Hail is hammering down on the airport. HAIL. And lightning is striking. The sky is grey as a corpse’s knackers and there’s LIGHTNING.

Remember me.

– W

Flight delayed three hours. Travel email down. I sense doom.

– W

Out to Toronto in the morning. I’ll be on mobile email, which means no images, no links and no please-blog-this emails until I get home next Tuesday, please.

My sched for the trip:

An Evening With Warren Ellis: Thursday 28 April, The Hacienda, Toronto, all details in link.

Toronto Comicon: my schedule for the convention can be found here — note that I have a special column. As it were. (This is mostly because I’m having to limit my signing times, I’m pretty sure.)

If you’re looking for me on the convention floor, I’ll either be the tall horrible-looking bloke on a walking stick, or I won’t be there at all. Probably the latter, for I am limpy.

I’ll be checking in from Canada if anything interesting happens.

– W

Featuring the Fantastic Four, although I doubt you’re going to get to see Jessica Alba sucking Reed Richards’ stretchy fleshy bits. In the other page, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm have been caught making a still.

Art by Steve McNiven with Morry Hollowell: click for full-size.

Matt Jones, one of Nokia’s Future Swami Cunning Men, is losing his shit at a scenario-planning workshop:

It’s Monday! I have a lovely picture for you, to start your day right. Smile.

A top German court ordered a cannibal to be retried Friday, saying his manslaughter conviction for killing and eating a willing victim was too lenient.

“The conviction only for manslaughter and not for murder does not stand up to legal review,” the Federal Court of Justice said in a statement, upholding an appeal by prosecutors.

Armin Meiwes, 43, was sentenced to eight and a half years in January 2004 after a gory case that both fascinated and repulsed Germany and the world.

Meiwes admitted to killing a Berlin computer specialist, Bernd-Juergen B, he met via the Internet, but was spared a murder conviction as the victim had asked to be eaten in a startling case of sexual fetishism.

Prosecutors believed Meiwes should have been convicted of murder as he had killed to satisfy perverted desires. Meiwes’ lawyer urged the lesser “killing on request,” a form of illegal euthanasia that carries a maximum five year sentence.

(An article of mine touching on Miewes is here)

“The man in the mask, who had stripped me completely naked, handed me a safety razor and shaving cream and ordered me to shave myself down there. While I complied without protest, he began filming me from different angles with his video camera.”

On April 7, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested Hideka Tada, age 38, who, writing for Dojinsha Co. under the pen name “Hideki Nonomura” has been acclaimed for his famous SM cartoons in which adolescent females with enormous breasts undergo acts of humiliation similar to the one above. Tada, it seems, wasn’t content merely to imagine such activities, but wanted to experience the real thing before turning to his sketchpad.

“Nonomura’s works were extremely popular. Bookstores would set up exclusive corners just to display his books. He was regarded by many as the ‘Emperor’ of this type of cartoon business and rumor had it he raked in 100 million yen a year via consignment sales to the media.”

My bones hurt.

Peeling the skin back from my eyes triggered my wire. The lower left edge of my vision sparkled/scrolled up my crew’s names and locations. The bad chime sounded in my inner ear. Jessica’s name went black in the menu. She’d died in the night.

I switched my wire status to Busy/refocussed on the ceiling. It was pointless calling Jessica’s girlfriend. She was an addict who’d rejected meme surgery/ had an algae factory implanted in her brain to dripfeed her opiate replacements. Jessica’s girlfriend moved on plant time. She wouldn’t notice Jessica was dead for a day or two.

I wondered if they were in bed together.

K was awake. I could see it on the wire. She was laying on her belly on the floor, among the clothes and straps and toys, her eyes closed as if communing. Her lids, sooty with last night’s makeup, opened slowly/laid orange eyes on me.

Just another day in Side-Effect City, she murmured.

(Fragment, 2004)

I’m sorry I came in your shoes.

I’m sorry I hung your teddy bear from the light fitting and then pointed the anglepoise lamp at it so the first thing you saw when you came home was little Bear Paws swinging from his noose in silhouette on the wall.

I’m sorry about that thing with your chinchilla and the bellows. But I have to point out that it was me who wiped everything off the wallpaper, and your sister did get the fur out of her teeth.

I’m sorry I pissed in the steam iron.

I’m sorry about putting that half a horse from the road accident in the back of your car. But in my defense I thought you might, I dunno, find it useful for something.

I’m sorry I left that half a horse in the back of your car for two weeks.

I’m sorry about your mother almost choking to death on the condom, though I still don’t think it was my fault.

I’m sorry about your mother almost choking to death on the used condom a month later. That might have been my fault, yeah.

I’m sorry I pissed in the washing machine.

I’m sorry about that whole thing with the harpoon gun, the fishing line and the, you know, the string of dogs.

I’m sorry I made you help me stand the dogs in line.

I’m sorry I threw up in the carrot bread mix and didn’t tell anyone.

I’m sorry about exploding those frogs with your drinking straws and then putting them back in the drawer without telling you. Or rinsing them.

I’m sorry I pissed in your sister. On your sister. On. Really. On your sister.

I’m sorry about all these things, and anything else you can think of, and I really really love you and I want you to take me back.

And, um. I’m sorry the back of your house is on fire.

(written 2004)

Have a panel from my new project with Ben Templesmith, FELL. Sssssh.