The cursor blinks at me like the lazy eye of a cat. Waiting with computer patience for me to give it something to chew on and as soon as I have put together a sentence returning to its relentless blinking. The only way to stop it even briefly is to give it something else to chew on. New words to eat. More of me, and tonight I don’t have quiet enough to feed it. Sometimes the words simply come sometimes you have to force them and when they are forced they refuse to play by the rules. They refuse to follow one another in any coherent sort of way and simply hang off of sentences in awkward poses.

I wanted to summarize a passage written by Henry Miller dealing with the definition of Art and what makes an artist but I couldn’t summarize it in a way that did it justice. When you read something that is so much better than anything you can even dream of it’s hard to write anymore. There is the constant thought that there is no point. Why bother to put any words in place when someone else has put them together so much better ? My own writing appear sad and clumsy a poor attempt at communicating ideas and concepts. As poor and clumsy as cave drawings are in explaining n-dimensional sphere packing. On a side note has anyone heard of the kissing number ? You can spend hours upon hours reading about sphere packing and the kissing number. I wonder if Henry Miller knew about sphere packing.

I was going to read more about sphere packing tonight but the incessant blinking of the cursor wouldn’t let me. School is on break for 2 weeks, I’ve promised myself to finish the story Nasy has so kindly passed onto me during this time. A suprise ending and maybe even an appearance by Bob who knows.

I’ll try to make it as good as cave drawings.

So we had to introduce our family to our classmates and since I didn’t have any pictures I used my great artistic ability to draw pictures. As you can see in the above picture I have a lot of aunts and uncles. In addition to not having a dog or a cat I have 7 fishes. Iranians all love tea and rice.

As I was drawing the picture I noticed I had some empty space left and drew a penguin at the bottom. Just for the heck of it, unfortunatly when it was time to do the actual intro I realized I was a bit short so not having anything else to talk about I pointed to the penguin and said “This is Bob, Bob is my sisters friend. Bob is not real”. So there you go, Bob my little sisters imaginary penguin friend.

Lately I’ve been talking to Bob a lot since my sister neglects him frequently and have realized all Bob ever thinks about is fish. Bob is like a horny teenager, sooner or later he will return to talking about fish and you can’t do anything about it.

Me: “Carrot Cake Soup is like the taste of watching girls make out.” Now that’s a good sentence.

Roomate: So that’s every guys fantasy ?

Me: What do you mean ?

Roomate: You know, watching girls make out. Or is it having sex with two girls at the same time ?

Me: No not really, I think every guys fantasy is having sex and eating a really good sandwich at the same time.

Honestly I think sometimes you can even skip the girl and just go for the sandwich.

I walk down the isle and it’s just like old times, I am even wearing my old Sales Engineer (SE) uniform, Brooks Brothers shirt and Gap khakis. The only difference is that this time I am not traveling for work but rather to take care of some paper work in Hong Kong. I came to Taiwan with a visitor visa so I have to leave and come back in as a student.

I get a bit closer to my exit row seating and recognize a fellow sales guy. I am not sure if he is a pure Sales Guy (SG) or an SE like me so I look at his cell phone. It’s a PDA/cell and he’s holding a stylus in hand, ahh an SE. The white socks he is wearing with his dusty black shoes further confirm his technical background. Amused at having found someone from my previous profession I sit next to him but I can tell I am dismissed before I have even finished sitting down. I have been out of the game for a bit and I don’t quiet look the part anymore. For one thing I am too relaxed and happy for another I don’t have an expensive cell phone. Oh well, I really didn’t want to talk tech the entire flight.

I have just put on my seat belt when I see the third member of our row approaching, he is also in Sales but not an SE, he has the wireless cell phone ear piece and that marks him as a pure sales guy, I start to listen in on his conversation.

“What the hell does the customer need confirmation for ? This is the chip business , what do they need to verify ? They gave us the PRD already they can not change the PRD at this stage. ”

I quietly move him up from a Sales guy, to something higher but still not sure what.

“No, I will tell you what the problem is here, it’s the damn field team. They have only one job to do and that is to make sure the customer is confident in our product. How the hell do they mess it up ? The reason we are having this conversation is because the customer doesn’t trust the field team and this is not the first time we have run into this problem. This is a broken internal process and I am not dealing with it anymore, write an email to John and Jeff and cc me and the field team on it. List examples, like what just happened and other things … like … well list other examples. This is unacceptable. Call Mike over he’s the higher up I don’t care what Josh says, he’s just a tech head go over his head. …”

While he is saying this he is looking for a spot for his bag, he notes my backpack and looks at me asking if it’s ok for him to move it and without waiting for the courtesy nod he moves it. I would be offended if I didn’t expect him to do just that. I make silent bets with myself regarding what he will do next, and as he sits down and pulls out an Apple Nano I owe myself some money. I make another bet double or nothing on the type of book he will be reading and sure enough What They Didn’t Teach You In Buisness School comes out. Of course he calls his wife first, I can guess every single word he says, no he’s not sure when he’ll be back he’ll call when he’s there and there’s nothing to worry about, yes tell the kids that he loves them and he’ll see them soon. I can guess at the rest of his life just as easily, power lunches and business meetings. Stops at massage parlors with happy finishes and the occasional nailing of an HR bunny. There’s probably a tightly controlled drinking habit and some cocain in there as well.

I would bet all the money I have won from myself that he is at the director level of a mid-size company. He has not made it big yet which is why he is in economy with us peons rather than in business class or first class and of course he’s well on his way there. For a second I miss the game, I think about an email a friend forwarded me a few days ago. An SE position with a US company here in Taiwan. No guarantees but I would be back in the game, I would have to change the uniform a bit and buy a new cell phone, something with PDA functionality…

But as I open up Porno I realize that I am not ready to go back yet, maybe some day I’ll jump back in the pool and swim with the sharks again but if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that you have be 100% dedicated to the game otherwise you are just so much bloody meat and meat does not float in an ocean full of sharks. Beside even when you win you don’t gain anything, you simply accumulate more stuff, stuff that you don’t need nor want but have to have simply to show what’s your score.

And really is having a high score worth some stranger being able to read your entire life by just looking at you and then posting about it on the Internet ?

Here are a few pictures from a day trip to DanShui a port in Taiwan. We had a great time eating all sorts of different foods. I really miss my computer now that I can’t edit pictures at all. The laptop is just not cut out to do that.

Panel One is a meta-fictional experiment designed to give me a vehicle for exploring a variety of narrative and non-narrative ideas I have about comics and visual storytelling. At the outset, it is taking the form of a daily four-panel gag strip. I realize this doesn’t seem particularly experimental, but seeing as it’s something I’ve never tried before, it seems a worthwhile challenge. At the same time, I reserve the right to change format on a whim, if some other form of experiment catches my fancy. Which I’m sure it will. This comic is about process more than product. I’ll be trying a lot of different things, and some will work, and some won’t. Either way is okay, so long as I learn something from the attempt.

The red tailed mouse ran across the desert and the lobsters followed. They didn’t know why they followed the red tailed mouse but they knew that if they stopped a buttery death awaited them. Each lobster on its own was not very intelligent, but together they were a different story. You can teach a lobster a few things like how to open a can or how to skin a cat but that’s about the limit of a single lobster a group of lobsters however can do incredible things. For example it can apply for a credit card or post a fake profile on match.com.

These lobsters were supposed to meet a chesty blond cheerleader instead they had met the red tailed mouse and then one of the lobsters had the idea to see well how bad could it actually be and the idea steam rolled from there. That’s the problem with group brains you see any bad idea can be voted on and let’s face it lobsters aren’t the smartest animals in the world, if they were they would have developed a shitty taste years ago.

Beside opening up a match.com account the lobsters had contacted a famous marine biologist who specialized in communicating with dolphins. The biologist had successfully communicated with a wide variety of dolphins only to find that dolphins didn’t have anything of value to say, they mostly asked for fish, or if the person knew where the fish were or maybe they could ask their friend where the fish were or could they check in that tank next door they could have sworn they heard some fish in it. The endless talk of fish was driving the biologist insane and so when he got an email from a group dollop of lobsters (by the way there is no specific word for a group of lobsters, this is very annoying so I’ve decided that a group of lobsters should be called a dollop anyone know how I could go about getting dollop added to the English language ? Nevermind I just added the word to webster http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/newword_search.php and search for dollop) he jumped at the chance to talk about something else. Unfortunately all the lobsters wanted to say was that people should stop eating them they understood that they tasted heavenly with butter but so did the natives of the Cook Islands and really maybe they should try eating a few aboriginals before coming up with fancy French ways of killing poor lobsters.