2014 in pictures
january


february


march


april


may


june


july


august


septemper


october


november

december

I think that about sums it up.

According to my vegetastic livejournal page this is also the tenth anniversary of 2004 in Pictures. In honor of that I have dishonored it by correcting its image links to not point at geocities anymore.

Slaughter Balloons

I first hinted at the idea back in 2008 for a greeting card design. However, nobody wants to be greeted by dumb old nemitz (the orange, incorangeable imp). The card I made still ultimately had a nemitz in it but that does not mean anybody wanted it there.

The only major thing I changed was putting the balloons in a bucket, but I decided on that rather late! It was suggested to me that due to the uncommon environment it was not clear what the balloons were. It must have been so jarringly unclear that the commenter neglected to say “and also, please shove that dumb mitz off the cliff edge back there.

There also was an issue in which I kept making the house in the background crummier but it still seemed too fancy for nemitz. But you know, an emptied fish barrel is too fancy for nemitz. A laundry basket is too fancy for nemitz. A non-emptied fish barrel is too fancy for nemitz and violates the civil rights of fish. I just had to accept that and move on.

I first posted this on twitto, where my good ideas go to get truncated into misery so that they want to die.

In an attempt to be more useful to people, I have tried to be nearer to them recently. This means also being near their influence device, the television, which makes me aware of things that are incredibly non-relevant to my existence.

More things than usual.

For example, did you know there was a movie called The Interview that was going to be dropped into cinemas, but then was not going to be? In fact it was not about Interviewing; interviews are not cinemized unless they are with Vampires. In this case, some characters are sent to the magical land of North Korea under the pretense of conducting an interview with the leader, Kim Jong Uh, but are actually in town to murder him. It is a comedy. You are meant to assume it is a comedy because we are meant to think North Korea is a big ol joke because the people are repressed by such bizarre despots. You generally do not aspire to despotism unless you have a problem.
I tell you this not because I assume you do not know, but sometimes I reread things I wrote ten years ago in which I assumed the reader DID know something, I and I have by now forgotten.

And you can make a film [ostensibly] about killing a real person so long as he is far off and has no power to stop you. If he has it, then oops. You have little excuse! Fortunately for this crew nobody asks them for an excuse, because they think they are entitled to make that film, and call a revocation of that entitlement censorship.
Supposedly the owning corporation of the film, had a big hack attack by people angry about, among other things, the Interview film being released, specifically due to the north Korea/murder connection and not because they are sick of Seth Rogen and his “gee I dunno a-heuh-heuh-heuh-heuh” facial expressions.

Following some threats to destroy theatres that screened the film, theatres refused to show it, and the distribution company decided to abort the release (but not the TV ads for it). Actors in and out the film called it an assault on free speech.
I believe in “free speech,” but if you wanted to make a major feature film about killing MC Hammer you would likely have to ask permission or change his name. Now, is threatening to blow up movie cinemas on MC Hammer’s behalf a reasonable reaction? Probably not.

Just think, if we had this political climate 22 years ago Hot Shots! Part Deux might never have been made. Not only did its “story” promote a non-historical, overt military mission by the United States to kill Iraq’s then ruler Saddam Hussein, the advertising promoted Saddam Hussein as himself. In fact there was no controversy at all. Maybe Saddam Hussein did not have internet access in 1992. Also, that one was a bit more obvious as a comedy. The poster shows Charles Sheen holding a bug-eyed chicken as an arrow in a bow, for beets sakes. Perhaps not FUNNY to everyone, but no cultural divide could mistake that for a sincere sentiment. Considering that in real life we cut off their beaks, genetically alter them to not grow feathers and make them live their whole lives in darkness, ankle deep in their own filth before we kill them anyway, robin hooding one in a combat situation is benevolent by comparison, and patriotic besides.

What we generally have in our present day comedy cases are situations that are meant to be plausible and we are just supposed to find the awkward banter and dude!ly reactions funny. Dude! You just said something weird! Dude! Your masculinity is of questionable purity! Yeah, no, dude, bro. Just no. I just. Half of Anchor Man 2 was comedy and the other half was somebody in the film reacting to the comedy as if they knew it was comedic, then explaining why it was so.¹ It is somewhat like the laugh track on Full House or The Flintstones except viewers who complain about that stuff pretend it is dissimilar.

Still, I do hope the United Kingdom follows North Korea’s example and starts taking action when an animated film has an out of place Scottish accent in it. Maybe that will calm some of the pro-secession fervour.

Is there proof that the North Korea government itself ordered or was capable of the attack? not necessarily, but somebody either supports the regime or wants to incriminate it. Maybe it is a mega marketing campaign, meant to make an ultimately tame and unadventurous movie seem shocking and enticing. And I wouldn’t want MY movie to open the same day as Robin Williams’ last major film appearance, unless it had nemitz in it and I was deliberately trying to reduce mitz market share. In any event The Interview’s stated premise is tacky. In fact at this point I would not even recommend making a movie about killing Mike Korea without consent.

Thank you Mxy Rimpfrixidy also for letting me post this without asking.

OR MAYBE, could this be a deliberate distraction from the recent torture report? I did notice that the ABC television network’s World News Tonight by last night had dropped the torture story while continuing to find means to bring up the Bill Cosby story, which is even older and longer media-ignored than the torture story, but less incriminating of crooked government, so possibly. Possibly, but if people were going to be outraged about it, they ought to have started long before then, or you could have been outraged that they were not outraged sooner sooner.

Maybe you were! The United States kills with robots, detains indefinitely without trial, makes destitute people homeless for missing payments while billion dollar profit corporations pay no taxes whatsoever, and uses chickens as weapons. I cannot keep up with what everybody is angry about, thinks I should be angry about, or thinks I have no right to be angry about while I ought to be angry about something else. This country is built on centuries of genocide. I have to periodically NOT think about that to get anything done.

I flip out when I cannot figure out what the creature (the younger cat) wants at 3am. I can get angry very easily. Knowing what to do about it is another matter. It can be cathartic to take apart an issue that is too stupid to matter in my life while things that ought to be addressed linger un.

And I heard about The Interview intervention on World News Tonight, the same nationally broadcast information program that broke the story that Froot Loops of all colors have the exact same flavor, this year, half a century after Kellogg’s didn’t bother denying it. If you want real insight, don’t watch something with commercial breaks that comes on before Wheel of Fortune. And if you get stuck near it without trying, don’t form an opinion and obsess over expressing it on websites where people want you to have more important problems.

The CIA report is not even the first torture admission this year. This one came in August. That is the face you make when talking about the torture of folks and folksy torture. Speaking of torture, I forgot I wrote a footnote about Anchorman earlier, so this page isn’t over.

¹A designated stupid character would make an absurd statement and another character would point out how absurd it was and then dwell on it. Ron Anchorman would say, probably yell, something like “I drank half a bottle of ketchup because I thought it was [some alcoholic beverage whose mention got a laugh]!” The other character would respond “really? because half a bottle is six or seven gulps. You should have known after the first gulp.” In a scene with Ron and his chum Brick, Ron would suddenly have the ability to detect and point out absurdity and perform the straight-man function that he formerly and futurely required someone else do for him. “Brick, you realize nobody but you remembers your dream, right?” I believe the delivery of such a correction was meant to be an additional joke and not a clarification for audience members who did not detect the initial absurdity, and maybe the repetition of these exchanges was meant to be a running gag, but it is not a very good gag. Not twelve times in a production with a script, certainly. If you ever saw the mid 1990s Nickelodeon program All That, it was a bit like all this, just with less “really?” And if you never saw All That, that’s all right, and that’s all.

Except there is also a professional wrestling heel/face turn aspect to this and the first film. How many times can Ron Burgundy alienate everyone he knows and then have a big comeback without ever making amends? He does it in the first movie, and twice in this one. He should try what I do, and not bother with the comebaAAAAAAAAAAACK I’VE BEEN ANCHORED

I will have an update on Sunday or my name is not Dwobo Stupwutch. And my name is not Dwobo Stupwutch, but if I fail to display an update that will still be the case.

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Page 4 of part 3 of thistle. I keep telling myself when I get a break I will sort out the automated comic system I spent days installing months ago, but I used the break making this new page instead.

The last few times the production got stretched across a lengthy period and I developed a hoard of stupid notes about it that I had to figure out for the website posting. If I did that this time I cannot find any, lucky for you! However, as before, I am concerned about the frequency with which the lizard has been appearing without a mouth lately. I intended to show a picture of it without a mouth here and then looked closer and realized it had a mouth in every pertinent frame, and contradicting me is even worse! I had to waste another minute erasing its mouth in the picture I just showed. Typical pitiful lizard move. Additionally:

I will normally not stick up for dumb imps, but how DARE nemitz talk to elpse that way? How can it live with mitself? Notice how its ears went up just for that remark, like it is prouder of itself than usual. nemitz how would you feel if i said to you “scrobbly doodly nemitz?” Why don’t you think about that awhile. If you have a reason why you don’t I have a reason why I don’t want to hear it!

I wish we could all agree to stop acknowledging nemitz, and just pretend it was not there. Perhaps with time it will choose to not be!

I can’t stair it any longer
another picture with stairs, but unlike sacre coward not based on a photograph (if you can tell).
It was initially meant to be a landscape, of a sort, but I drew it so slowly that some discourteous imps moved in and built a city, unfortunately. Yet later some of them boarded the stairs and hopefully will get what they deserve.

I am still not sure if the bird is nearer to the viewer or simply really large in comparison to the scale of its surroundings. Thankfully on my computer screen it is still too small to be a significant threat.