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I'm Back - Kinda

By Hervé St-Louis
February 12, 2010 - 23:10

I was doing some maintenance to the site tonight, as I didn't have much time to do any work on the site all week and noticed that we still have articles from last Saturday showing up on the main page. This is extremely rare that after a week we still have stuff that old showing up.

As I wrote in a previous blog, I have to deal with my thesis and the last few weeks I have set a bunch of actions in motion to make sure it becomes reality. I'm aiming to defend my thesis in September so hard sacrifices have to be made.

Now, I'm not alone on this site, but it seems that our best efforts are not enough and I will be the first admit, at least in the blog part of the Bin that we are letting you guys down. If you've followed the site after seven and a half year, you would know that I'm not the type to give up. If I were to give up, I would have done so many times before. This is a crunch time in our history, and with less active writers and very busy editors, it's not an easy thing.

This weekend is a long one here in Alberta, but still I'll have to work on other things. I have to submit a proposal for Tuesday that I haven't had time to hand in. Speaking of which, I just remembered that I had to provide a bio for a conference I'm participating in a few weeks and the deadline was tonight. This is crazy. Next, I have to brush up on my conference topic. I've been a bit smug because I know my topic in and out, but I can't rely on what I think I know and make sure I'm up to date an ready to answer any tough questions in two weeks.

All of that means, of course, less time for the Bin. I'm not even watching the Olympics. To be honest, I haven't watched any Olympics for years. Half of my friends have flown to Vancouver for the event though. It's a one hour flight from Calgary.

If I were smart, I would have flown to Vancouver too. I haven't seen many Olympics first hands and the party would be fun. By the way, when you ask a Montrealer what they remember of the 1976 Olympics. They usually answer -  the party. In Calgary, about the 1988 Olympics, they usually mention the civic pride. I wonder if in a few years people in Vancouver will say they remember the pot... :) NO I don't smoke pot. I'm a card carrying member of the Junior Justice League and the Young Avengers. That didn't stop Zatanna from smoking weed way back in a Constantine comics and making a lot of reader uneasy to say the least. I remember the letters (in the days when comics had letters published in the back of comics) the number of complaints about that small scene. Swamp Thing provided the weed, and Zee had some.


Back to whatever I was yakking about. Yeah, so I just don't have enough times to post articles these days. In fact, I'm three weeks late on my comic book reading. I did read Siege #2, but I'm late on everything else. So I can't even review. Anyway, any review I write now would probably come out as convoluted and confused as this blog post is. I'm not sure what I was writing about, but I am sober - totally. Just tired from all the work I've been doing and not catching many breaks.

Once upon a time, I use to draw a lot and make my own comics. It use to be painful in my gut - like a void when I didn't do anything for a while. I once had a broken thumb or something and it was wrapped in layers upon layers of bandages. After a week, I learned to draw with the bandages on because I just couldn't stop drawing. Well, I'm having a similar withdrawal pain about doing stuff for the Bin now, but I'm much older and more organized and I know I just can't write articles at this point. The articles from yours truly will comeback. We just all have to be patient.

But that brings us to another topic which is manpower. How do you tell someone to join our team if it doesn't pay and he can start his own blog. I keep saying that joining and existing team is easier than starting a new blog, but it falls on deaf ears.

But all is not lost. Tonight, I had the pleasure of starting a new column by Andy Frisk. It's called Pencils and Pundits. It really was Pencillers and Pundits, but I made him shortened it a bit so it would fit better in the menu. I also modified the blurb he sent me describing the column. I told him earlier that it was all ok, but somehow it felt - and I'm a grad student saying it - too smart in its original form. Too scholarly. So I tried to simplify it by keeping brief hints of the post modernists context of the original proposal.

So this is a new column for our comic book section which is quite cool. We've gathered some of Andy's older articles to give it a good jump start.

Another big item has been the end of the Web site redesign competition. Well we only had one entry by Sean Kleefeld. Of course Sean wins, even if no one had a chance to vote. I actually like his design, but he's the only one who took us seriously and submitted something. So he gets the $500 because he was enough of a gent to trust us.

I know this guy, a designer who was completely against this contest. Apparently, asking designers to submit original designs for a competition without insurance of being paid and when it's not asked by a big advertising firm is wrong. It apparently dilutes the value of the work of a designer.

Well, I asked that designer, a few weeks ago, what he suggested I do considering I had a problem and that he was a potential customer for him. He said he had no idea, but that this contest was still wrong and evil.

Well, I'm pretty sure that Sean doesn't think this contest is evil and wrong now. He won without any competition but as I said, his design will be the new look of the Bin. I wanted something designed by the users of this site and that's what Sean's design brings. Congratulation Sean. If you're a designer who saw the competition but decided not to participate because of some weird moral code, then just too bad. Sean wants to say thank you!

F***, I've ranted too long and obviously too tired to have any kind of normal conversation. I guess, I'm really blogging now without any formal consideration for well edited and reflective thoughts.

Anyway, thanks for reading and good night.

Last Updated: November 10, 2023 - 14:53