Posts tagged personal
To the scum of the world…
So, I caught some scum-sucker on the roof of our wash house the other day trying to steal a metal flue. I mean honest to god, a metal flue. I know that people are hard up, and scrap metal is going for a bomb and all that, but if I had thought the hunk of junk up on that roof was worth something I’d have ripped it off already and sold it myself.
Just even more galling is the fact it looks like said scumbag returned yesterday morning to remove said flue from the roof, leaving a massive gap in the roof in the process. All I can say is that the asshole had better pray he gets caught by the police before I catch him, mainly as prison would be a cake walk compared to what I’d do to him.
</rant>
Anyways, the picture that I posted on Sunday night is indeed something I’m working on, and hope to launch sooner rather than later. Basically, I’m relaunching ‘projectfortytwo’, which will now be known as Project 42.
What is Project 42 you ask? Well, I’ve found in recent times that any time I try to start and write and draw and complete a story based comic, I find myself drifting away from it completely in one way or another. Look at Alienated Youth last year. I find myself not really planning the story out properly and just generally winging it which makes the process much more difficult for me to complete and much more difficult to produce a coherent product. Which is where the concept of Project 42 is coming in - to help me teach myself to actually plan and work out a full story and produce a fully complete comic story. Although I’ve not fully settled on the full concept of how Project 42 is going to work, I have settled on one little rule.
Each comic story I produce on Project 42 will be 42 pages long. No more, no less.
I know that one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to fully do a 20 page comic minimum, but that felt a bit restricting. In that length it’s difficult to set up, develop and properly resolve a conflict. 42 pages means enough leeway to set up the foil, develop the characters and the relationships and resolve the story to a satisfactory level.
I have a few concepts already brewing for this little endeavour and the first I’m doing is a piece called ‘Don’t Ask For Decaf’. This is going to essentially be a reboot of my old comic ‘Coffee of Doom’, renamed as I have too much respect for certain comic creators. I did a lot of learning of the writing and drawing process when I first did COD, but I was never happy with the finished product, especially with the first couple of chapters. This is going to be my way of resolving that and pulling the story back to the way I had originally envisaged it.
I am already quite a bit in to developing the story and I’ve already started thumbnailling the first few comics. But I’m not posting anything completed until I’m happy to start. And besides, I’ve still got to pull together a home for all these new comics I’ll be drawing. More news on Project 42 and ‘Don’t Ask For Decaf’ when I have it.
Good god, it’s December already…
Jesus Christ almighty, where the hell does the time go?
I think I can honestly say this has been a proper annus horribilis and definately a year I’ll be wanting to forget in a hurry. It’s nearly a year since my wife and I got flooded out of our home (week on Friday to be exact) and to say that everything has went to pot since then would be something of an understatement.
It is part of the reason that I’ve had to give up Alienated Youth. As much as I tried and tried and tried, I couldn’t get the damn comic to resolve in my head. And so when cost cutting measures came to the fore in my household affairs I had no choice but to let it go. It’s not that I wanted to per say, creative things are trying to jump out from me but, unfortunately, time and money seem to be at a rather large premium these days.
The funny thing is, not even 10 years ago, I was writing more than I was drawing. Or doing coursework. Or going to lectures. *cough*
This is why there has been a small flurry of postings here recently. And why I’ve changed the name of the blog to The Life and Times of Mark McQueen. An almost nod to my old blog the Deviant Chronicles there, my (admittedly early) New Years Resolution is to pick my sorry ass up and start getting myself back to ‘normal’. Whatever that is.
I am going to try my damndest to keep coming back online and venting. Rambling. Ranting. Whatever gets my fingers moving and my mind ticking. I used to be very good at this way back when, so I can’t see why the spark can’t return.
I aim to grab 2012 by the scruff of the neck and make it an awesome year, not just for me but for the people closest around me. Because, quite frankly, 2011 has sucked. Royally sucked. And I refuse to go through another 12 months of the same shite as last year.
Actually, know what? That wasn’t an early New Years Resolution. It’s a New Years Revolution. 2012 - here we come!
The OBGYN I had told me I had to miscarry naturally KNOWING that I had only had mole pregnancies before and COULD NOT miscarry and the previous Dr’s I had had to remove to pregnancies for fear of further complications to me. The result of me having to miscarry naturally? I almost hemorrhaged to death in ANOTHER Dr’s office and had to have an emergency D&C performed with no pain medication, hemorrhaging, conscious, passing clots *literally* larger then the size of golf balls (I took pictures because the on call Dr thought I was being dramatic), JUST to make it to the hospital to have the ACTUAL D&C. And I ended up needing surgery 2 months later because they left sone of the tissue in and I bled and cramped for 2 months! DISGUSTING!!! Em PS mine wasn’t an ectopic pregnancy.There are actual fucking physicians in this world who won’t treat ectopic pregnancies.
I want to cry.
….pretty sure this is actually illegal. Like, if someone comes in to the ER, no matter who they are, what they need, if they are in immediate danger, you have to treat them. It’s problematic from an economic/insurance standpoint (like, logistically, sometimes it is hard to figure out how to pay/who can pay for services), but ultimately, you will get treated.
Actually, most states have conscience clauses that protect doctors who would rather let a woman die from an ectopic pregnancy or hemorrhage to death because of a miscarriage and they are fully within their rights to refuse treatment because of these clauses. AND, depending on the hospital you go to (whether it is affiliated with a church like many hospitals are) they have to refuse to treat you because they aren’t allowed to do certain procedures by the board of directors/ethics committee.
The nun who was excommunicated for allowing an abortion to take place to save a dying woman is a prime example of an ethics committee allowing an abortion in a hospital where they are not allowed to be performed without permission. The church excommunicated the nun because they didn’t think saving the life of the mother justified terminating the 11 week fetus….which would have died with the mother a few weeks later if the abortion had not been allowed. So two deaths, according to the church, would have been better than the one. The 27-year old woman who needed the abortion due to pulmonary hypertension already had four children, too.
Now, doctors can refuse to treat patients due to these conscience clauses without any legal ramifications, but the odds of another doctor being called in to take care of the patient is high. The problem with this, though, is that women end up waiting while in the process of a miscarriage for the doctor to arrive and treat them. I posted a story about a woman who went through a miscarriage and another doctor had to be called that wasn’t affiliated with the hospital she went to because it was a Catholic hospital and none of the doctors would treat her. I’m having trouble finding the link, but this woman was literally bleeding to death in front of these doctors while waiting for the other doctor to arrive and no one even offered her pain medication. Instead they kept talking about how interesting of a case study she was while she was dying. She survived because the doctor finally showed up and performed the D&C she needed but she could have died while waiting for it. AND THIS IS COMPLETELY LEGAL BECAUSE OF ANTI-CHOICE LEGISLATION.
In any other case, a person bleeding to death would be treated immediately, but because it happens to be a pregnant woman (whose fetus, I might add, was already dead) there are laws in place to protect doctors who would rather let her die because they want to “preserve their conscience”. Personally, I don’t see how letting someone die in front of you preserves one’s conscience when you have all the tools available to save that person’s life, but I guess you aren’t a person if you’re pregnant, only the fetus has any sort of value, not the mother of four who is going to die.
Love,
Rabble
(via jessfink)
