiest one in the pack with holes and crinkles all up on it, and then looks at us crazy when we tell him that we need the copy to be darker with less streaks. Turns out, the guys the brother in law of the manager and complaining does nothing because there is no way he'll ever get fired for sitting on his ass and doing nothing.

*Sigh* I love this, but if you can't tell I'm starting to get discouraged.