Paul Southworth

Ugh. Sick.

Eric Millikin kicks off "Tales from the Ugly Files" with a bang!





Still sick.

I'm re-posting this from the official Ugly Hill site:

There exists a text file on my computer that contains every idea I've had for Ugly Hill since it started way back in 2005. Every. Single. Idea. It's pretty darn big. A lot of those ideas get either forgotten or rejected for one reason or another, and since I'm taking next week off, I thought it might be fun to throw a little twist on the boring old "Guest Week" we're probably all so tired of. What follows is a short list of one line ideas for Ugly Hill stories that never got made. For example:

•Hastings commissions Peter to paint a portrait of his mother for her birthday.

The guest artist would then build a single strip around this concept, showing what they think would happen in that situation. If you're an artist and would like to try your hand at this, pick one of the ideas below and email me with it, just so we make sure nothing gets done twice. Here's the rest of the list:

• Eli develops a crush on Peter's underage girlfriend.
• Peter falls in with a gang of militant vegetarians.
• Hastings and Peter are sent on a business trip to China.
• Snug becomes mayor of Ugly Hill through a write-in campaign.
• Hastings' great-great-grandfather is the inventor of scientific racism.
• Hastings and Eli get invited to the wedding of a former classmate.

"Tales from the Ugly Files" starts this Monday, March 31st (short notice, I know!). I know there are some great artists out there among you, so I look forward to seeing how you flesh out these ideas!

Haven't drawn a dang thing (other than a freelance project I'm doing and various projects at my day job) since Friday. I was planning to take next week off from drawing Ugly Hill, but then I got back into the swing of things, and now I think a week off is in order again. It's been six months since the baby was born, and I haven't missed a day since that initial guest week when we brought him home. I'm burned out! Need some time to refocus, regroup, and rest. Not sure what I'll run for content next week, though, but maybe I can use that time to finally finish the new website design.

William got his first tooth this weekend! Well, technically he already had it. He kept it under his gums! But that little bugger decided this weekend would be a good time to forcibly erupt through its wet, fleshy prison. It only seemed to hurt him for a day, and he had some trouble sleeping, but now that it's broken though the gum line we seem to be out of the woods. What? Oh, human beings have dozens of teeth in their heads? [Scott Bakula Impression] OH BOY [/Scott Bakula Impression].

You won't see any of the tooth in these pictures, but  here is a list of things you will see: chubby cheeks, fat little legs, plastics helmets, and various members of my family posing with them.









Dude, I totally forgot to put on a shirt today.

Just wanted to share this, because I can't think of anything more hilarious right now.

Also, is anyone else using Mojo to share iTunes libraries?

I'm southworth813, and I want your music.

It turns out the problem with the car was a cracked "power pack", which sounds to me like something the Red Ranger would snap onto his plasma rifle to give it an extra boost, but whatever. Apparently there's a lot of electronic crap in this "power pack", and because of the crack it was getting all kinds of wet. A new one costs over $500, but our guy is trying to find  us a used on for half the price.

So.. power packs: screw you.

Also, we took William to the Helmet Doctor this morning and his progress remains excellent! He should have the helmet off before summer, and that's awesome. I don't know if you've ever smelled a sweaty baby head before, but if you ever get the chance... pass. It is a sub-standard olfactory experience. Here are a couple of pictures of the little guy, because I feel like it!

He was so tired in this one. he could barely hold his head up to eat his flavorless mush!



This is technically not a picture of William , but of his favorite toy. He loves the CRAP out of that thing, when he's not hitting himself in the face with it.



I don't remember what we were looking at in this picture, but it probably wasn't very exciting.



Also, in closing, we rocked out:

So I'm driving home from taking my father food shopping this weekend (New Bedford, MA to Riverside, RI... about a 40 minute drive each way), and all of a sudden I notice the car seems to be having trouble shifting. Huh. I keep going, and then the car starts to decelerate. No matter how far down I push the gas pedal, the car continues to go slower and slower. It can't seem to shift into the next gear. I started off going 75... then 60... then 40.... finally I pulled over to the side of the highway and crawled along at a steady 20MPH. AWESOME. Even more awesome, I don't have a cell phone. And it was raining... pouring, really. AWWWWEEESOOOOMMMMEEEE. Long story short, I managed to make it to a gas station with a pay phone and called AAA. I had to wait for almost an hour, and in that time I got asked for a dollar and watched some crackhead lady in a fur coat check the two pay phones for change almost a dozen times. I passed her on the way back to my car. She smelled like cigarettes and failure.

When I brought the car to our mechanic, he asked if I had just recently gone through a large puddle. I said no, but it was raining awfully hard. He said it was probably due to the moisture, with an air of finality I didn't appreciate; like he didn't even intend to investigate. I said, "But uh... should my car be doing that? You know, totally not working when it rains? Is that par for the course in Jettas or what?".

So, you know, don't invite me anywhere when it's raining. I won't make it.

I've been trying to replace my hat for years. It's dirty, faded, and just about ready to fall apart. Maybe  you can help me.



As  you can see, it is a "Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish" hat, from "The Simpsons". It's all black, with an embroidered fish on the front, and according to the tag it was made by a company called "HeadShots", which, according to Google, no longer exists.

I love this hat because it is simple, not obnoxious, and has a three-eyed fish on it. Does anyone know where I can get a replacement?

- Went to bed at 10:00pm with two earplugs.

- Woke up around 2:30am with one earplug.

- My wife got up around 5:30am and found the missing earplug on the kitchen floor.

.....

Huh.

Looks like today's comic and yesterday's comic ran out of order... somehow! Huh. I guess I'll have to fix that when I get home. In the meantime, I'll brace for a glut of emails pointing out the error. There's really nothing like getting hundreds of corrections when you make a single mistake.

It feels like... home.