Just across from the sign that says "Pros Only"

Financial skills

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:05:34 GMT

a comic on the internet about a videogame, who'da thunk

To make matters worse, I saw this thing halfway through drawing it, pfffffft is what I say to that

Comic dump

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:36:52 GMT

Apologies, friends pages

BUT THEN

Then there's this one, idea from Shannon:

Then I drew Shannon upon request

So, y'know, if anyone wants an exquisitely detailed portrait such as this done for themselves, you know who to come to

Remembrance Day

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:29:20 GMT

Did this for my school newspaper to be published next week, but oh well, that's boring

Germophobia

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:07:10 GMT

If you can't trust soap then what can you trust

Whatta nerd

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:17:50 GMT

I made myself a veritable fuckton of TMBG icons today.

I was just watchin some videos, then I dunno what happened, but there they were

I keep expecting to grow out of these guys, but no matter how far I stray, or how long I go without listening to them, I'm always drawn back eventually. Mine is a first love that runs quiet and deep. v_v

And look at them, can you blame me

All signs point to

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:23:54 GMT

Actually, as it turns out, the venue was really enclosed and intimate. I went early and got a seat in the front row.

Word on the Street had a five-person webcomics panel, so there were five empty chairs on stage when I got there. Naturally, when Ryan North comes in, he picks the one three feet directly in front of me. D: So I had an up-close view of his chiseled features and massive hands.

The panel was pretty cool, highlights include
(1) Ryan North exchanging a "no-drawing" high five with Emily Horne across the three other panelists sitting between them,
(2) Ryan North describing webcomics as the best job he could have because he gets a bunch of emails every morning from people saying "I love you," and that's a nice thing to think about as you eat your breakfast,
(3) Ryan North admitting he googles his name sometimes, and once found a blog trashing him because he won an award for "Best Furry Webcomic" one year, and the author (an actual furry webcartoonist) was outraged because his characters were technically "scalies," so Ryan wrote in response, "why don't you like my awesome comic dude," and the author got all upset, but they later both apologised and made up,
(4) when the topic of piracy came up, Ryan North said he has no problem with it since his comics are free anyway, then someone asked "What if they pirate your t-shirts?" and he said that did happen once, when someone stole one of his shirt designs, but he just sent an email to the guy saying only "hey what's the deal" and the guy took them down, saying "Oh I didn't think you would find these"

Q&A came around, I asked what advice the panelists had for new cartoonists in terms of promoting oneself and gaining a readership. Most of the panelists said stuff like "social networking" or "live in Toronto and throw really good parties," but Ryan North looked all thoughtful and responded with some very nice words about being there for your audience, providing them with comics regularly, because as long as someone is coming back to read you, you have a pretty good start. He may have said some other stuff, but my brain was pretty much misted over at that point.

Afterwards there was a 15-minute period where the panelists would be selling and signing stuff outside the tent. It was at this point I realised I had forgotten my wallet! So I ran back to my residence (about a five minute walk) to get it, figuring I could be back in time. When I got there, I realised I had also somehow forgotten my room key. I stood and waited impatiently for someone to let me into the building, then ran up to my room hoping my roommate would be in. He wasn't.

At this point, you start to think, "Okay maybe I don't need to buy stuff for Ryan North to sign THAT BAD, I'm sure I can move on in life without it," but I just couldn't let the opportunity slip by without at least doing my darnedest. So I ran back downstairs and down the street to residence services to pick up a temporary key (service was mercifully fast), ran back to my residence, ran up to my room again, grabbed my wallet, ran back downstairs, and finally back across the five-minute-walk to Queen's Park, where most of the tents were being packed up because the day was over.

I walk up, and Ryan North is just sitting there, being Ryan North. I was the last fan there.

I was all sweaty and short of breath talking to him from all the running around, but he was super nice. He shook my hand and asked what my name was, and if I was starting a webcomic, since I had asked that question. I said not yet, but I'd like to, once I learn to draw better. He said that's one of the cool things about having a webcomic, is you can prove to yourself, publishers, or whoever, that you can handle the workload of having a comic, while at the same time improving your art as you go along, documenting your improvement over time. He talked about hating comics he made several months ago, but liking comics he made several years ago, describing it as like a "window of self hate," indicating a waveform pattern with his hand.

He asked me what kind of comics I make, and I said just general purpose sort of comics, without any kind of arch to them, kind of like what John Campbell is doing right now. Then we talked about how awesome John Campbell is for a bit. Ryan said he's a really nice guy in person, despite how bleak and depressing his comics are; that didn't surprise me.

I wound up spending $55 dollars on Dinosaur Comics merchandise: a shirt, a poster, and a book. Totally worth it.

:3

Bands I like

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:26:18 GMT

I've been getting this question a lot lately, I wish I had something more interesting to say than "Oh, you know... stuff."

Also hey, I've drawn some Mario fan art, how 'bout that

I don't know why I'm drawing it this way I think something is wrong with me

Autumnal

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:37:58 GMT

growing my first beard

coming in black, bronze, and gold

a manly rainbow

My Hampton Beach study

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:15:45 GMT

Not to seem judgmental or stereotyping, but upon my honour, there's at least one of these on every corner in Hampton, NH this time of year. I must have seen hundreds of that exact same pair of sunglasses.

Vonneglut

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:43:04 GMT

Went to the beach today. An Italian guy waved me over and asked for help with this English language workbook he had. I helped him out best I could. In exasperation, he was like, "This grammar is... mamma mia" and I was like, "Yeah, yeah it is." I apologised on behalf of my language for being so unintuitive and hodgepodge. You just have to stick with it; eventually you pick up on the general patterns. I sure don't envy anyone learning it as a second language.

I brought a book of literary interviews and read a really good one with Kurt Vonnegut. He says he never features love in his stories because "I have other things I want to talk about" and "If a lover in a story wins his true love, that's the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers."

He says creative writing can be taught "About the same way golf can be taught. A pro can point out obvious flaws in your swing." I like that idea because it leaves it to the students, ultimately, to figure themselves out, and do whatever produces the best results, even if that means an unorthodox, Jim Furyk type of swing.

He says when his colleagues on certain art councils want to send notices to college English departments about literary opportunities, he tells them, "Send them to the chemistry departments, send them to the zoology departments, send them to the anthropology departments and the astronomy departments and physcis departments, and all the medical and law schools. That's where the writers are most likely to be... I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak." As someone going into an English program, this quote worries me.

It's easy to write Vonnegut off because he was a chemisty major, was kind of anti-romantic in general, spent a lot of time writing crappy pulp sci-fi to pay the bills, and so is maybe just old-fashioned, like a biased uncle or physics teacher. I'm not sure I can agree with him, but I'm not sure how I would argue against his points either. In a way, I guess he only means English students can fall into a rut of reading books for the sake of reading books, holding the classics above all else, and having no ideas of their own to express. Well, I'm not in danger of that at least. I've never been as well-versed in the classics as someone of my disposition ought to be; I spend too much time on the internet. >.>

He has a great sense of humour, though, Vonnegut:

VONNEGUT: At one time, when I was writing, I happened to sniff my armpits absent-mindedly. Several people saw me do it, and thought it was funny—and ever after that I was given the name "Snarf." In the annual for my graduating class, the class of 1940, I'm listed as "Kurt Snarfield Vonnegut, Jr." Technically, I wasn't really a snarf. A snarf was a person who went around sniffing girls' bicycle saddles. I didn't do that. "Twerp" also had a very specific meaning, which few people know now. Through careless usage, "twerp" is a pretty formless insult now.

INTERVIEWER: What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?

VONNEGUT: It's a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.

INTERVIEWER: I see.

VONNEGUT: I beg your pardon; between the cheeks of his or her ass. I'm always offending feminists that way.

INTERVIEWER: I don't quite understand why someone would do that with false teeth.

VONNEGUT: In order to bite the buttons off the back seats of taxicabs. That's the only reason twerps do it. It's all that turns them on.

And he allows himself the romanticism to say "every successful creative person creates with an audience of one in mind. That's the secret of artistic unity. Anybody can achieve it, if he or she will make something with only one person in mind" (for Vonnegut, that was his sister). That, at least, affirms a lot of what I do.

Did some drawrin'

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:39:16 GMT

Also contributed to the Great Cosby Experiment of '09.

A Passage to India passages

Thu, 21 May 2009 20:21:03 GMT

Haha I love this book.

Most of life is so dull that nothing is to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, "I do enjoy myself," or, "I am horrified," we are insincere. "As far as I feel anything, it is enjoyment, horror"—it's no more than that really, and a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent.

She felt increasingly (vision or nightmare?) that, though people are important, the relations between them are not, and that in particular too much fuss has been made over marriage; centuries of carnal embracement, yet man is no nearer to understanding man. And to-day she felt this with such force that it seemed itself a relationship, itself a person who was trying to take hold of her hand.

It's so existential it's not even funny.

Also the Marabar Caves are especially rad—they're perfectly circular and smooth and make any noise, even really small ones, reverberate into this monotone "booouuuum," and it's so creepy it makes one character have a spiritual crisis and another realise she doesn't really love her fiancée and think she's been raped

A tunnel eight feet long, five feet high, three feet wide, leads to a circular chamber about twenty feet in diameter. This arrangement occurs again and again throughout the group of hills, and this is all, this is a Marabar Cave. Having seen one such cave, having seen two, having seen three, four, fourteen, twenty-four, the visitor returns to Chandrapore uncertain whether he has had an interesting experience or a dull one or any experience at all. He finds it difficult to discuss the caves, or to keep them apart in his mind, for the pattern never varies, and no carving, not even a bees'-nest or a bat distinguishes one from another. Nothing, nothing attaches to them...

Only the wall of the circular chamber has been polished thus. The sides of the tunnel are left rough, they impinge as an afterthought upon the internal perfection. An entrance was necessary, so mankind made one. But elsewhere, deeper in the granite, are there certain chambers that have no entrances? Chambers never unsealed since the arrival of the gods. Local report declares that these exceed in number those that can be visited, as the dead exceed the living—four hundred of them, four thousand or million. Nothing is inside them, they were sealed up before the creation of pestilence or treasure; if mankind grew curious and excavated, nothing, nothing would be added to the sum of good or evil.

Also rad: Professor Godbole, who similarly freaks out all the English characters in the book

"Good-bye, Professor Godbole," she continued, suddenly agitated. "It's a shame we never heard you sing."

"I may sing now," he replied, and did.

His thin voice rose, and gave out one sound after another. At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western melody. But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any cue, and wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none intelligible. It was the song of an unknown bird. Only the servants understood it. They began to whisper to one another. The man who was gathering water chestnut came naked out of the tank, his lips parted with delight, disclosing his scarlet tongue. The sounds continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had begun—apparently half through a bar, and upon the subdominant.

"Thanks so much: what was that?" asked Fielding.

"I will explain in detail. It was a religious song. I placed myself in the position of a milkmaiden. I say to Shri Krishna, 'Come! come to me only.' The god refuses to come. I grew humble and say, 'Do not come to me only. Multiply yourself into a hundred Krishnas, and let one go to each of my hundred companions, but one, O Lord of the Universe, come to me.' He refuses to come. This is repeated several times. The song is composed in a raga appropriate to the present hour, which is the evening."

"But He comes in some other song, I hope?" said Mrs. Moore gently.

"Oh no, he refuses to come," repeated Godbole, perhaps not understanding her question.

My sexy substitute English teacher did his thesis on the book ("I'm New Hampshire's expert on A Passage to India!"), and said the most important thing we had to understand was that "it's a book about Nothing." Indeed.

In other news, I overheard a girl the other day talking about how much she hates Holden Caulfield, and it made me depressed

That river is way too wide

Sun, 10 May 2009 02:45:36 GMT

I maked some comics

In which I rip off a guy's art style

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:19:21 GMT

So I'm pretty stoked for Hourly Comics Day on February 1.

This is not an hourly comic, it is just depressing

So prepare for the coup of the century, be prepared for the murkiest scam

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:05:43 GMT

While trying to feel interested in college applications today, I happened across the one perfect and foolproof cure for any lack of ambition.

And that is listening to "Be Prepared" from the Lion King.

One more Watchmen post

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:32:47 GMT

It would be a stronger world, a stronger loving world, to die in

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:28 GMT

A few things...

This is Ezra Pound, modernist poet, punk symphony composer, photographed in 1920:

1920! Look at him! He was living in the 70s a half century before they happened! Now that's modernist.

I finished Watchmen today. It's such a great read. No heroes, no villains, just brilliant characters... the entire story unfolds in this morally grey haze, yet in the end, when it turns out Veidt was right... it's all very complex and satisfying. Relevant, even; sometimes even today, it seems like we're on the brink of our own sort of doomsday, just with economic collapse instead of nuclear fallout. Maybe all we need is restored perspective, an alien invasion...

Anyway, it's all very thought-provoking, and there's no way the movie will live up to it, but oh well. Directors and screenwriters, y'know, they just have this compulsion, this oath, that no material shall ever pass through their maws untampered with. I really appreciated how it ended with a John Cale quote... do you think you'll hear any John Cale or Bob Dylan or Elvis Costello in the movie? I doubt it. You just have to hope people read the series. It should be the price of admission.

My headphones finally died today. It's really quite tragic. I can't listen to anything here now, unless everyone is out. I have nothing to block out bus noise on the way to school, besides the songs in my head. Yet I'm not too upset. Hopefully a replacement will come for Christmas, or my siblings will dig up or bring me an extra pair when they visit. In the meantime, it's back to stuff like reading and peoplewatching. I had hardly taken my headphones off when I first noticed something silly: there were these two girls sitting behind me, and one was really bright and talkative, discussing the Twilight premiere, drama between her online friends, etc., and the girl being subjected to this would make these polite responses once in a while, like "hmm" or "wow" or "oh gosh," with this barely perceptible hint of discomfort that the talking girl was cheerfully oblivious to. It made me smile. There was something familiar about it, but I'm not sure who I was empathising with—the enthusiastic girl or the patient one. Maybe both.

Then I was on such a high from finishing Watchmen that I was able to mull through the boisterous, pushy crowds at my school all day, which are without a doubt spotted with actual criminals as well as future ones, and just observe the self-satisfied way one would carry himself, or the possessive, threatening arm another would put around his girlfriend, or the obnoxiously loud calls of "EYYYYYYYYY" that jocks around here throw to each other upon sight... and you know what? After reading Watchmen, it didn't bother me so much. I was in too thoughtful a mood. So today is a day in which I came to hate humanity a little less. That's what a good story does for you, I guess.

The cattle all have brucellosis

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:35:20 GMT

Pushing Daisies isn't on today because of the Country Music Awards, so now I'm sitting here trying to figure them out.

It seems like every time I hear someone talk about their musical tastes, they say something to the effect of "Oh, I listen to all kinds of music... *grimace* except COUNTRY." It sounds so ignorant, close minded, categorically dismissing a mode of expression like that. I mean, I get it, it can be really trite, conservative, hard to stomach, and whatnot, but that's really indicative of bad songwriters, not a bad genre.

I've been listening to a lot of Neil Young lately—beautifully earnest, distinctive, Canadian, kind of a rock/country blend—and the Eagles are apparently country, because they're playing tonight, and then there's folk, which is a hip thing to like still... bah, labels, genres. Everyone knows they suck.

Anyway, I get the feeling that a lot of people around here just object to the folksy, "down home" flavour to it... but it isn't even folksy. I don't know what it is. I just saw a bit of the show: Hugh Jackman got up, Hugh Jackman, and some other Australian chick (non-American Hollywood thespian Commie types no doubt), to introduce the winner for Single of the Year. The guy who won held up his trophy and thanked the people who wrote the song for him, thanked the musicians who played the song, and thanked the guy who produced the song. What exactly did this guy do, then, to deserve an award, besides having money and a cowboy hat?

I wonder if there's country music purists. Are there people who are disappointed or alienated by what I'm seeing on TV tonight? Is it safe to assume the CMA is no more representative of country music than the Grammy's are of music in general? Maybe, then, there are genuine musical patrons who appreciate country, but have to suffer as much as the rest of us through its popular representation.

But maybe the corporate show is all that's really left of country.

A girl in my class, really smart, a wannabe lawyer, was talking today about how she went on a trip to Alabama, and how disgusting it was. She told about how the people were fat and the ground was covered in trash, and how there was a mall in one town full of young girls, really young, wearing makeup and slinky clothes, looking like prostitutes. She said it was embarrassing the way they live, as if it was their choice. And maybe it is; who can draw a line between nature and nurture, choice and circumstance? She suggested America would be better off if the south was just cut off, if we were two separate countries. Maybe it would. She complained that Tennessee accents make women sound like little girls. I understand the feeling. My family vacations sometimes at a Sea Pines in South Carolina, and we drive through scary-looking towns, and encounter annoying accents filling the pool, cawing at the beach, sunny and superficial, and it makes one feel very other. But... I can't be comfortable with that kind of sentiment. People are people, regardless of the society, and thus can be rationalised, be relatable, defensible, no worse, inherently, than our more immediate countrymen. Right?

Next time someone hates on country music, I'm going to ask them for clarification. What is country music, exactly? I don't understand. I really don't.

A poem of truth

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:33:15 GMT

Nearsightedness is great;
It's a desirable quality
In a mate
When you're ugly

College applications? Never heard of 'em

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:55:23 GMT

Alexander Hamilton

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:06:02 GMT

The dude was out of control. I've been reading about 'im. Forget all the boring economic stuff he did, and his Aaron Burr duel. Even prior to that, he lived a steamy life.

He was involved in the first sex scandal in American politics. It was nuts―the whole thing was set up by this girl's abusive husband, so he could blackmail Hamilton, threating to expose the affair and ruin his good name. So what did Hamilton do? Basically, he kept paying the guy so he could carry on the affair for three years. Crazy. Or maybe he was just really in love?

Anyway, the girl's husband was also involved in counterfeiting. When he got caught, he implicated Hamilton as a member of the operation, for no reason other than causing drama, I guess. Hamilton had to choose between revealing his affair to explain away the accusation or having himself associated with organized crime.

He eventually went public with his adultery confession. Interesting to note: about a month before this, the girl finally got a divorce from her husband. The lawyer who represented her in the proceedings? AARON BURR. WHAAAAAAAAA

There's also rumors that he had another affair with his wife's sister, but nobody knows for sure because his family went back and edited the contents of all his letters to her.

So later on he and Aaron Burr had their duel in New Jersey to settle their political rivalry. They held it on a certain ridge that was a popular dueling place back then, where Hamilton's own son was killed in a duel three years before. Sounds like a bad idea, but when did that ever stop the guy?

Going into the duel, Hamilton wrote that he didn't want to shoot Burr, so he planned to throw away his first shot, and possibly his second. But he apparently wasn't aware of all the official proceedings that a duelist goes through when they turn with no intention of shooting. So instead he nailed the tree branch above Aaron Burr's head. Then Burr shot him.

There's still a big debate over what Hamilton's real intentions were with the duel. I like to think he had some climactic moment of clarity before being shot, where he reflected on all the ridiculous goings-on in his life and decided it was time to cease his participation in them. But some say he was just trying to make Burr look bad in the event that he lost. Also, apparently he may have been manic-depressive? What a dramatic guy. When's the movie?

Sometimes I worry

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:24:46 GMT

I was looking for something in my old Physics notes today, and I happened across a page about calculating mechanical energy in springs.

On the back of the sheet, I had scribbled some pickup lines:

"Baby, your elastic potential makes my spring coefficient go all static"

"Care to convert the carbs in these drinks to kinetic energy? Maybe through some simple harmonic motion over at your place?"

Here a Pretty Baby Lies

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:46:48 GMT

Here a pretty baby lies
Sung asleep with lullabies:
Pray be silent, and not stir
Th'easy earth that covers her.

And with these four simple lines, in 1648,
poet Robert Herrick authored the first documented Dead Baby Joke in the English language.

Kernan's Law of Bioluminescence

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:56:25 GMT

For all functions describing net cuteness in which x = the cuteness of any given animal and y = the ability to glow in the fucking dark,

f ( x + y ) > f ( x )

Figure 1.1 — a demonstration of Kernan's Law

Another productive day of learnin' on Wikipedia

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:41:47 GMT

I went to read up on the term heteronormativity. Here are some things I eventually discovered:

    1. Wikipedia's article for masturbation is really long

    2. The phrase "radical lesbian feminists" sounds like it should be a comic book

    3. St. Priapus Church is one of the most awesomely ridiculous things I have ever read about.