Internet cafe review. Wednesday, Jun 24 2009

I don’t have internet access at home yet so I’m going to a new internet cafe every couple of days to catch up. I have to say that the green internet cafe next to Pigeon Park is both the most high-tech and the most infuriatingly complicated. I mean it’s the only place where you actually have to turn the computer on before you use it. And there’s this thing where you have to pay a deposit on a card and have it refunded after… I mean, what’s wrong with good old-fashioned “sit at computer number five and come up to the desk when you’re finished”?

Also, the browser won’t let me open new windows, only tabs. I hate tabs.

At least the service isn’t as bad as that internet cafe that closed down a while ago where I was actually mocked by the staff for printing out an image they didn’t realise was supposed to be a parody.

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Baah. Saturday, Jun 13 2009

I’m moving. Hopefully next weekend I’ll be able to start cartooning again. In the mean time I might as well keep Blogging. It keeps away the fear that if I don’t continuously exist on the internet, I won’t exist at all.

This week’s front-cover Time article is on how great Twitter is. I could vomit. I’ve experimentally been following the Twitter account of one person I highly regard, just to see if I shouldn’t be too dismissive of the system, but even he posts things like “When I die and go to hell, I’ll be thrown into a pit of spiders and forced to eat my way out.” I think there should be system where people have to wait 24 hours before posting their twitters, just so they have more time than just the typing of 140 characters to reflect on whether their comment is actually of any interest. Mass communication isn’t compatible with the kind of impulsiveness that Twitter provides.

The Bain trial is over, but people keep going on about it. The worst article I read was an exploitative article in the Dom, talking about the lives of all the murdered Bains and telling us we should be ashamed of ourselves for using them as our entertainment. It’s like eating a hamburger and having a vegeratian come at you and tell you the life story of the cow you’re eating. Actually, you’re only interested in the taste and sustenance of the food, they’re the one the one exploiting the cow for their own smug self-satisfaction.

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Conan. Sunday, Mar 29 2009

My girlfriend read the Conan stories recently so I thought I’d borrow the movie from Aro Video and watch it with her. Rewatching it after fifteen years or so I was expecting to find it stupid and pointless, but actually it made me nostalgic for when stupid and pointless movies used to be simple and entertaining.

I was thinking of all the unbearable changes they’d make to the films if they remade them. Everyone would have short hair for a start, probably that short spiky hair style that almost every male has had for the last decade. There would also be designer stubble. Conan would be 18 and full of angst. Probably he would pout and say ‘it’s not fair!’ when the baddies gang up on him. Other times he’d just have an obnoxious smirk all the time. He’d have an annoying excitable sidekick straight out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer who’d make up words (‘wordificate’) all the time. The final act of revenge would be an epic computer generated battle with lots of explosions, rather than Arnie’s understated cutting-off-of-the-head. There would be WAY more dialogue, because what the world really needs is a couple of mismatched barbarians comedically discussing how to get blood stains out of leather. And Conan and the love interest would hate each other on first sight and exchange cutting remarks for three quarters of the film, even though the story isn’t really that much of a romantic comedy.

To summarise, Conan may be dated sword-and-sandal trash, but it’s still much better than UPdated sword-and-sandal trash.

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I’m walking on sunshine. Monday, Mar 9 2009

Also used as alternate text for the image

“So David, after all you were saying about men writing women unrealistically… you now have a woman flying around in her underwear?”

“There’s a reason for it, I swear! I just… don’t know what it is yet.”

I need to develop a faster way to turn pencil sketches into completed panels. Probably this will involve practice. My working title for this project is ‘Nuclear Vintler’ because the words popped into my head and I liked them.

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Neo-misogyny. Friday, Mar 6 2009

Mr. Nobody and I have been discussing that comic with the women with the magic dresses. I’m not promising anything since Mr. Nobody will only work on the project if they don’t have to work on the project if they don’t want to, and we torrent new TV shows faster than we can watch them, but we’re both generally enthusiastic.

The one thing I’m worried about is the kind of sexist anti-sexism that occurs when men try to write women. It’s a thing I’ve noticed in a lot of in progressive cavemen and it takes various forms:

1) Writing in token ‘realistic’ women who have none of the flaws that the men are allowed to have. Because writing a woman with flaws would be SEXIST! And writing an intelligent woman with a realistic body type is FEMINIST! Although when you refer to your female character as ‘a female’ when all your male characters have actual personalities, you’re betraying your misogyny somewhat. Yes, it’s progressive misogyny, but it’s still misogyny.

2) Writing smart, articulate, intelligent computer-literate, mathematically able women, not because you wish to represent them in a positive manner but because that’s what your ideal woman is like. Coincidentally, your ideal woman will also continue dating you when you’re dating other women and fall for every lame pick-up line. Some men represent their ideal women as thin and large-breasted, some represent their ideal women as intelligent and promiscuous. It’s still basically pornography.

3) Joss Whedon. Just because your women aren’t damsels in distress, just because they’re solving their own problems and often rescuing men in distress, doesn’t mean you’re not heavily objectifying them at the same time. Sheesh.

Anyway. Neo-misogyny: progressive, but not progressed enough. It’s a token effort NOT to appear sexist, but for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way.

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Politics, sorry. Monday, Mar 2 2009

I was hoping that now Obama was in power, the US would sane up. Apparently not. The propaganda has just become more insidious.

I wonder if this information about the rant being preconceived months in advance will become popular and undermine what they’re trying to achieve, or if the mainstream media will just ignore it. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

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I can work with nobody. Monday, Mar 2 2009

I spend all my time at work writing comics in my head, but I can’t draw. Then I have this friend called ‘Mr. Nobody’ who likes to draw, but who doesn’t like to write. Then there’s me again, who can scan pencil drawings and fiddle with them endlessly in PhotoShop.

It took us a year to figure out that we could possibly do something with this.

Mr. Nobody doesn’t want credit for their work, but I don’t want it either, so I guess that means I’m collaborating with nobody. As usual.

Mr. Nobody and I are discussing a comic about four women with magic dresses. The women are of varied ethnicity and body shape, unlike the women in any project by Joss Whedon. They also solve their problems without access to a massive talent for martial arts, unlike the women in any project by Joss Whedon.

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Can a fictional character sue for slander? Friday, Feb 27 2009

This comic is wrong. Westley didn’t stay with the Dread Pirate Roberts because Buttercup was with Humperdinck, he did it because he was a prisoner. The only reason Westley didn’t go back to Buttercup when he became free was that she’d become engaged to the prince by that time. Also, the Dread Pirate Roberts was never reported to have killed anyone – in fact, the one person he said he would kill, he didn’t.

I should write a strongly worded letter to the editor.

Apparently Guillermo Del Toro is shopping everywhere in Wellington these days. I sold him some Doctor Who DVDs last year, but now my girlfriend has sold him some children’s books. I no longer feel special.

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I was sixteen when I first noticed that there were two ‘r’s in ‘February’. Wednesday, Feb 18 2009

I’ve been a bit distraced lately. The new Lego Pirates sets were released a couple of weeks ago and I ‘ad to ‘ave ’em. They are awesome. After twenty years of waiting I finally have a lego pirate ship. What’s not to be distracted about?

I realised a couple of days ago that in all the time I’ve had this blog I haven’t posted any anecdotes about work. I’m quite proud of that. When I was on LiveJournal, half of the posts I read were rants about stupid customers or stupid co-workers or stupid people in management. I got sick of it after a while and that’s one of the reasons I shifted to the much less inane WordPress. I already know how stupid people can be, reading reminders all the time just makes me depressed.

I need to start writing a book. I’ve been in a state of literary ‘why bother?’ for a while since most of the stuff I want to write isn’t really what publishers are interested in and I never like my work enough to market it properly on the internet, but it’s the only thing I know I’m actually capable of finishing.

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More stuff. Tuesday, Jan 27 2009

Here’s another stuff. One quarter of a page of stuff anyway. Don’t ask me why I don’t just copy and paste everything when I’m clearly just tracing it anyway.

The comic is called ‘Kerry and the Shadow Puppets’. I know I’m not supposed to use the names of people I know but I thought ‘Kerry’ went well with ‘and the Shadow Puppets’. I think I’ll be able to get through one full page a week.

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