Because If I Don't Link to it, Someone Else WIll
My feeling is that if you're going to make a children's book about pot, it's just as well that you work in a samurai on a bicycle.
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August 31, 2006
August 30, 2006
Irregular Humor
This didn't quite make Table of Malconents, having been eclipsed by Penny Arcade's cavalcade of announcements, but Irregular Webcomic particularly amused me today.
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August 28, 2006
Where to Live
It has come to my and Colette's attention that we'll probably eventually have to move from this charming little overpriced stinky jewel of a city and to somewhere where the dollar to square footage ratio is lower -- which is to say anyplace not within a hundred miles of here. The cities are well-represented by online searches, but not so much the smaller areas. So, you folks have been helpful with the beer and pizza recommendations, I thought I'd appeal to you concerning major life decisions. Do you know of smallish, coolish towns, maybe with the comforting scent of patchouli swirling through the hippier-dippier sections of the area? I'm thinking places like Santa Cruz, Bolinas, and Humboldt County, only not on the California coast.
I Had a Kipper
This morning I had a kipper for breakfast at Saul's, a lovely local Jewish deli and restaurant. I don't know that I had ever really considered kipper as an actual foodstuff, I thought of it more as a word used in British comedy because it's funnier than "bacon." Interesting. Very fishy, very salty. Wasn't sure if I was supposed to pick out the dozens of hairlike bones or just chew them and hope they get ground down enough so they don't make my stomach leak. All in all, though, I think I'd happily substitute lox for kipper in all applications.
August 26, 2006
Well, Piffle
Just found out both my laptop batteries have been recalled, according to the revised list from Apple. Just spreading the word; if you think you got away clean you might be wrong.
August 25, 2006
So Many Things
I don't know if The 675 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG is old news, but it actually made me laugh out loud a few times, so I'm linking it on up. If you've played a lot of RPGs, I think you'll enjoy it. I also think you'll have someone in mind from your own groups as the secret identity of "Mr. Welch."
Hi, Marq!
August 23, 2006
Durr
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August 22, 2006
New Shirts
It's been a while since we put up new shirts, so Colette and I put together three designs, now available at our store, Non-Zero Chance. Here they are:
Wow
If you animate in Flash, and you do any lip sync at all, you seriously and completely need AnimSlider, a deceptively simple little tool that just cut the time it took me to lip sync a clip by half. Maybe by two-thirds.
I can't explain why without getting technical. Briefly put, if you know how to put your mouth shapes in a single symbol and switch between them using the "Single Frame" field, then this will make that process -- possibly the most boring and laborious in Flash -- a lot quicker and save a lot of pain. There's a limited version for free, but I shelled out for the regular version without even demoing it, and it's the best thirty bucks I've spent this year.
August 21, 2006
A Couple of Silver Spoons
Hey, it's the moment each of my individual brain cells has been waiting for: Sean and Wormwood. We'll be following these guys for three or four weeks, then I dunno. We'll see.
August 19, 2006
Penis Unicorns
I ran into -- through no fault of my own -- a page devoted to Penis Unicorns via Metafilter.
So, uh, Porn Star and My Little Pony!
Fun Little Game: Fruit Fall
Sometimes I come across games that I enjoy, but that for one reason or another don't make it into Table of Malcontents. Fruit Fall is one such game. I guess you could fit it vaguely into Tetris spinnoffs -- you have to match up fruit and then they disappear -- but I think of it more as a spinning version of Sokoban.
August 18, 2006
Signs of the Times
I don't write a lot of political humor because, well, I could go on for several paragraphs about why I don't write a lot of political humor, but what it comes down to is that I find it difficult to be funny about politics without being either didactic or superficial.
I suspect the best political humor seems completely reasonable to the people it's making fun of. For instance, more than once The Onion has been taken seriously by people who see no exaggeration in J.K. Rowling praising Satan, or a young woman getting excited about getting an abortion. Seems to me that shows a little more finesse than the umpteenth iteration of HA HA CHENEY LIKES TO SHOOT GUYS IN THE FACE! (Or, to be fair, my own recent incisive political commentary, which comes down to "I don't want to see Ann Coulter naked.")
Anyhow, this is all by way of something the esteemed Greg Peters pointed me to: What Right-Wingers See When They Read the New York Times. Very funny stuff, and I laughed at the expense of conservatives as intended. At the same time, though, I wonder if it was re-named "What the New York Times Really Means" and plugged to conservatives, would they laugh at the expense of those nutty liberals over at the Times? And if so, does that mean that the joke is better or worse?
August 17, 2006
About Pluto
As you've probably heard, the definition of "planet" is, pardon the expression, up in the air. Some people feel that Pluto and anything Pluto-like should be excluded, leaving us with eight planets. The current proposal, however, grants planet status not only to Pluto, but to Charon, Ceres, and the informally-named Xena.
There's a lot of emotional attachment to Pluto as a planet, but I don't think people are taking into account a group of citizens unable to speak for themselves, coherently at least: stoned students in dorm rooms. If we expand the definition of planet, stoned students in dorm rooms will no longer be able to speculate that maybe the solar system is actually a big flourine atom. Sure, they can switch to speculating that the solar system is just a big magnesium atom, but what of the future? As we find more objects in the Plutonian class, stoned college students in dorm rooms will have to alter their drug-induced imaginings, perhaps even in the middle of a bong hit. And, as our powers of astronomical observation become more advanced, we may find that, thanks to Pluto, the solar system is actually a big plutonium atom.
These are the minds of the future, people. Can we afford to blow them?
Sweet Baby Jesus
BoingBoing has an article up today about Rockabye Baby, lullaby covers of alternative rock songs. I haven't listened to many of the clips, but I think if you played their version of Smells Like Teen Spirit for me late at night, I would never sleep again. It puts the "incredibly creepy" in "incredibly fucking creepy."
Makes Its Own Gravy
I always think it's fun to run across jargon from subcultures with which I'm not involved. Not the ultra-new terms from Wired's jargon watch, but jargon that's been around long enough to be in wide use, at least among certain folk, like "Mary Sue" and "slash fiction" in the fanfic community.
Today the blog at Shortpacked introduced me to a new term: kibble. In this context I think it means "little bits of car parts all over a Transformer in robot mode that don't really look robot-like, but which kind of have to be there because all the car parts have to go somewhere." I think it's great that a concept like that, something I've never thought about, comes up often enough among Transformers collectors that they need a word.
Whoo and/or Doggies
I finally finished the first clip of what will probably be about eight in the debut arc of Sean and Wormwood. Given that I first thought them up in college, that means a development time of only about sixteen years! I don't rush my work like some of the hacks out there. Yeah, I'm looking at you, J.R.R. Tolkien!
The fun starts Monday.
August 16, 2006
Loose Ends
Spinn reminded me that I was hinting at a possible deal of great significance a few weeks back. As it turns out, it's not happening, but I still can't talk about it. How's that for news?
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August 13, 2006
Closer, Getting Closer
I was hoping this week would be the long-awaited -- by me, at least -- debut of Sean and Wormwood, but things have been moving a little more slowly than anticipated. Colette and I spent maybe an hour and a half working on the voice for a recurring character, which was a really interesting process. I ended up essentially re-writing the character's personality based on the voice Colette came up with, and I think it's a marked improvement. I also spent most of today shopping for robots, you'll find out why on Wednesday. Anyhow, the latest Bad Gods is from my extremely small backlog, I'm hoping once Sean and Wormwood gets going I'll be able to make it up.
August 10, 2006
Speaking of Food
I have complained publicly about the difficulties in getting decent food delivered in the East Bay. There's all sorts of great food if you go out and get it, but when it comes to having someone bring it to your door the options dwindle. I've finally tracked down a pizza place and a Chinese place, each of which are good enough that I've called them more than a couple times.
The pizza place is La Val's. There used to be two La Val's, and I think maybe the other one was the one that delivered, and I didn't think it was particularly tasty. But since that La Val's went under I've been ordering from the La Val's linked above, and it's been consistently good. They have a $20 minimum for delivery, which is pretty steep for pizza, but I'm willing to order a little more to get something decent. Yeah, I know, extra pizza, big sacrifice.
As for the Chinese food, King Dong is the current king of the hill, and perhaps dong of the hill as well. They do both pot stickers and szechuan chicken well, which is unusual. I've found places that have great pot stickers, but their battered fried dishes suck, and vice versa. King Dong isn't the best at either, but they get both into the green zone.
And, while I'm at it, India Palace (sound) delivers great Indian food. I actually only ordered from them because I was tired of trying to find decent Chinese, but it turns out it's really good.
For those of you who don't live anywhere near Berkeley and don't plan to, thanks for your patience. I've just done so many searches on "berkeley delivery restaurant" that I wanted to give back to the great Google-mind.
August 09, 2006
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August 08, 2006
Questionable Content
I think today's Questionable Content is a bit of a breakthrough for Jeph Jacques. The characters are showing a vitality and fluidity that they haven't had before. I'm looking forward to seeing the continued evolution of his drawing style. So, uh, good job Jeph!
August 06, 2006
A Cocktail
I accidentally sort of invented a drink this evening. Cleaning out the fridge, I realized that we had what I thought were pimento-stuffed olives, so I made myself a martini, sticking in two olives as I often do. As it turns out the olives weren't stuffed with pimentos, they were stuffed with hot piri-piri peppers, and the result was quite nice. The flavor of the martini at first overwhelms the hotness of the peppers, but as the alcohol fades from the palate, you start to feel a pleasant burn. And the olives themselves are quite tasty.
Now, reasonably you could call this "a martini with two peri-peri stuffed olives instead of a regular olive," but tradition demands that you make up a new name with every small variation. For instance, a martini with a black olive is called a buckeye. So I'm going to call this a "burn-in martini" or just a burn-in for short.
For the record, the brand is Delallo, I'm not sure how widely available it is. I suspect getting the olives straight out of the brine is key, I'm not sure if a more dry olive would impart enough flavor to the spirits.
August 05, 2006
Dog Treats
Overheard at the pet store this morning: "I need to keep a pit bull busy for a while."
August 04, 2006
Untalented Like a Fox
Someone was complaining, somewhere out there on the World Whine Web, about movie reviewers, the usual grumbles you hear about who are they to decide what's good and what's bad, why can't they get a real job so on and so forth. And it got me wondering how closely movie reviews track public opinion. Specifically, I wondered about movies that are critical failures but commercial successes. What's the least-acclaimed, most-successful movie in history?
Well, that's a tough question to answer, but I was able to come up with a likely candidate after some searches on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
Here's my nomination: The Flintstones, the live-action movie with John Goodman. The film made about $131 million dollars in the US, more than a lot of other high-grossing, critically excoriated movies like Godzilla (Matthew Broderick version) and Batman & Robin. It's not the least liked movie in history, but at 3.2 out of 10 at Rotten Tomatoes it's way down there. Moreover, with a budget of $45 million, it made a ton of money. It wasn't a flop by any measure.
So there you go, either the most successful crappy movie, or the crappiest successful movie. Me, I only saw it once and I have no particular desire to see it again, but I don't remember being particularly aghast coming out of the theater. Live action versions of cartoons were rarer back then, so there was the novelty aspect, and I liked the joke where Barney is trying to start a fire without a lighter and he says "It's finally happened. I've become my father."
Dicewars
I picked this one up from Metafilter: Dicewars is a fun Flash-based game where you conquer territory with your dice. It's pretty self-explanatory except for one thing: at the end of your turn, you get a number of extra dice, randomly distributed, equal to the highest number of consecutive areas you control. So try to control consecutive areas. Playing the two-player version first might make it easier to get a hold on the game, but I've played three-player and seven-player with pleasant results.
I'd love to see this game in multi-player, and I'm tempted to translate it to a board game just to see how it plays.
August 03, 2006
Bad Gods, Originally
So here's the story behind the name Bad Gods. Once upon a time there was a place called college, and when I was in college I started about a googolplex short stories and novels and only finished one. One of the stories I didn't finish was about an island somewhere in the Mediterranean some time in the unspecified past that was watched over by some very unpleasant deities, basically like Norse or Greek gods but without their rare redeeming features. The gods pretty much make the people miserable constantly, and if anyone complains it's all the worse for them and their immediate family. Possibly their extended family. Quite possibly everyone on the island. So the story was to be about a young lady with nothing to lose who tells the gods to go fuck themselves and thus finds herself exiled by her community and hunted by the gods. It was intended as a comedy.
So I was thinking about this new site I wanted to start, and it didn't seem likely that I was going to actually write Bad Gods as a story, plus the domain name was short, reasonably catchy, and available. So I figured what the hell.
At any rate, this morning I was sketching while waiting for my breakfast at Saul's, a fine deli and restaurant in Berkeley, and I decided to draw Zeus. I gave him a little lightning bolt on his forehead like Harry Potter. Anyhow, I realized there's no particular reason I couldn't tell the story of the original Bad Gods in the new Bad Gods. Like any good DM, I've made up a number of pantheons -- I believe that number is three -- and making up gods is fun. I'd probably have to change the scope and tone of the story to match the episodic nature of the site, but the concept is appealing to me.
The funny thing is that at this point I've nearly entirely gotten bored of the original impetus of the site, which was to make something like the good parts of YTMND. Since going to Comic-Con I've been thinking more in terms of characters and situations than one-off gags about The Matrix.
So where am I going with this? Oh, hell, I dunno. I don't usually like to post stuff like this mid-thought, because I know perfectly well that next week I'll be thinking "HEY! I'LL MAKE BAD GODS AN EPISODIC VIDEO GAME SITE WITH EMBEDDED HORS D'OEUVRE RECIPES!" But I'm coming to accept that sort of creative flightiness as part of my inestimable charm.
August 02, 2006
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Sweet New Silver-Screen Cereals
Readers of the Ratings will find the topic familiar. And someone has already been kind enough to add the grades for me in the comments.
August 01, 2006
Spoke Too Soon
It seems I'm not taking a voice acting class at the end of August after all. To begin with, it's full. Moreover, apparently one does not simply sign up for a Bob Bergen class. One must meet with a consultant, to determine one's eligibility for such an advanced level of instruction. One must be vetted. So they're going to send me a catalog and I'll mull things over. In the meantime, I guess I just keep talking weird into my own private microphone.