Usually on Wednesday nights, I’m tr ying to put finishing touches on some page for Dicebox. But as my drawing time was yanked away from me earlier this week, I was already resigned to missing this week’s update (and only 2 pages into Chapter 2. Yeesh.). So when a free ticket became available for the Ryan Adams show at the Roseland, I took it.

This all kind of reminded me of my college days when someone would ask me if I wanted to go see the concert of some band or musician I never heard of before and then made my decision on the basis of half a song that’d be played for me. And, like those past times, I was not disappointed with my choice.

I knew Ryan Adams by reputation only (and knew not to scream out for “Summer of 1969”) so could not join in the general enthuiasm over the begining chords of this or that song. But I liked the music and found his obsession with Cookie Monster amusing, as was his Tom Waits impression—which actually sounded more like Louis Armstrong.

The real treat for me however was the opening act Tegan and Sarah. To put it simply: they rocked. And I was surprised to find some of their songs familar. Then I realized that Kip has been playing their latest CD around the house. When he picked Hilary and me up, he confirmed that he had. And that they are sisters (twins), which relieved Hilary and I as we were afraid we had fallen into the cliché of how all Canadians look alike.

Happy Halloween.

First, thanks to Gijs for p roviding me a much more sane translation of Dutch for the Speed Planet Blurb below:

Dicebox is a comic by Jenn Manley Lee about the characters Griffen and Molly. A beautiful comic which eventually will span 36 chapters, divided over four (books). The first one is now online.

Gijs also did not know what omgekat —from the Zone 5300 blurb— meant, but from context and Gijs guess, I’m pretty sure it’s design or re-design.

And actually Gijs wasn’t referred to Dicebox by either of the Dutch sites, but by OnlineComics.net, where I recently listed Dicebox in the Science Fiction section.

Another native speaker of Dutch, Piet, has cleared up the meaning of “omgekat” for me:

Your description of re-design kind of fits the bill. It is the illegal action of changing the identity of a car after you have stolen it. You do this by removing the existing serial number and applying a new one. Usually the new one is derived from a dump.

I think that’s pretty cool. A very interesting analogy for a re-design, especially when I think of certain graphic designers’ work.

I have recently started re-reading Tho mas Laqueur’s Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud to balance my reading of Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism by Marina Warner. It’s not uncommon for my to mix up my non-fiction reading a bit as pursuing one kind of fact for too long can be wearying. And it’s sometimes interesting to read books that compliment each other or give two different perspectives.

The epigram of the first chapter instantly brought back all of my I am fond of Laqueur’s book and analysis and why I keep this book around to refer to time and again:

The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are “the opposite sex” (though why “opposite” I do not know; what is the neighboring sex”?). But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world.

Dorothy L. Sayers “The Human-Not-Quite-Human”

Then we get to the good stuff, like historical accounts of maidens awaken from comas with “passionate embraces”, the pluses and minuses of the old belief that female orgasm was necessary for conception and, of course, inside-out penises. And that’s only the first chapter.

During the past couple of months, I have had the pleasure of being linked to by three European portal sites that have sent many, many new visitors my way. First were two from the Netherlands: Zone 5300 at the end of September, then Speed Planet at the beginning of October. And, most recently, and currently, ORF from Austria.

It’s all very flattering and yet makes me feel a little lame that all these people can read Dicebox in English and I haven’t the foggiest what they are saying about it in Dutch and German. (Not to mention my inability to read the Dutch or German comics on or referred to by these sites)

Naturally, I am curious what they are saying, so I located an online machine translator. Now, here’s where I laugh.

Here’s the blurb that accompanied the link on Speed Planet:

Dicebox is een comic van Jenn Manley Lee over de personages Griffen en Molly. Een prachtige comic dat verdeeld over vier boeken uiteindelijk 36 hoofdstukken zal beslaan. Het eerste staat nu online.

And here’s what one tranlator made of it:

Dicebox is one committee with Badger Masculine Lee via the personage Engrave and Do in. One splender committee who divisible via four register ultimate 36 chapter will trim. The first realm now online.

Actually, I love the fact that my name translates to Badger, Griffen’s to Engrave and Molly to Do in. I got a similar result with the blurb from Zone 5300.

Does anyone know what “omgekat” means? That word was not even in the dictionaries I checked out.

I was in the middle of chiseling tiles off the walls o f the bathroom downstairs, and had just laid down a successfully salvaged tile upside down on the sink.

Though I had removed about eighty tiles before this moment, this was the first time I noticed the manufacturer’s stamp. What I saw was this:

Now, what I find even more amusing than the fact I saw a winged penis and scrotum, was that I found this symbol perfectly acceptable for bathroom tile. And those Japanese can have an aggressive sense of humor… oh, wait. Made In Japan is upside down, isn’t it?

I did some poking around online for N.T.K. ceramic tile, which only came up on sites selling antique tile; which referenced the dragonfly mark. NTK Ceramics is now geared more towards technological and industrial applications, such as spark plugs and conductors, and only their Brazil site acknowledges the tiles as being part of their product line.

I can believe these tiles are quite old (our house was built in 1908) and, really, whoever installed them did an excellent job. It’s the subsequent neglect and “repairs” that is forcing us to remove the tiles in order to fix the decaying wall. I think my favorite part was the section of tile that had been epoxied back on.