Monday, June 2, 2003

Stop Drawing Bad Manga! "There are a lot of manga-style comics on the Web, and the vast majority fall into that banal second category. They beg the question: Why should I read this, when I could just as easily be reading actual manga?"

She makes good points, but she misses the pivotal fact:  All kids make shitty comics.  It's just part of life.  Shit, shit, shit.  If they draw enough, it won't be shit anymore.  10 years ago they drew shitty Image comics, maybe 10 years from now they'll draw shitty furry pirate comics, who gives a shit?

…

PS Shit.

Wire Pop  Speaking of which George Xamra Panella's strating up a Subscription Manga Site.  If you got a non-shitty manga in a closet or Keenspace somewhere, dust that sucker up and send it to the guy.  Who knows, you might make enough cash to buy an actual DVD instead of leeching off the IRC, you cheapscape!

The lies that led us into war ... "One key tactic of the British and United States governments in their campaign on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was to talk up suspicions and to portray possibility as fact. The clearest example was the quotation and misquotation of the reports of United Nations weapons inspectors."

What a Tangled Web We Weave . . .  A bit of chronology for those who'll probably have trouble remembering it in 2004.

An Interview with Sexy Losers' Hard Artist by Leah Fitzgerald

Socially Acceptable Bigotry:  A primer in discrimination against us GOPers  "In short, the justification for bigoted comments directed at those with whom the educated Left disagrees politically is based on two foundations: 1) We're a lot smarter than they are; and 2) We're better people than they are. That logic leads to three inescapable conclusions: We're right. They're wrong. QED: All Republicans are assholes."  

You know, he's right.  Just like rapist, child molesters, Klan members, and Nazis, Republicans also have feeling too.  Spread the love, increase the peace.

"Lately, I've been indulging in a semi-crazy LEGO habit involving large scale models."

Traumatic Toilet "If you grow up using these, then squatting is no big deal. In fact, I seem to remember reading somewhere that squatting is a better position for the body's plumbing—it works more easily and more efficiently. But to Westerners, this type of toilet is traumatic."

Forget the Hummer, how 'bout a Bradley fighting vehicle!

Game Imitates Life  "At first, players started speculating that there was a really bad bug in the game code," player Tim Wheating said. "Then we realized that somehow an insane god had taken control of our world and was out to kill us all."

Sandman Annotations (from the Neil Gaiman comic)

Why Am I Getting All This Spam?  Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report

Tuesday, June 3, 2003.

Fine Arts meets the Sims " A series of drawings from an isometric perspective, in the style of a computer game. The subject of each drawing is the image, or images, that created a popular cultural event. Historical events (like the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel) are used interchangeably with fictionalized events (like the picnic scene from The Sound of Music)."

Welcome to the website of the California Coastal Records Project. Our goal is to create an aerial photographic survey of the California Coast and update it on a periodic basis.

Nosphalot went to con.  Took pictures.  The elf chick's kinda hot… I guess.  Lot's of people who really should know better.

"1. You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat together with a family. "It has changed just for a moment". [ "it being very dear" or ] You will pass pleasant one time."  Translation:  Humiliated your cat by forcing them to wear bonnets. (via Ghastly)

The Effects Of Cannabis On A Web-Based Lifestyle

**Einstein wrote this riddle this century. He said 98% of the world could not solve it. It's not hard, you just need to pay attention and be patient.**

US 'is an empire in denial'  "The United States is the empire that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial, and US denial of this poses a real danger to the world. An empire that doesn't recognise its own power is a dangerous one."

Farting Fetish Videos  How you do know they're not faking it?  They could be just SFX farts, all done in post! (via Derek Kirk)

Bush Flash  Agitprop for the internet age.  (Proof positive the liberals can be just as paranoid & wacky as the other side.)

Xiiin One of those Ultra Cool Flash sites are are SOOO fucking neat, but you don't know or care what the point was or what it was about other then looking really badass and all.  Kinda defines the dot com years, ey?

Photos of the Great War  "It was supposed to be "The War to End All Wars." These are the images of that time, an eternal testament to all those whose lives were lost or forever altered by "The Great War.""  Like this one. (via MF)

Unused Audio Commentary By Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter, Recorded Spring 2003, for Aliens Special Red-State Edition DVD, Part One & Part Two.

Photos from the G8 protests  (via Boing^2)

Wednesday, June 4, 2003.

The Theme from Love Boat (Zipped MP3, 1.4MB)  Come on kids, sing along!

Quiz: Art or Crap "Do you know your Dada from your Moma? Try the quiz and see."

Weatherpix: Storm Chasing, Tornado education and severe weather photography  "A source dedicated to severe storm and tornado education for spotters, enthusiasts, and scientists alike who share an avid interest in atmospheric violence."

knockoff*project  album cover spoofs, goofs and send-ups

The Rorschach Test "Most people have heard of the Rorschach test (pronounced " raw-shock "), but few have ever seen a real Rorschach inkblot. The blots are kept secret. When you see an inkblot in a popular article on the test (as in the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the Rorschach test), it's a fake: it's an an inkblot, but not one of the inkblots. There are only ten Rorschach inkblots."

The Archive of Golden Age Romance Comics  "A resource for scholars and fans interested in golden era romance comics, containing full scans of issues."

Tolkien Fonts  It's like, in  different language, right?

Orsinial - Runaway Train (Flash gane)

Christian Group Wants Disney's No-Fly Zone Down For Gay Days  Wow, Disney, Christians, gay, and terrorism all in one news article.  Gotta be a record.

www.funet.fi/pub/culture/ russian/ voices/ realaudio/  Comreds!  Relive the struggle with some Communist Oldies!

"From Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler, history's most evil tyrants are also the tackiest interior designers."  In their defense, murdering your enemies, looting your country, AND oppressing your people is a full time job.  I mean, there's only so much one guy can do!

Thursday, June 5, 2003.

Genva G8 Summit  Protests.  (via Boing^2)

World support for U.S. at new low because of Iraq war, survey finds  Ha! You call that news?

New Cafe Press Member's Agreement  which includes a $25 "maintence" fee for low-volume store and a 5% "comission" on your comission's been causing a bit of a bruhaha.  The Official Member Agreement/Privacy Policy Discussions here.

I've made my views on hawking glorified iron-on (aka "Thermal Printing") T-shirts known before; I actually designed couple of tees, but stopped. I was going to buy a sample to see how well they're made, then I realized I did not want to pay ~20 bucks for another goddamn t-shirt.  If I couldn't be bothered to pay, I really failed to see why anybody else should.

Try Domination T-shirts (distributor for Brunetto T-Shirts screenprinter) for an alternative, you'll have to do some calculations yourself, but isn't why God gave you such big brains?  Plus, they have color tees on good old fashioned silkscreen.

HERCUBUSH!  Not as bad as I thought it would be.

"Now, in the first of his fortnightly Guardian columns, Salam Pax reports on life in the Iraqi capital "

WhoWhatWhen  "Database of people and events from 1000 A.D. to the present. Create graphic timelines of periods in history and of the lives of individuals."

CYMATIC SOUNDSCAPE  Sound Wave Pictures

Movie spoilers galore! Moviepooper ruins the endings for hundreds of movies!  "Why Moviepooper?   Let's be frank, because sometimes that guy in Marketing who's such a jerk to everyone needs to be put in his place...and how better than to ruin the ending of the movie he's been looking forward to seeing for the past three weeks?"  You can always Nitpick afterwards.

ARTEMIS RADIO "A Webcast Talk-Show dedicated to Anime Fans and the general public as a means to entertain and inform."
The Good:  It's just like having a bunch of guys over talking non-stop about anime.
The Bad:  It's just like having a bunch of guys over talking non-stop about anime.

Shredder 1.0  "The web is not a publication. Web sites are not paper. Yet the current thinking of web design is that of the magazine, newspaper, book, or catalog. Visually, aesthetically, legally, the web is treated as a physical page upon which text and images are written.
Web pages are temporary graphic images created when browsing software interprets HTML instructions. As long as all browsers agree (at least somewhat) on the conventions of HTML there is the illusion of solidity or permanence in the web. But behind the graphical illusion is a vast body of text files -- containing HTML code -- that fills hard drives on computers at locations all over the world. Collectively these instructions make up what we call 'the web'. But what if these instructions are interpreted differently than intended? Perhaps radically differently?"

Saturday, June 7, 2003.

Snoop Dogg - Tha Shizzolator Enter your url and watch it snizzle! As always, I used Megatokyo.  Piro be one badass mofo and his homey Dommy got his back.

UNSEEN AMERICA  Photos of people that in the words of George Baily, "do the most of the living, working and dying of this crummy town."

Warren Ellis on Saving Fantagraphics  "The comics stores never supported Fantagraphics. The vast majority of them never bought Joe Sacco books, or the beautiful reproductions of KRAZY KAT or LITTLE NEMO, or anything else. That's why they started producing the filth-o-comics in the first place. That's why they attacked the bookstore market with such energy. That's where their readership is. That's why I find the new Joe Sacco book racked with the new releases in bookstores, not buried in a half-arsed "graphic novel" section stored at floor level under the fat fantasy paperbacks. They always had a wider view than the hobby market, and the hobby market has no right to feel jilted and resentful now.

If anyone has the right to be pissed off, it's Fantagraphics, who have fought in their weird and idiosyncratic way over three decades for a better medium, only to be told that no-one cares."

FREE E-Mail just like Excite or Hotmail, only much more evil!  Avoid the spammers, get a dummy email account. How does hyung@PunchMyVagina.com sound?

El DED! "Another Stupid comic I also redid the "leah light" stupid comic. The "Real" Comic series will be started in awhile... I haven't started the script yet so... It will be a lil while... Ha ha I suck."  (Lindsey Colman?  That's a girl, right?  Didn't think girls wrote just as nonsensical as boys.  Must reassess my mental gender gap.)

Taming the Terahertz   "And different compounds respond to terahertz radiation differently, meaning a terahertz-based imaging system can discern a hidden object’s chemical composition. Thanks to this power, “terahertz imaging is getting hotter and hotter,” says Xi-Cheng Zhang, a terahertz pioneer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Potential applications range from detecting tumors to finding plastic explosives. And since t-rays penetrate paper and clothing, a terahertz camera could detect hidden weapons." (via die puny humans)

Tune Out, Turn Off, Drop Offline  "A total of 80 million American adults -- 42 percent of the adult population -- say they don't use the Internet, the study found. But 20 percent of them have Internet access in the next room and choose not to go online. Or, some of them get family members to go online for them."

Priest suspended: 'No God'  "A LUTHERAN priest was suspended today after his remarks that God doesn't exist and there is no eternal life rankled many of his peers in Denmark's state church."  PS The earth isn't flat, either.

Echoes of Tiananmen "The 14th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre this Wednesday, June 4, may not seem terribly notable. Fourteen isn't an auspicious number, even though Chinese numerology links the number four with death, appropriately in this case."

Anybody ever see that movie horror The Ring?  Well, in the Japanese original, the chick in the well is named Sadako; a gallery of Sadako fanart.  Ignore the big "enter" banner on top, click the three text links below. (Most are surprisingly cute and cheeky for a girl thrown down a well and left to die, but being Japanese, some are very very NSFW.  Via The Craig David Discussion Forum! ^o^V;;;; )

.Sunday, June 8, 2003

DID YOU SEE ANYTHING? "Every night, the police scanner spits out random pieces of chaos, dozens per hour. Everything, big and small, gets aired: from a ticking sound inside a car to a man calling from a Shell station who just got his head bashed with a brick to much, much worse."  Reporters on the crime beat. (via MF)

Near-Life Experience: Killing the Hooker  Diva Lea Hernandez's funniest comic strip, read the astounding true story!  Oh, new ep. of her radio show.

Iraq: a memorial  "Untold stories of those who died during the war on Iraq"

Michal sent me Sulabh International Museum of Toilets link.  He said the site immediately reminded him of me.  Hm...

Homepage of Chris Reed and the Anime Raiders Chris wanted to use on of my strip for his upcoming CD.  I said yes.  (That was before I saw the site.)  Check out his MP3.com page.  Unfortunely, his music isn't about anime, but I did find "TV's Kyle's" "Ukyo Kuonji from Rumiko Takahashi's brilliant manga series, Ranma 1/2."  (She was the one in drag witht he spatula.)

Who says astronomers don't have a sense of humour?

Oekaki drawing board + diesel sweeties + Cafepress = Pixel Tees  (via Coolio)

Get your war on | page twenty-five 

"NaDa™ is a new concept. A thought, really. It is very light : 1 byte. It doesn't take long to fetch. It doesn't take long to understand. It doesn't disturb your habits nor does it makes you feel insecure. It is a reassuring piece of software that does nothing, and does it very well."

Kids be warned: Flushing your pet fish down the drain will not send it safely into the ocean as depicted in the movie "Finding Nemo."

The Acme Patented Lie-O-Matic  "More than 73 quality lies pulled out of the ether at random."