Hey chumbles! I misplaced the sketchbook where I drew the last page of ‘I wuzz nicked’ so I dug an ancient comic out of my zip disks.
No Curtains is a comic from nearly 10 years ago and the theme still annoys. I don’t think it’s too much of a problem now but for years you would see it all over Dublin, especially in Tallaght.

Why do these weirdos want you to see into their front room? I think it’s such an odd psychological trait.

Here’s some shit prank call to Bord Gais but I laughed at it. It’s so dopey.

For a few months I was besieged. Sitting here like an African baby with bluebottles dotted around my face, shclucking up the goo from my pores and eating the sugar on my lips. One day I couldn’t work up in the studio because of them between chasing them around and hosing the air with spray which makes me feel ill. I lost a whole days work because of 5 blue bottles.

They kept landing on my screen and nose and it’s impossible to concentrate. And worst of all was my daily visit by El Gordo, this massive humming bird/hornet nearly two inches long that would swoop in with a dentist drill like shrill and I swear to God more often than not I’d let out a scream.

Even by Spanish standards it has been a bad year for flies. The tiny increase in global temperature has made insects larger and live longer. They’re loving it.

But like Jennifer Lopez in Enough, I had had…enough. And I took the war down to my level. First weapon was the good old fashioned flame thrower. I had promised myself I would never use it again after nearly blinding a girl but I need it. I waited in the centre of the room, poised to strike and as they swooped down…

I feel guilty for enjoying it but I do. I torched around twenty one week, some while sitting down from 4 feet away. Next was the sonic boom. I saw her nephew catching them with his hands and I was just too slow to use that method, even when I calculated how far ahead to strike, half of the time I’d miss. Then I realised that if you clap your hands together really hard on front of them it creates a little shockwave that stuns them enough to try again. WHAMMMO! WHAMMO! SQUISH!!

One day I boomed one so hard that it’s wings fell off, turning it into a ‘walk’ rather than a fly. I probably skewered him on a toothpick to finish him. Little bastards. She hates fly paper so I can’t use that but we bought these little pink granules that you leave out in a tray for them and they eat it. It drives them mental, they just start spinning on they’re back at such a speed all you can see is a fuzzy grey globe.
I stand on them. And I start spinning around too. No, they squish.

So within six months of living here I have earned my stripes. Never again will I be held hostage by these flies. But I have a bad feeling the ants that I drove out a few months ago are regrouping and next Summer will be Armageddon.

We went to Lisbon a few weeks ago. It was sort of a surprise for the both of us, we booked it a few days before on a whim and I knew nothing about the place.

It’s a great city. I went to this great comic library where I could have spent a few days lapping it all up. And I bought this deadly used science room poster of a cross section of a lobster in an old book shop.

The first night there we were walking back to the hotel after a nice dinner and I says I want a pint before bed. The local beer is this cheap widdle called Super Bock and its awful. A few streets before the hotel was a row of undoubtedly seedy bars and we said they’d do. The closest one, called Vienna Club looked dodgy from the outside and I told her it must be a titty bar but she wanted to go in anyway.

I’m only in the place about 3 seconds, up a small flight of stairs and this black behemoth flashes her gowl at me. I imagined a little stinky Astro Boy flying out and socking me in the face. There were about 5 whores sitting there in various states of shame and trampiness.

We paid 10 clams for two bottles of that manky beer and the effusive, old Chinaman seemed embarrassed as we found a booth to sit, walking past a pole dancing pole that looked like it’d snap if any of the workers gave it a whirl. The place smelled like camphor and old gee and it was nearly impossible to see anything.

Two well dressed men came in and the pune flasher and her pal hopped on them, they went to the booth next to us and you hear all these cartoon kiss noises then a big comical ZIPP!! as her ropey tits splattered all over her chest.

They left with their girls, one of them giving me the slow approving nod like Boba Fett as he passed and saw my bird draped over me. If not for the smell and the scruddy beer I’d have stayed and maybe paid for a sloppy dance but we left. I got a good look at the girls on the way out, most of them flaked out in abject boredom, one of them either out of it or doing a hard sudoku by look on her face.

So after all that brothel sexiness and intrigue we went back to the hotel where I was refused sex by my girlfriend and I had to whack it into a towel. So yeah nothing happened, this story has no climax. I just wanted to draw the pictures and use ‘ropey tits splattering’ in a sentence

Dear Kitty,

Sorry I haven’t written for so long as I have been busy getting my balls sucked on a beach

Yeah I know, I know. No posts in a few weeks. I have been busy though and I’m really struggling to adapt to the new flavah over here. The heat is a killer. I started Spanish lessons a couple of weeks ago and I think it was a Tuesday when the temperature hit 50 degrees, it was 55 in some places. I left the building and nearly collapsed as the door opened.

That’s not right. The only thing I can compare it to is when you take your Goodfellas pizza out of the oven and you get a woosh of hot air in the face. Well imagine that all day. Pizza air.

I have a fan in my studio that sweeps from side to side and I flinch every time it passes me because I assembled it and I don’t trust my screw tightening abilities. But when its hot it just blows hot air like a hairdryer. I’ve realised that going to the beach is more of a necessity than a pleasure. You have no choice.

Other than that things are good, I’m surviving doing lame design work and this week 2000AD thank God. But the cost of living here is so low, 12 cans of beer for 3 quid, dinner for 2 for a tenner, 20 smokes is 3 quid, the hash is twice the value too. I’m eating like a pig but haven’t really put on weight.

Guinness is CHEAPER here too which really just seals the deal for me. I never thought I was the type but 2 weeks ago I went to the Irish bar and lapped up a few pints. That’s the only thing I miss really. So yeah its all good over here, head is wrecked sending emails all day for work though.

Well I’m getting ‘requirements’ together to revamp the shit out of this site. I have a Joe Duffy soundboard finished for months now and nowhere to put it. I’ll probably be gay and have a Spanish section too.

I cacked this out in 10mins last night as a request from my mate Colm who has a blog. A blog with the most repulsive colour scheme and graphics in the history of gick. His writing is great though. We share the same ropey childhood memories of being dragged up in Tallaght.

Read his story here and Everybody hates Nigerians. I love ya Colm but visiting your blog makes me feel ill. Change it immediately.

Neh, I have nothing to say or show today. Went to the zoo yesterday instead of going to work, was planning on going to see the Bodies exhibition but then I realised I don’t need to see poor little Chinamen with their skin flayed and their wangs hanging out. Do Chinese call their wangs ‘wongs’?

There we go, now I’m back into it. The last time I went to the zoo was around 2001. I was working in a bakery 8pm-8am and was sleeping minus 2 hours a day, living off eating snots and Maltana bread. Quinner calls up at midday and invites me to go to the zoo with him. I protest that I’m in work at 8 and he calls me a fag so I go.

Went into town, bought some shit videos as usual and then to the zoo. No, we managed to get lost and beforehand and wandered around Islandbridge and bought Cornetto’s from a small shop where my apartment block now is. I only remembered that yesterday. I never thought I’d end up living there. I threw a stone at a wolf and clocked him on the snout. Q stroked around 12 fake lizards from the gift shop.

Quinn with his harem of shit tapes

We went for a pint then I went to work. Did my shift and as usual when I go past the 24hr mark, I can’t sleep. I was up for nearly two days. This story has no point other than that I can see and appreciate how everything has changed from those days. Life is mad. It struck me that the NEXT time I go to the zoo will probably be with my kids.

Result! Q’s trophy for playing darts. What a man

I’ve been sleeping terribly all month. I couldn’t figure out if it was too much coffee, too much water/not enough water, too much dope or the fact that I just miss my girlfriend’s legs draped over me. She’s gone for 3 weeks and it’s not the Ferris Bueller fun fest I thought it would be. I’ve realised I need her to tell me when to eat and when to go to bed. I’m a shambling, masturbating mess now.

So this week I decided to try figure out what’s stopping me from sleeping by changing something different in my day. Last night I only woke up once. I only had one coffee yesterday and drank lots of water but the real secret is this:

Sleep INSIDE your blanky.

Yep, open up your duvet cover and climb in. It’s like being inside a toastie sandwich, it’s fucking brill! I used to do it years ago but forgot about it. Give it a go. You’ll love it. I sure did. I’m biting my tongue here from telling a story about me sleeping inside my duvet lest it offend all involved. Let’s just say one night I was sleeping inside my blanky and Blank and Blank tried to Blank it blankily.

I’m full of energy today. I woke up doing the Charlston

I always wake up at 04:52. It must mean something

Theres a kind of humour that I’ve sort of grown out of. The broad, quirky self deprecating type that most people find amusing like admitting to wanking to Smurfette. Its funny in the way Joey and Chandler were funny but this story isn’t about that.

This is a story that has hounded me and when I tell it it gets a laugh but I’m serious when I say it has plagued me. I have woken up at 4am and replayed it over and over again wondering just what happened.

As a kid, around 7 or 8 we went to Butlins. Somewhere in the UK. I have no idea where because as a kid you’re not going to England; you’re going to Butlins. Same way as a child when an adult would ask me where I’m from I’d say ‘Ireland’ when the answer they wanted was Tallaght or Dublin. You have no idea about the scope of geography.

For those who don’t know, Butlins is/was a holiday camp for middle to working class families where the parents could sit themselves down in the huge drinking hall and be free from the kids except for the regular returning to get another pound coin for the arcade. I loved it. That summer I discovered Pac Land . Having played Pacman for years I just couldn’t believe how wonderful this new game was. They also had a huge swimming pool with windows in the sides, facing the drinking hall so if the parents bothered to turn their heads they’d see their blue faced kids pounding on the glass trying to get a wave.

There were loads of activities all overseen by The Kids club. Which thinking about it now had to be ran by teenagers. ‘Bubbly and outgoing guys and girls needed for child friendly holiday resort’. They laid on lots of things to do, arts and crafts, races and the like. It was fun but I’ll always remember the complete downer of being told sit down at a desk in what looked like a classroom on my summer holidays. ‘This isn’t a shower….it’s a fucking gas chamber!’

They paired you up with other kids. I went on my own one day and got matched up with some English kid. We talked the way kids do in awkward spurts and disjointed ramblings about He-Man and football stickers. I remember thinking he was a square because he never saw an ice pop stick sharpened down to a point by rubbing it on a kerb. I always had one tucked in my sock in case things got messy.

So this days activity was a ‘treasure hunt’. You were given a photocopied sheet, no it was actually spirit print, those cheap but fun purple copies. I remember my school start using them and we all knew it was a cost saving measure. The items we had to find were….

I knew I was going to win. I can’t remember the prize, I think it was a pencil and a can of Coke but I wanted to win. A treasure hunt. I’d be the number one treasure finder. As we filed out calmly I noticed there were kids who were much older and taller than me, they must have been at the age between being a kid and a teenager and weren’t having fun or not admitting to it. I remember the last family holiday I went on when I was 15 and we all realised it was over. I couldn’t sit and drink Fanta. That was the time I shot my goo into my eye in the shower down in Tramore.

So we’re filing out calmly, me feigning disinterest and then darting off in the opposite direction from where around 12 kids where being led by the Leaders on a group treasure hunt the fucking losers. How could they win if they’re searching in a group? My ‘friend’ said we should go with the group and I told him we’d have better luck going the complete opposite direction and he still hesitated. He must have remembered the shiv in my sock because soon he was foraging with me.

We found three of the items immediately, a match, a pebble and a cigarette butt. We still needed a flower and a bottle top. We searched all over the place, grabbed a doozy of a flower from some display but couldn’t find a bottle top. I was getting agitated. What was the time limit? How long had we been gone for? I searched like a lunatic in a bin as he looked on worried. And then it hit me. I had to play dirty.

I had money and there was a Supermarket within the resort so I’d just buy a bottle, drink it and then present our haul and bag the prize. I remember the two us looking very guilty and nervous as we approached the checkout thinking that the Kids Club had issued an APB banning all kid from buying drinks in case of cheating. I’d go on to feel that exact same terror countless times in my teens as I tried to buy alcohol in Super Valu. It went smoothly and we left with a gaudy two litre of some cheapo Orange drink like Fanta. It had two colour printing on the label. It was cheap. I started chugging it. Frantically.

I passed it to him and he took a timid sip, I could tell he felt like he was breaking 100 laws that day. He passed it back and I lashed into it again but it hardly made a dent in the thing. I don’t remember if I demanded he drink it or if he was trying to end this sordid affair as quickly as possible but suddenly he was gulping it down like it was the antidote.

And this image is ingrained in my head. His face red and his eyes watering, either from the cheap fizz or the awfulness of the situation.

We ended up pouring it down a shore. We ran back to the clubhouse at full speed. I siezed him just before we crested the corner. “WAIT!!” I yelped. And I dropped the bottle top on the ground and stomped on it. “It looked too new”. He wasn’t impressed and I was digusted. I could imagine his dopey life, his scalextric packed neatly under his bed, his undoodled copy books and when he was a teenager his Ma wouldn’t let him put posters on his wall and he’d grow up to play pitch and putt. I hated him the little sap.

The clubhouse was closed. We waited a while in silence. He wanted to go. I told him to wait. We waited. But then he left. Fine, I thought. Fuck him. I’d get all the glory. The lone crusader.

But nobody came. It felt like an eternity. It was.

Was I far too early or far too late? Had we collected the items in record time or spent far too long on the bottle top? I looked at the grubby treasures in one hand and the 50p in the other and decided to leave for a game of Pac Land.

It bugged me for the rest of the holiday. Was I too early or was I too late? Had my dishonesty made me win or lose spectacularly? And it bugged me for the rest of the Summer. Then the rest of the year. Then the year after that. Was I too early or was I too late?

And for the rest of my life. I lie awake and mull over the things in my life and the kinks in my past and it’s usually the first thing that comes to mind. Again and again. You can laugh but these are the words of a tortured soul.

I nearly lost my two front teeth two months ago in a crazy accident. But thinking about it now I probably deserved it.

I lost my front teeth in time for my Communion and now proudly sport two fucking Bugs Bunny chompers. They’re silly but I reckon I’d look sillier without them. One cold November Sunday in the long forgotten year of our Lord 2008, I went for a walk with my girl in the park beside my place and since it was our first walk there and had no idea how big the park was I didn’t bring a coat.

The park is bigger than we thought and I came home freezing. I tried to draw but my hands were too cold so I put on her gloves. She found them on the way into Town one day and has worn them since. They’re grey and made from wispy wool stuff with a flower on the back. They weren’t warming my hands though and I was eager to work so I start doing push ups to try get some heat going.

I was impatient and picked my trusty exercise bar and start pumping away. The exercise bar is a heavy coiled spring with two handles and I came to own it in a remarkable way.

I was 19 and a fuck up. I admitted defeat with trying to be an illustrator and took a shitty job with two friends in a tile shop in Tallaght. They were the salesmen and I was the storeman. A storeman does all the lifting, drives the forklift and carries boxes of tiles and grout to cars. The other storeman was a smack head from Ballyfermot called Brian who treated himself to some gear at lunch and was a slurring wreck after 2pm.

The Boss was a wanker. One of the few people I’ve met that who I think is a genuine bad person. He had a Jew being executed by SS as his PC screen saver I josh you not. He pointed his shotgun at me at least twice and was just a general prick to everybody. I called him Baloney Tits. I’m not using his name lest he figures out how to google it and so that I can admit to all my crimes. And crimes there were.

Besides drinking on the job, smoking blow, crashing the forklift into a car and giving away free tiles to everybody I liked, I must have destroyed 80,000 old punts in stock on purpose. He was a cunt. A bully and a spoiled kid. I just searched for his name and found an article about how he punched my predecessor and had to pay him damages in court. I hope those big Baloney tits fall flop over his face and smother him some night.

Anyway, long story short. He had the exercise bar in his office and I decided to steal it. I strolled in, dropped it down my trousers and tried to walk out but my leg was now rigid. A girl appears and asks me what I’m doing and I stall her with some nonsense and shuffle out. Then one of the funniest things ever, old Baloney Tits is standing at the checkout talking to somebody and I have do a nonchalant stroll about 30ft to the door. My left leg wont bend so I’m whistling and trying to do a carefree saunter.

Then Baloney Tits calls me over and I tell I’ll be back in a minute, I couldn’t quicken my pace and he starts shouting at me. I manage to get out of view and try to remove the bar and hide behind the skip for later collection. But its a disaster. I ended up struggling with it for about 5 minutes and loads of people saw me. But I got it home safely that night.

Back to 2008, I’m pumping away thinking about Baloney Tits when suddenly I’m on the floor clutching my face. That horrible iron taste of being punched hard. Then blood from my nose and I’m numb. What the fuck happened?

The stupid woolen gloves made me lose my grip. I checked my teeth and they were definitely loose but still there. My mouth was fucked for days. Couldn’t even eat the pussy. But I stole that bar and the gloves weren’t ours either so I had nobody to blame but me.

And that fat Baloney titted wanker. It was the first job I walked out of. And so began a spiral of shit jobs until I lied my way into a decent one.

Look at that. I love it.

A fantastic xmas gift landed in my post box yesterday, original art from the best Irish comic artist Phil Barrett. He has me down. Miserable, weird and complaining.

Such draftsmanship. Check out that lettering. It’s brilliant. He puts me to shame really. You should buy some of his comics,, dirt cheap QUALITY productions and I’m sure they come with a little doodle. The new MATTER is fantastic. His blog is here .

Thanks man.

Last post of 2008, have to say it was a great year. So many wonderful and weird things happened. And continuing my millionaire comic artist lifestyle, I’m going to Spain for xmas. Cheers to everybody for joining in the messing. Big plans for everything in ‘09 including the comic classes and a new online comic thing.