Portland Mercury Illo

Here’s an illustration of mine that was in today’s Portland Mercury. The article it accompanies is about renters’ rights. In Portland, many apartment buildings are being converted into condos. The renters of those apartments get evicted, some on very short notice. There is a proposed law that would make the owner of the building pay the moving expenses of the renter if he/she was evicted for this reason.
Also, the last thing I will post about my new uke:

I really wanted to bike around to parks and play the thing, as well as take it on a trip I will be leaving for shortly, so I made a carrying case for it. It’s made from a pair of cargo pants that had been ripped. (My bike saddle has the reputation of ripping out the crotches of many a pair of pants; other than that, it’s perfect) I had been holding onto them for just such an occasion. I took a bunch of the pockets from the pants and re-sewed them onto the case, so it has two big pockets (one on either side) and three smaller ones for picks or spare change or other doo-dads. The shoulder strap is part of an old bike tube, a favorite material of mine lately. The tube makes the perfect strap, it’s made of very pliable rubber so it just sort of stretches itself to whatever size it needs to accomodate. You can’t see it in the photo, but the interior is lined with 1/4″ thick thermal fleece, the leftovers from Rembrandt’s hair.
There were a few requests to actually hear the uke so here’s a quick mp3. I apologize for the poor quality of my computer’s internal microphone and for the fact that I’ve only been playing ukulele for a few days. DOWNLOAD
I’ll be taking a little bit of a summer vacation for the next two weeks, so I probably won’t be posting much as I won’t have access to my scanner. I plan on having quite a bit of free time to finish up a few necessary projects and comics though, so I should have a glut of material to show you when I return.
