Remi's Bloglet - Friday 22 August 2003

Fox Network DENIED! _
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06:06:34 PM, Friday 22 August 2003

I would like to give thanks to Athenstown Properties for responding in an efficient and professional manner to our complaints about the refrigerator not working. Repairman the same day, 36 hours after that there was a new fridge (delivery delay due to the store, they bought the fridge on Wednesday), absolutely no hassle. This is so totally unlike the other "refrigerator breaking in a rental place" story I know as to seem to be from a different dimension. _
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01:08:52 PM, Friday 22 August 2003

I am on a RAMPAGE and my sleep schedule is DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED.
(oh god kill me now) _
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12:50:19 PM, Friday 22 August 2003

Many stupid personal quizzes/interviews/quotes ahead. Mostly because I've decided, after years of denial, that I'm very arrogant, and nothing goes with arrogance better than vanity. The Friday Five.

1. When was the last time you laughed?
Hmmm. I laughed a bit at an illustration I did for a project last night. The last really good laugh I had, though, was the pissing scene in Blankets, which is some of the most hilarious bathroom humor I've read since Gargantua.

2. Who was the last person you had an argument with?
Jeeez. I dunno. I suppose I argued with Liz about something stupid. I haven't had a real knock-down drag-out argument with anyone since before Gulf War 2, when I got into a long and semi-civil conversation with my wingnut friend Dave Wisdom (hi Dave!) about the righteousness of our crusade in Iraq. I was on the 'anti' side of the argument, which I'm sure surprises everyone.

3. Who was the last person you emailed?
Jon Leisteiko at Invisible City. The e-mail dealt, at least partially, with the illustration mentioned above. This should give some clue as to the nature of the currently secret project. HYPE!

4. When was the last time you bathed?
Oooch. Yesterday. I would normally do it when I wake up, but I'm going to go back to sleep in like 20 minutes. Our new refrigerator got delivered today. I went to bed at 7am and they called at 9am, and I'm waiting for the fridge to cool down so I can put our food back into it. They said wait 2 hours. Arrrrgh, Remi no sleepy in a while.

5. What was the last thing you ate?
Hmmmm. Some sort of generic Captain Crunch thing with generic Crunchberries. It's called something like Commander Syphilitic with Infected Dingleberries or somesuch. _
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12:07:50 PM, Friday 22 August 2003

New Secretland! Episode four! _
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12:43:13 AM, Thursday 21 August 2003

Went to the bookstore in search of Audio Books (because I won't be able to be online during the day for the next few days and Liz took pity on me). However, Audio Books are really expensive . . . Especially the 4-book David Sedaris collection I was lusting over. So I wandered over to the comics section and Wonder of Wonders it was a cornucopeia of comicbook bliss. James Sturms The Golem's Mighty Swing, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and Craig Thompson's Blankets. Also a new Powers collection, and a bunch of other stuff. I ended up with Blankets, because the buzz is that it's, well, the best comic to come out this year. More later. _
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09:47:39 PM, Wednesday 20 August 2003

I've spent the day drawing and listening to 'This American Life'. I tell you, it doesn't get much better than that. New Secretland up around ~~8-ish~~ 12-ish if everything continues on schedule. _
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03:52:09 PM, Wednesday 20 August 2003

David Byrne has gone off the deep end. He's produced a book and DVD of 'Power Point Art' with an EXCEEDINGLY PRETENTIOUS TITLE. I suppose Byrne's always been a self-absorbed git but this somehow feels more false and painful than, say, doing a big stage show with a nine piece band playing awesome music with lots of wacky background projection and lighting. _
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02:00:47 PM, Wednesday 20 August 2003

Comic Book Resources is running an ongoing contest through one of their columns called (rather embarassingly) Comic Book Idol. The name may be bad, but some of the artists they chose are very, very good. The results of the first round assignment, recreate an ancient Greco-Roman God as a superhero, are being posted now. Some of the concepts, especially the Modern Samurai Athena, are cool looking. _
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08:18:39 AM, Monday 18 August 2003

The site design is horrible, but if you absolutely, positively need a picture of Siouxsie & the Banshees, Madness, Talking Heads, or the Slits (but not the Clash, strangely) or any of a hundred other 'New Wave' era bands, I'd guess that New Wave Photos is your destination of choice. _
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05:44:39 AM, Monday 18 August 2003

I'm enjoying Warren Ellis's online novel Listener. Weird, funny stuff in a Transmetropolitan meets 28 Days Later vein. _
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07:57:08 AM, Sunday 17 August 2003

A jaw-dropping exploration of energy deregulation and the widespread effects that it has had in New York and California. Blacking out one of the largest cities in the country and recalling a governor. _
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01:58:54 AM, Saturday 16 August 2003

Y'know, I like Ralph Nader and all, but he can be a bit of a self-righteous, a bit lacking in the ability to laugh at himself. And humorless self-righteous people getting his by pies is comedy gold! _
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12:02:52 AM, Saturday 16 August 2003

A cute Daily Show segment on 'Fair and Balanced'. _
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11:55:19 PM, Friday 15 August 2003

This is for folks who might have gotten a copy of The College and not recycled it or thrown it out while moving (like Liz and I). In the Alumni Notes there was a woman in Austin who was talking about a text book company that's hiring and likes Johnnies. Could anyone transcribe that segment and e-mail it to me? I couldn't find it online. _
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11:33:32 PM, Friday 15 August 2003

A pretty neat article on how to play a judge. It's meant to be a quick n' dirty guide for doing a Law & Order style courtroom drama in an RPG, and I think it succeeds admirably at opening the basic rules of courtroom procedure up for many interesting roleplaying possibilities. It's also just an interesting primer in and of itself.

[via invisible broadcast system] _
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10:03:10 AM, Friday 15 August 2003

So you're in a video store, and you see a DVD called Comic Book Villains. It looks sort of like a Reservoir Nerds type of things, with a bunch of comics geeks trying to heist the motherlode of comics collections. You think to yourself, "Sure it will probably just be derivative Tarantino pacing with Kevin Smith dialog, but who says that's a bad thing? I like comics! A geek heist could be a goldmine of amusement. Donal Logue played a pot-smoking loser in Tao of Steve, I bet he can pull off comic geek. Oooh! And Carey Elwes, when was the last time you saw him?"

Back away from the DVD rack, motherfucker. Go straight to the counter. Tell the clerk that someone has taken a dump in the 'C' section, and its name is Comic Book Villains. If they refuse your pleas you may want to consider burning the place down in order to prevent anyone from ever seeing Comic Book Villains again. I'm not usually one to advocate mass destruction of quirky movie rental places (and, let's face it, Blockbuster ain't gonna carry this one), but the madness must end! _
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03:38:11 PM, Wednesday 13 August 2003

Humorous surrealist nostalgia remixes of those old GI Joe PSA's. Well, they make me laugh. Body Massage! _
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07:25:44 AM, Wednesday 13 August 2003

Had enough, Punk? A 70-year-old man's quest to benchpress more than George W. Bush. _
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03:36:16 AM, Wednesday 13 August 2003

I've changed my bloglet title image in line with the goings on in the lefty blogosphere, namely NewsCorp (Fox News parent company) trying to sue Al Franken's book out of existence. It's something that's amusing and harmless, and fed the nagging feeling at the back of my head that something about the appearance of the blog needed to change. _
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03:34:10 PM, Tuesday 12 August 2003

Mirabai, this is the live opera mail-order place I had heard of. _
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08:56:21 PM, Sunday 10 August 2003

Speaking of unfortunately racist cartoons . . . here's a recent cartoon, which, I have to admit, makes me pretty uncomfortable. The fact that there's a nearly identical cartoon from 1930's Nazi Germany makes the point even more unnerving.

[via iJournalista!] _
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06:05:45 AM, Tuesday 5 August 2003

Something Positive is running a series of strips, starting here, with Steve Jackson as a 'guest star'. The 8/04 strip has a shot of some of the characters and Steve playing the only RPG I own that I will never, ever get anyone to play, Bunnies and Burrows. The whole premise of the game is that you're a nearly-powerless rabbits, like less adept at building than the rabbits in Watership Down powerless. I've wanted to play it for so long, but people start giggling when I try to explain it, or just give me blank stares of horror. Goddam geeks and their power fantasies . . . _
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05:03:22 AM, Tuesday 5 August 2003

Comicollage isn't often brilliant, but when it is, it's very much so. _
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08:06:11 PM, Monday 4 August 2003

One of the classic GMing tools, S. John Ross's Big List of RPG Plots is a great place to go if you're running low on story-juice.

[reminded by this RPGnet article] _
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02:31:04 PM, Monday 4 August 2003

Dave Eggers on AmeriCorps. _
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04:24:33 AM, Sunday 3 August 2003

UC/SD has posted 400 WWII political cartoons by Dr. Seuss.
[via iJournalista!] _
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04:10:52 AM, Sunday 3 August 2003

If you've been trying to call us, our phone has been disconnected (we did not want it disconnected, but it was). I'll be back online Saturday, hopefully. This all has to do with moving into our new place, the process of which is going apace. _
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07:51:16 PM, Wednesday 30 July 2003

rstevens, of diesel sweeties fame, has put up an interesting little essay on webcomicking. Less bile-filled than Scott Kurtz's essay, and less pie-in-the-sky than Scott McCloud's. _
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07:42:31 PM, Wednesday 30 July 2003

Did any of you old skool gamers ever play Dungeons of Doom on your little toaster Mac? Well, it's available from Macintosh Garden as The Dungeon Revealed. Great hack n' slash dungeon crawl with the cutest graphics in the world. A true classic. _
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07:31:42 PM, Saturday 26 July 2003

Cybersex with bloodninja:
bloodninja: Nostrils flaring, I lower my head. My horn, like some phallic symbol of my potent virility, is the last thing you see as skulls collide and mine remains the victor. You are now a bloody red ragdoll suspended in the air on my mighty horn.
bloodninja: Goddam am I hard now. _
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01:10:47 AM, Saturday 26 July 2003

It was exciting to see screen captures of the Batman pro-fan short Dead End. It showed a more organic Batman suit (tights instead of molded rubber, better cape, leather cowl) and a speeded-out, insanely smiling Joker. Unfortunately, it turns into a fanwank at the 3-minute mark, and becomes a horrifying self-parody. When an Alien (yes, that Alien) shows up, it doesn't seem scary or surprising, it's just very silly. When the Predators shows up after that the short just goes into stupidity overdrive. Why couldn't the production team have invested some of the money and talent that obviously went into this short into telling an interesting little 7 minute Batman story? Why turn it into a late-night geek argument? "Huh huh, I bet Batman could beat up the Alien AND the Predator!" We have an answer now, but little else. _
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02:25:26 PM, Friday 25 July 2003

Some rather nice Harry Potter illustrations. I like the art overall, which seems halfway between manga and a more traditional illustration style. My only real gripe is that there doesn't seem to be much grit to it, which makes characters like Snape and Moody less convincing. The artist really does give the kids a good look, and it's an interesting change from Mary Grand Pr�'s chapter-heading and cover illustrations. _
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09:38:01 AM, Friday 25 July 2003

The original lame-ass Spiderman supervillain with a bowl cut gets an ultra-sexy reimagining as the world's coolest pissed-off computer nerd. _
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05:45:24 PM, Tuesday 22 July 2003

Saw Pirates of the Carribean. Loads of fun, the audience seemed bored, though, which was really strange. I got totally swept up in the story and the occasional bizarre bit of facial hair. The ghost effect was great and Johnny Depp really kept the movie rolling. I will never be crazy about OrlandO BlOOm, who acted exclusively through his chin pubes, but Geoffrey Rush totally got the job done, and with quite a lot of flair. I kind've hope there are more pirate movies. I could really get behind that. The best summer movie since X2 (although Finding Nemo is still tops in my book). _
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10:34:36 PM, Friday 18 July 2003

Hey all you pedants, what's the plural of 'ho'? Is it 'hos' or 'hoes'? (yes, this is related to the spelling in the current Secretland). _
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10:28:04 PM, Friday 18 July 2003

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