As announced previously, I've spent the weekend trying to sell my comics at Small Press Expo in Stockholm. It's an annual festival for fanzines and independent comics. They also have a market where fanzine makers can get a table for free, so I gave it a shot.

I got a table next to the friendly furries from Chainroaker. Commerce was hot in the first couple of hours, until people, apparently, ran out of money.


(English version right here.)

But by the end of Sunday, I had actually sold about a third of my magazines. Yay!

The theme of this year's SPX was animation. They showed some interesting stuff that I, unfortunately, didn't see much of, because I didn't dare leave my table unattended. (Though now that I think about it, I probably would have seen it as a privilege if someone had stolen my comics out of genuine interest ...)

Another nice feature was the very own comics webzine of Small Press Expo. Yes, cartooning in public has never been more fun! I improvised a strip about my pet pig Sergei for it ...

This year was actually the first time that SPX had a contest for 'the best fanzine in Northern Europe'. I would have liked to enter if I'd have known about it in time, but then, it might be just as well that I didn't, because the three winners this year are all established comic artists, anyway (as far as I know). The 1st prize was taken by a flashy Finnish anthology, while the 'shared 2nd prize' was given to Li Österberg and her cool nun fanzine, and this guy with his cigarette fanzine.
I didn't get a chance to look closer at the Finnish anthology, to see who contributed to it, but Li Österberg has gotten several books with her comics published, while the Bolivian reportage comics of this guy whose name I can't remember have previously been published at least in the weekly Arbetaren.

Don't get me wrong - I like these artists and the comics they make, and I'm happy for them. But one might just wonder why quite established artists have to publish their works in fanzines. Because they couldn't get deals? In some cases, maybe. But in other cases, I'm leaning towards the assumption that they, unlike us other poor sods who can't seem to get our comics published in any other way, are making the active choice to publish their comics in fanzines ... because fanzines are really cool.

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... Anyway, I didn't just sell my comics. I also traded a few with other fanzine makers. The best deal was definitely "Medley" by Lisa Medin. It's a kind of shonen manga parody about the synth-popper Axel, set in a world where music has a strange, strange power. Somehow, it reminds a bit of Full Metal Alchemist, but it's completely different. And crazy.

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What this weekend has taught me:
1. Stockholm is actually a quite nice city.
2. I have to draw more comics, dammit!
3. Aeron ia a good cover boy. Issue #2 was the # picked up most frequently (by females, at least). Too bad most of the comics inside it are so crappy ... (-_-); (But the # bought in the greatest quantities was, of course, #0, with short stories only.)
4. I'm definitely going to SPX06.

Argh, I blew 3500 crowns on printing. I'll have to raise the price of my comic books ...

The reason is that I'm going to Small Press Expo in Stockholm this weekend, where I'll be selling comics and trying to get somehow ... noticed. Or something.

In other comics news, I just got the second volume of Bounce Comics in the mail. This Australian-based webcomics anthology is printing my comic Driftwood. Its choice of comics is a bit uneven, but then, as it is now, *anyone* is quite likely to find a comic in it that they like! ^_^ There are several very good comics in it, so go buy it!

Finally, internet.

It seems that we will get internet at the apartment next Wednesday. It will be some kind of wireless stuff, according to our landlord, though he himself has no idea what it is and how it will work.

We will probably be moving into the new apartment on Monday, and, of course, the otherwise very mild Skåne weather has decided that it has to snow all weekend. Hope it stops (and melts away) by Monday ...

I actually like snow, but it's a bit sad to be carrying heavy boxes and furniture through it, and getting som much slush in the apartment. Reminds me of when we moved to Germany, and the week we moved in was the only week of the year when there actually was snow.

As for this apartment, an oceanographer and a whale interpreter have been here to look at it. They are currently desperately trying to find another place in Lund, but I hope they will decide for my place in the end ...

I was looking for pictures of nice, big Northern Swedish working horses, and found Turbo, for sale at HästNet.se. Curiously, the ad said sweet Turbo wore no shoes.

I had already earlier decided that if I'd ever happen to have my own horse(s) some day, I would not lock them up in a stable every night, but let them stay outdoors day and night, with a shelter they could walk in and out of as they pleased. I had also made up my mind not to use a metal bit on the bridle - preferably no bit at all.

Well, our friend Turbo lives outdoors 24/7, and he is ridden with no bit, just a halter and a rope (the principle is called 'sidepull'). And he is also barefoot, "according to the principle of AANHCP". When I googled this acronym, I for the first time also started wondering about why people actually put shoes on horses.

I found out that, generally, it is assumed that the shoes protect the hoof. Historically, shoeing was probably necessary for carriage horses running on paved streets (which would cause them to wear down their hooves too quickly) and in some other cases. Nowadays, most 'hobby horse' owners still assume that the shoe is necessary to protect the hoof. For instance, horses-and-horse-information.com says:

"Wild horses spend most of their time grazing, and don't need to travel long distances or run over hard ground. That's why they don't need shoes. If a horse's foot is in bad shape or hurts, you really can't ride him. Horse shoes are used to protect the horse's feet. Otherwise the hoof walls can crack."

The statement about wild horses and why they don't need shoes, I must say, sounds kind of ridiculous. Marjorie Smith, advocate of barefoot horses, writes:

"The horse is a creature of wide-open, dry plains (except for the wide-footed breeds of northern Europe, which are adapted to marshy land). The horse's natural environment includes extremes of heat and cold. The ground is dry, hard, and often rocky. Rivers or water holes are scarce. The wild horse's food is the dry bunch-grasses of low-rainfall areas, and a variety of herbs, shrubs, roots, and bark. Wild horses go 20 miles (30 km.) or more every day, to find food and water.
The horse is exactly designed to live well in that environment. Every part of his body, plus the social life of the herd, is fashioned for a strenuous life on the dry plains -- and he requires these extremes to stay in peak health. The horse has lived this way successfully for many millions of years, far longer than human beings have existed."

Read about barefoot horses at http://www.barefoothorse.com/.

Mihai was feeling pedagogic after dinner today, so he took the coconut he'd bought a while ago and asked me how I would open it. I had never tried to open a coconut before, but I could remember that Bamse (the strongest bear in the world) used to punch a hole in coconuts with his thumb and drink the milk. Well, since I'm not the strongest bear in the world, I would probably need some kind of tool for that.

But nothing on my swiss army knife would make it through the coconut's hard shell, so I suggested getting my big handsaw and just sawing it apart. Mihai then hinted that maybe I should go back to the 'small hole' idea ... And was all of the shell exactly the same ...? Or was there perhaps a weak point somewhere ...??

Oh yeah, I could try with one of the three holes on the top. Since we didn't have any straws, I should make two holes, so we could pour out the milk. Mihai was amazed at my problem solving capabilities, and so, we got the milk out. It was the first time I had ever drank real coconut milk, and it tasted a bit weird. (A bit like ... hrm ... "mayonnaise" ... you know, the stuff you eat with, uh ... "sausages".)

So, after the milk was out, we had to get the shell apart. It turned out that the only way was banging the nut as hard as possible with my heavy bad-ass carpenter's hammer.



Then, it was possible to break apart the inner part with the yummy white stuff.



Fresh coconut tastes somehow like cream.


Nature morte with coconut, apples and a nice pot I found in the trash.

I was initially looking for information about a feminist fanzine called 'Flickrum' (girl's room) that a student at my university has founded recently. I couldn't find anything on the web, but instead I found the home page of some crazy Swedish woman who had written some stuff about herself, along with the slightly confusing sentence "Kungen och Drottningen är min mor och far" ("The King and the Queen are my mother and father"). Well, she had also posted the results of some tests she had made, and I did some of them. Most were pretty stupid, but this one was at least partly true, and has a nice pigture:

You'll Find Love Where You Least Expect It You're the type most likely to find love... surprised? You shouldn't be! You're a fun, independent woman who is always out and about. And you're smart to sometimes leave your girlfriends behind and go it alone. Men love to approach you when you're out by yourself - including Mr. Perfect! Where Will You Find Love? Take This Quiz :-) Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

Today we went to look at an apartment in Lund. Mihai has been looking for one for a long time, either for us both or just for him (if he couldn't find anything big enough). Recently, he got a tip from a lady at his institute. At the same time, he also found a pretty cheap room in a student's house. He had almost decided to go for the student's house, because the apartment the lady had mentioned seemed really much too expensive (1500/week). He had, however, already agreed to meet the landlady and look at the place.

So, yesterday and today Mihai was looking all over the place for the piece of paper where he had written down the landlady's phone number, so he could cancel the meeting. But it had vanished without trace. He damned himself all over again, and said it was one hell of a mistake to have lost it. Reluctantly, he went to see the apartment anyway, and I tagged along to keep him company.

Well, as it turned out, the apartment was *very* nice!!! It's located on the top floor of a very old brick house quite near the railway station. It's a bit run-down, but that's the way we like it! The toilet is painted bright blue, the shower room is constructed in a very interesting way, you can see all the way to Malmö from the windows, there is a nice little window niche in the bedroom, and the only other person living on the same floor is a cat, who has access to a room or two that are connected to the apartment underneath.
The rent would be 4100/month (we got it down a bit after Mihai said they didn't have to clean and change the sheets for us, as they had initially planned to do). Well, split in two, that's just 2050!!

... We were jumping around in euphoria all the way home.

The only down side is that there's no phone. If there would be internet, that wouldn't be such a big problem, as we could make phone calls through a program like Skype. But there is no broadband, either. The landlady said that they would get DSL installed in a month or two, but that somehow seems a bit too uncertain ...

I hope that gets straightened out somehow, because I WANT TO MOVE THERE RIGHT NOW!!!
*sigh* ... I've always wanted to live in an apartment like that, in a house like that.