In memiriam
“Laeta,” the uninspired small smiling imp, violently, horrifically decapitated at the moment of its much awaited debut.
As to why, if the website knows the edges will be chopped off and precisely how much of them, it does not make a bigger point of informing the non-paranoid non-artists using its site of things like this, or why it can’t factor the chop space it knows to within less than an inch into what size stuff is printed at, eliminating the need for every user ever to deal with it, rather than just making some lazy psd file with a red border that nobody is told about unless they ask, it’s because business. This website is advertised in tiny little letters on every one of my cards.
Though never myself a great proponent of its merits, I was disappointed at “laeta’s” misfortune. However much punishment the creature may have deserved, this was too much. A lethal injection would have sufficed. Another injustice: the blue dope toward the picture’s center came out totally unharmed.
2000-2008
In other news, some amount of years ago, a mysterious human known now only as Uncle Uterus told me, concealed amongst other bits of helpful information, that “laeta bovis” was the Latin way of saying “happy oxen.” (this was back when “Latin” was a dead language spoken by dead Romans and not a marketing buzzword to make Spanish people think The Media at large gives a chimichanga who’s in their murals so that they buy tacky de-harmony’ed sped up remixes of Train singles) I assumed the first half was pronounced “lay eat uh” and that it would make a good name for a perpetually happy thing but it seems to me now that is probably incorrect, so it is for the best of us all the creature is deceased. There is no other way this name which I have never actually applied to it but in my mind and sometimes not even then could have been amended.
And that is it! It is that! I am done for the year! I look forward to several hours of rest.
Yes, well, we must be getting back to business soon.
I have lost my concept of weird.
I’ve just had a look for the first time in about a year and it turns out that writing two full pages about the marsupwhatever video game is something I should be incredibly ashamed by. Also that every thing I’ve written since that has had a link to it at the right. That is no good. That is not right. My feet stick out of bed all night. And when I pull them in — oh dear! My head sticks out of bed up here. Some of it is funny, thankfully, but not nearly as much as I thought, and it’s mostly the image “title” comments, which most people never see.
So how has it happened that the page I put before you today lacks those comments entirely* but is an improvement content-wise, and deals with pastel colored equidae yet is less embarrassing? The answer may shock you. And so I shall not tell.
*that was yesterday. The one I put before you today is fully equipped.
How many more must not be helped before you are satisfied?!
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Oddly enough, so far in this December session I haven’t even heard much of the songs I complained about the other times I complained about Christmas songs. They are determined to irritate me in new and despicable ways. It’s been a lot of “I’ll be home for Christmas but not really” and “Although it’s been said many times and many ways!” I don’t know what that one’s about because I tend not to notice it until that part. Which would be great, but then the singer just says “merry crist-mah-ozzzz to you” to me and that’s the end. It sounds like something should be there to rhyme with “ways” but it never arrives! “Ways” most likely is spoken to itself rhyme with something that came before it, but the song is so agonizingly slow and badly plotted that I forget by the time it’s supposed to happen. I believe it is something to do with excluding ninety-three year-olds from the merriness, which strikes me as rather a poor business decision by Tony Bennett with his new Christ-massing album of semisinging.
Also, apparently “Mr. Sandman” is a Christmas song now, as I heard it coming from more than one inescapable magical electric God-voice courtesy of more than one horrible band, which is what Christmas is all about.
A Destiny’s Child Christmas medley is a thing I was not previously aware of. But it is so wicked and dastardly that it ought to call itself a Smedley instead.
This the actual audio preview I found on some junky website selling a cd disk containing that track. D’s C took a simple, repetitive song with no depth and through a true Christmas miracle left it with less depth than that. And then somebody else decided that was best part. It was the worst song I heard all hour. Even after venturing through the incinerating dot-gobbling corona of a Pac Sun playing “Rock rock rock rock rock and roll high school” I considered this to be the case. Destiny needs to get her kid in line.
I understand that this Santa feller is coming. But he also is doing things besides coming. He is proofreading a spreadsheet and ordering us to conceal our emotions because evidently shedding tears for any reason at all denotes naughtiness. Santa Claus is obviously not a practitioner of Domestic Discipline, in which tears are rather the only cure for naughtiness.
Destiny Jr.’s ruindition of the reindeer song is not included on the christmas album. I am certain this has more to do with a contract than mercy. I imagine it’s supposed to be an incentive to buy the dvd of some stupid thing that’s on free television every year at about the only time of year anyone would want to watch it. “HOLIDAY EXLUSIVE” is printed in tiny little letters right at the top there. By my reckless reckoning anyone to whom prime-time advertising is a deterrent would be uninterested in, if not this show itself, at least Destiny’s incorrigible offspring warbling off yet another moany rendition of what this is intended to elaborate on and straighten the proverbial record of.
And Frosty the Snowman, evidently he’s a very. But we knew that. I only mentioned it because it reminds me of when I used to think the song about having a holly jolly Christmas in fact desired for me to have a very very Christmas. I never did.
One I’ve obviously heard before but with increased frequency this time through is Little Drummer Boy, The, the tale of the tragically abbreviated music career of Jake “The Snake” Roberts.
What’s important is that due to its alleged actual Christianity content you tend to get a slightly more reserved set of people than usual singing it, or when it’s the usual cash-munching whorbies they momentarily pretend to have dignity, and what they’re singing is “pah rumpappum pum.” I just thought you should know.
Stop him! He’s getting away!
Bah, I forgot what I was talking about.
Oh, that’s right. be sure to get your anthropomorphic drag queen fruit spayed and neutered plus whatever further measures you deem necessary.
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My own December rituals have about as much to do with J. Christ as they do with a couple magic candles so I consider there to be nothing rude about me suddenly talking about the Christ-mass on the first night of Hanukkah.
I have at two recent occasions temporarily left my home for the purpose of Krissmiss “shopping,” in which I stand around in stores and do not buy anything.
That is generally not my goal from the start, I simply do not know what anybody wants and I hate receiving gifts I don’t want, and I hate pretending they’re sort of good because then I risk getting them again. Surely other people hate this as well and I don’t want to put them through it. I hate spending money anyway. The real reason I go out is because I remember I used to greatly enjoy just going to malls in December and am looking to revisit that even though I hate snow, stress, every Christmas song and unquestioned, arbitrary bad traditions exploited in horrid marketing. Worse, these days I am so meticulous and have so many thoughts piled up that I can’t possibly express my individual annoyances here in a way I find satisfactory.
What this came from is surely one of the worst ads ever made and yet I’m too busy to say anything about it and too horrified to look at it long enough to think of anything to say beyond that it’s obscene and creepy. Maybe, sometimes, that’s enough.
But I was talking about buying things (things other than what is being advertised there, whatever it is)! It is a process one must devote considerable resources to.
It is never easy to find the perfect gift for the limbless gay spiderman in your life. This shopping, I am not good at it. I get the impression that nobody particularly enjoys it, but they know how to do it. My mother, for example, went to three different stores yearning to purchase the right martini glasses for an acquaintance american. I, however, lack the internal programming to detect when a person requires new martini glasses. My mother also took an opportunity to explain the difference between martini and margarita glasses. And that is all fine and decent, but I wonder how the glasses know what’s in them. And then I wonder if they get offended when stores stuff them with shiny balls instead of their liquid soulmates.
Me (hello!), I place all my imbibable substances in the same cylinder of glass, and they’re usually water. If I need something else just about any other tube I deem to be of adequate capacity will suffice. I am not opposed to having two different liquids occupy the same space within close chronosensible proximity to each other. I consider myself rather an anti-residue activist, but that generally regards the residue of other things in other places; partially removed tags with clothing, unconvincing mayonnaise, butter, whipped cream removal* substituted for mayonnaise, butter, whipped cream prevention, anything which has touched milk, the normal stuff. If it’s something I put in my mouth in a place where no mouths have gone I am surprisingly tolerable. Have fun with that sentence.
*these things cannot be removed convincingly
When I venture externally from my ramshackle ransack shack, there is a glass bottle which previously contained a different, snapply substance that I place my water in and I refill it when things start to get empty. It is replaced easily enough if anybody asks me if I wash it.
I don’t know why I even talk to you sometimes.
The best defense against potential burglars is to reside in a house that looks like it’s already been ransacked. This naturally works best in regions where it would not be suspicious for a burglar to not steal a lampshade.
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Several people have recently found it prudent to harangue me for not inserting something resembling my name into these silly pictures. So now everyone must suffer.
Not necessarily this one was suggested.
As to why I neglected to give them hats or earmuffs, I don’t now remember but it probably wasn’t a good reason as the absense of those is the primary aspect of this picture that I like less than the other one similar to it.
It seems to me unfair that all the interesting mountains exist in places without snow. I’m sure from a meteorological perspective it makes perfect sense but as long as this is all made up I may disregard that if I wish.
This will hopefully be the last large picture to so prominently feature the red or green creatures for quite some time. I fear they are seen too much. For one ehhh, becoming obsessed with completing this, which approximately nobody requested me to make, has kept me from other tasks, one of which might well have been producing something elpse to float at the top of this website.
I require reasons for delay compiled in list form.
1 I don’t know how to draw skis
2 nobody knows how to draw skis that would work on stupid animals like this
3 if they did it would probably come in the form of a boot and the “joke” doesn’t work that way but I didn’t realize it went exclusively toward boots until I had already drawn it and my best hope then was to hope nobody else knew that
4 this is not how I usually color things
5 I obsess over minor nuisances anyway
6 and then I added additional problems before and after the list which I did not assign numerals to.
It is hard work to get something to look this cheap. What are the benefits to having a pixel based image of this size look like a tacky scummy vector construction? You, I am asking you this, as my research has not found there to be any.
I declare that it was all too much trouble for something that looks like powerpoint clipart that you couldn’t logically incorporate into a powerpoint document. And then I get through all that and realize that the original non-power “point,” that of ski decadence is much harder to discern than it was initially, due to the weird colors and all the junk I added. The focus is elsewhere, so the foreground figures become weird obstructions rather than the subjects. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtoo late fix.
Still to come: Somehow I have semi-agreed to make three sport themed pictures to be issued as tertiary semi-prizes for a raffle being raffed on December 23 at some place I hate going to. Because if there are any things I am known for, they are my ability to work fast for free and my love of all things sportly at places that I hate. Hopefully this will spare me at least one “what’re you doin in there? Are you gay?” by a drunk grabbing the restroom stall door the next time I fail to operate the apparently only toilet on the premises within a satisfactory time frame. Although scientists have proven that’s the only cure for urine retention brought on by fear and discomfort and/or gayness, I do understand that sometimes I have to compromise.
Whenever possible, I have blank paper available while I attempt to sleep so that I can write down thoughts which occur to me or things to remind me of those thoughts. Very important things, like who the voice of the Honey Nut Cheerio bee was in the 1980s or what order the Berenstain Bear books were written in. If I don’t reach over and scrawl out through the darkness BEE VOICE or BERENSTAIN BEAR ORDER I might not remember to look those things up later, and then where would I be? The notes vary in legibility; with some I cannot make out right away every letter and with others I can read the words but don’t know what they mean; I recently wrote PALIN ENERGIZED THE BASEST and that one took me a while, because “Palin” looked like “Blin” and I couldn’t remember thinking anything about energy, and I would because that is a funny word. The important part of the thought only regarded the last word, but if I’d just written “basest” that would have confused me for even longer. I may have thought I wrote something about a beast, and I have no shortage of ignorant smiling beasts causing me problems. That I do not need to remind myself of! However, I always get it eventually. UNTIL NOW.
This one is a mystery. po nostev? pcn naGtar? i Do rostiL? pm rastyr? Dm loctov? Dq haqxld?
Natsoy Wd? I have no idea! None of these are close to being an idea or the name of a thing I wanted more information about. My own lack of consistency among letter cases and writing angles needlessly complicates things. And I wrote this days ago, so even if I do figure out the literary portion of the problem I may not be able to remember what I was thinking that it related to. I dared not erase it without making a record first, because it’s probably not important (unlike I get Popful junk mail which was incredibly important) but some things I only think about once a year and judging by my inability to interpret it this could be one of them.
The reason I had to erase it is because I write all my notes on paper that I intend to draw pictures on, because that’s the only way to force me-self to look at the notes and do something about them. Placing it here constitutes doing something, I decided.
All those people making fun with “Blagojevich” this week don’t know what I’ve been through. any hair a mannequin needs is available in wig form indeed!
I’d love to explain this to you.
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What did I do yesterday? Can anybody tell me? I did not get any work done yet I most certainly did not do anything fun, either.
These things are sort of fun, though.
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I’m going to miss you, too.
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Hey, that which I posted recently regarding Madmartigan reminds me of some crazy rambling essayoid I wrote about MadMartigan two years ago. It went a little something like this. A big something like this, actually.
I thought for certain I’d have taken a picture of the box or one of the numerous stupid sights of the film at some point, but none seem to exist. I show instead Whoopi Goldberg in Burglar, which you will be glad to know that despite the suggestive themes I did not steal. Clearly that is a big problem at Wal Mart, though.
I saw the 1988 Lucasfilm classic “Willow” recently. A DVD copy of this was the thus far apparent culmination of an inside joke the likes of which cannot be understood (it involves diapers). Surprisingly, it was much worse than I thought it would be. It may also be surprising, perhaps, that I expected it to be good. It did make me wonder, though, how anyone expected much from Star Wars “episode 1” when a George Lucas movie with many of the exact same faults had already existed for ten years, but without any past franchise success eager to jinx it. Quite simply, they, much like meself, had not seen Willow. It’s one of those movies where seeing things continuously not quite fall into place is more disappointing than had there been no chance. If the movie had been a total disaster I wouldn’t be bothered theorizing alternate versions that are better.
There is a point, for example, where Madmartigan is stricken with magic love dust and then rushes into the tent of Sorsha, his female adversary, and wakes her up while telling a stupid poem. In theory, it could be funny, except Sorsha becomes conflicted over the act, rather than just kicking Marty in the face and calling some guards, none of whom were apparently watching the prisoners or their leader.
And then I was thinking
He isn’t even Mad Mart-igan. He is Madmartigan. He is not a man named Martigan who has a reputation for flipping his matters out at people. His birth certificate says “Madmartigan McMeeplesworth” on it. I have found myself just speaking “madmartigan” repeatedly. And he’s really not that important a character. He’s supposed to be, but again, the movie is just badly done. Here, he’s in a cage. Next, he’s just nowhere, and he’s lost the baby Willow trusted him with. Look, he’s disguised as a woman and running away from some ramshackly establishment. Hmmm? Oh, now he’s captured again. Fight? No, escape. Now he’s falling down a snow-covered mountain’s side. “He’d better not turn into a snowball,” I quipped. Now he’s turned into a snowball. Ah, now a fight. But what’s going on? Where did these monsters come from? Who is hitting who? Why did people load all these crossbows and catapults and then abandon the fortress? Who is this talking rodent again?
I have no problem with the “dated” visual effects. I love stop motion monsters and cartoon lightning bolts. The only things that look totally out of place are the “brownies,” regular sized people meant to seem tiny, filmed separately and inserted into the main picture with a pre-bluescreen era process that makes them appear really far away rather than small, but they’re in the foreground and ugh. A bit like that Buddha “statue” in Mortal Kombat that looks more like somebody’s desk paperweight. Focus on the focus, people! But that’s not important, because my nonexistent “ideal” version of the movie hardly has brownies in it at all (except for the part where Airk Thaughbaer happens upon one of Willow’s “magic” laxative-laced confections, intended as a housewarming gift for the villainous Kael, and hilarity ensues when Airk tries to conceal his deed). They look out of place because they are out of place, in more ways than two. This is why people write fan-fiction. I don’t want to write fan-fiction. “Fan-fiction” being stories about characters one likes enough to write stories about. The inventors of the quote-marked phrase seemed quite sure non-fans would not bother.
The Willow arcade video game makes more sense as a video game than the Willow movie makes as a movie. The real question is whether that sentence made any sense. But see: in the game, Willow’s too busy throwing sparkle glitter at soldiers and rat dogs to carry a baby. You find out Bavmorda (the villain who desires the baby) already has the baby in the first level. That’s fine, since after 90 minutes of movie in which Willow is supposedly going towards some place safe Bavmorda gets the baby anyway. Additionally, I have great fondness for the method used to digitize the intermission scene people, even if the Willow a player actually controls looks as much like Chucky as Warwick Davis.
As I said, I don’t want to write fan-fiction. I said that to lead into this paragraph. But then I didn’t. But now I have. I like to think that at best I could amount to more than Phillip Jose Farmer, the kook who invented the “Wold Newton Family,” the concept that all the pre-established characters he’s spent his life writing his own stories about or as not only logically coexist but are related to each other. I probably won’t but my aspirations ought to.
Not that I think Mr. Farmer is a bad writer; I don’t really remember. I went through a bunch of stories by him back when I read and it wasn’t until years later that I realized how crazy he is or has been. He was most prolific in the 1960s and 70s but yet lives, and yet writes, even if the Wold section of his official website strongly implies he became dead some time in 1997. At any rate he’s done well enough that his work typically isn’t referred to with a deprecating label like “fan fiction.” But it’s the same thing.
And now here’s a rebuttal, also by me, from only one year ago.
Is the inclination to write asinine fan-fiction really so indicative of maladjustment? All of the most “beloved” animated films are freely interpreted from pre-existing works and using pre-existing characters. The only real difference is that the subject matter was sought out rather than received and gobbled up gleefully. Even wholly authorized and admitted “adaptations” seem to feel no lack of validity inventing new stupid situations at the director or whoever’s contrivance. In the time of ancient Greece any yahoocles could write his own story about Zeus (women and slaves, obviously, were not permitted to do so) magically transforming into a duck and doing unlikely sexes to the goddess of the author’s choice. Our modern fanfictioners are part of a greater tradition than they realize and/or deserve. Just instead of Zeus it’s Nick Jonas and instead of a duck it’s Vulpix and instead of a goddess it’s Jesse from Full House. The fact that popular fan-written characters aren’t all-powerful masters of all things who we might presume to have such powers (and in fact rarely exceed average functionality) or living in a time which predates the concept of moral decency need make no difference. Maybe it ought to, but it doesn’t need to.
I should know better than to rebut myself in public.
Important Madmartigan update coming soon…
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Aw beans! page 26? Of this?
Hopefully it is acceptable to rip off old gags if their use is irrelevant. Hopefully I will accept that I have done such a thing.
I am still not sure how the bed thing should work, and I’ll be up all night fixing it if I try to figure it out, and when it only has problems for the purposes of an old gag about folding beds which is not relevant it simply seems of minimal concern.
It also seems to be destiny that my comic appear to switch artist mid-page on a regular basis.
I remember, a few weeks ago, there was this big News headline to the effect of “Jolie disses Aniston” above all other things and I was utterly baffled by it but not curious enough to attempt reading it. Even now that I accidentally deleted the last month of pictures I saved off of websites I remember it, but only because I dictated an angry complaint through my fingers to my keyboard about it.
Sure, the “news” service had “yahoo” in its name… in fact “yahoo” was its name, but apparently we’re not supposed to consider that any more than we are meant to associate selectively non-naked rain forest ladies who battle Grimace-esque Draculas with the sale of books.
Here, though, is a totally different diss-themed headline involving the popular kids. Nevermind why, nevermind when, just know that it happened, and somebody with a better google rank than me noticed.
Boysenberry! Ambush!
Ah hass! Reinforcements!
I don’t even remember why I came in here.
What are disses? If you actually read some of the stories attached to these titles, the “diss” invariably turns out to be something utterly trivial and unworthy of bringing to so many peoples’ attentionses. Capcom did not “diss” X-Box, as much as I’m sure it could stand to be dissed once in a while. Somebody employed by Captaincommando expressed a concern for the state of the former Box’s online service but in such a way that suggests he expects it to improve. This did not need a graphic. No obliterating blue fireball was thrown. Use of diplomacy suggests a desire to avoid dissing. Not disrespectful in the least!
November 30, 2008:
Roneldo Disses Disses
This is of even less consequence than that time Danny Devito choke-slammed Presidente Bush
through a table and bashed him with a steel ring bell.
Just jolly Jolie herself has achieved Paris Hilton levels of mention-on-tv-without-justification-ability simply for, as far as I can figure out without specifically looking her up, adopting a couple kids. Isn’t it good to adopt children? Isn’t that preferable to them not having parents? Even if the new parents happen to be diss-drunk doibydickleses? I’m sure Joliebean was in some movies at some point, but either I never saw them or did and just didn’t find anything about her particularly memorable. Eh, eh, I’m receiving a transmission… I hear that she has fat lips. Is that it? I’ve seen people with big lips on screens before.
And then at some point she was acquainted through the six-syllable name club with Jennifer Aniston, who also supposedly did something, but now they hate each other for some reason, and it’s assumed that I know that. Actually, I’m sad to admit that I figured out right before The Friends Show was canceled or whatever that Anniston was on it. And Matt Leblanc, Matt Perry or Luke Perry was also on it and oh, such good times they had. I either need to stop watching television or watch a rumproastload more of it.
A helpful robot provided me with this. It is everything I need to know. I wish I could have Jack Perkins read it to me.
I’ve been hearing about Angelina Jolie and Brad Petunia for… maybe 8 years now? I seriously don’t think about them. I don’t find jokes about them funny. They have failed to matter even in a mocking way within muh mind. They’re barely boring.
I seriously just [three months ago] saw Bradd Pitt in an ad for a movie with Brad Pitt in it and couldn’t figure out who he was. I eventually settled on Val Kilmer, TV’s Madmartigan/Air Bite Guy From Top Gun before being corrected by onscreen text that it was the Pitt fellow I’d heard so much about.
Oh, much longer than so! I would never forget! We madmarted before, and we will madmartigan.