Macramé is my passion

Well, that's me finished with politics. Washed my hands of the stinking business. I've learned one important lesson from this election and it's that no bugger cares. I've done some pretty unpopular things in my day (held a Twitter yoga class, wrote a book as Richard Madeley's number one lookalike, pretended to be Steven Martin's gogo dancers, tried to pass myself off as London's only midget gigolo, wrote a book of pornographic short stories, drew 101 cartoons about why I hate Man United, wrote an Android shuffleboard game including the best version of Dutch shuffleboard on the market, built a Gag Machine for Windows)* but nothing comes quite as close to an unmitigated disaster as my election podcasts. I recorded eight in total and they've probably not had that number of listeners. Perhaps the majority of people are just completely shut off from politics. Perhaps they're just shut off to me, for whatever reason: my voice, my words, my thoughts, my attitude. The point is: I need to move on. Find something else to fill the blog.

I keep getting hits from an arts and crafts website, which makes me wonder if that's the route I should take. I have no idea how to do macramé but I think I should be talking about it, perhaps in the form of a 30 minute weekly podcast given a modern twist involving a beard I'll grow or possibly fashion using my developing macramé skills. Hipster Macramé? You might laugh (but more likely won't) but I think there's money in knotted string. I'll Kickstart it for ten grand and become the nation's macramé  uncle. I'd have five good years on ITV and then become involved in one highly publicised sex scandal involving a rubberised  Great Dane and a copy of Wisden. I'll have to appear on the Philip Schofield sofa and sob a little bit into his lilac scented lap but eventually the nation would forgive me and I'd go on to host a popular travel series on BBC1 in which I ride Claire Balding around the Baltic. Don't tell me you wouldn't watch that because I know damn well that it would be compulsive viewing.

By the way, if you were wondering... Yes, I'm in a slightly ticked off mood and you probably think: when is he ever not in a slightly ticked off mood? However, that's not always the case. Blogging usually puts me in a ticked off mood and my total inability to connect with the British people frustrates the hell out of me. It's why macramé is my passion or it will be once I can get the knot out of this piece of string I'll be fashioning this afternoon into a nut sling, a stylish cradle to suspend a few cashews or brazils over my desk and within easy reach. Some of you with filthier minds than mine will have imagined something different when I mentioned 'nut sling' but, there again, I don't connect with the current zeitgeist. However, that ends right now. This blog is either going to attack the shortage of serious macramé websites or it will join the back of the queue of websites offering free pornography and since I have more string in the shed that I have rutting Russians, macramé is the way to go.

It's a shame it's come to this. I thought my recent cartoons had been good but it feels like they're among the least popular that I've ever drawn. I'd hoped that colouring in my cartoons might have made them more popular but the reverse has been the case. I suspect if I went back to black and white and then completely omitted the black, they'd be even more popular. I tried that last night and here's my first attempt.




Oh, some people might say that it's a bit obscene but don't tell me that you've never fantasised about using a stick of licorice like that. Let me also point out how much skill was involved in drawing licorice with white ink.

However, I've digressed when I was intending on explaining the basics of macramé and I haven't even got to the stage of telling you about how much string you'll need in order to follow me as I work on our first project together: a macramé  Gillian Anderson, five foot two inches of sexy woven goodness, upper lip mole a cunningly deployed larks head knot sure to melt the heart.

However, we'll have to cover that in the next lesson. I've got into a slight tangle here and every time I cross my legs I manage to hoist the cat up the curtains.

Until anon, macramé fans.



* All things I actually did.

Another Cartoon With Mass Appeal

Another cartoon drawn with the aid of my new 'Gag Machine'. It probably accounts for the reason that any rational person would find it odd/unfunny and without a jot of sense. Yet these are the cartoons that make me laugh, give me the most pleasure to draw, despite there being no market for them. If I had more time or a purpose for drawing it, I'd have finished it more than I have: better drooping fag, bit of smoke, halo around his head, more shadows on the ground, a few 'geeza' rings on his hands...

Being a fan of cartoons and cartoonists, I probably look at too many of them every year. In my downtime, I often page through one of the big collections I have (Private Eye or Punch) or I look at cartoons from The New Yorker via the DVD Rom I have saved to my tablet. They produced it a few years ago and it contain their entire back catalogue, which my memory tells me might be as many as 70,000 cartoons. I look at so many cartoons that I probably immunise myself to the general strain. A few will still produce a mild fever. Fewer still will make me splutter and cough. Yet there's a broach tranche of cartoons that are professional and eminently publishable yet just a little bit bland. I enjoy cartoons that make me gasp because of the unexpected. 'Sid the Jesus' makes me laugh but I have no idea why. I know it wouldn't be funny if it was 'Sid the Christ' or even 'Jesus Smith' (though that one isn't too bad).

I would never send this to a magazine. I wouldn't embarrass myself. Not because I'm ashamed of the cartoon (quite reverse) but because I know it doesn't fit with the cartoons the market so obviously wants. Perhaps the fact I like 'Sid the Jesus' explains why I can't even get one of my more mainstream cartoons published. Perhaps people can sense that those cartoons aren't authentic. They're my attempt to be being something I'm not. Yet cartoons like 'Sid' are clearly not for mass consumption.  It leaves me in a difficult situation at the end of 2014. Can I handle another year of constant rejection? I have days before I have to think about such things. Resolutions are nearly a week away.

Regarding the 'The Gag Machine': quite a few new features yesterday. Using Windows forms, it's so easy to program the little (usually tricky) features. I did a quick search of the reference library, found a few methods I needed, and half an hour later, I'd added a settings screen, with a customisable save directory (also saved in the settings) for all the outputs along with a button which allows you to browse to the folder on your PC. On Android, I'd have had to write my own File dialog and then create a new Activity with various Resource files for the new screen. By contrast, Microsoft have everything ready for you. It's so easy that I've now run out of things to implement and that's the first time that's ever happened to me. I now need to have a long think about what to do next.

It's Vaz, The New Comic Cartoon Figure Everybody Loves To Hate

Accidental Nose Photography

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