instagraham I don’t need this garbage right now. even the “try” in there indicates this might be a futile endeavor. Give us personal information, it says, and MAYBE we’ll let you back in. To the APP. We have miles of empty space into which to type “lication” but the more we normalize jargon, slang and abbreviations as proper terminologies the less anyone using these systems will have a clue what is going on.
ah hes also i used an alternate camera to take these pictures because the screen capture function on my mobile telephone machine is broken, on account of requiring the pressing of the power and volume buttons simultaneously, and the volume buttons no longer functioning, a development without which this unnecessary comic strip would not have been necessary. it will still TAKE screenshots but only when it feels like doing so.
which is why I have a folder full of pictures of icons, text messages and people calling me. I don’t delete them because obviously I was going to talk about this happening at some point and wanted evidence.
anywhuh, a “video selfie” is not something i have ever done in my life and as long as I am able to I intend to continue that tradition. I don’t even accept the word “selfie.” I held on to vhs years into the dvd era and that was actually something useful so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that technology is continually looking for new ways to break my experience in non-organic ways to try and force me to use something new and dumb but that it controls instead of me.
in any case I am fortunate to have allies in my struggles.
This strange Zeldalink was given as a gift to someone else but ended up following me around instead and has done so a few years. It went pretty far but got stuck on the fourth step: “slowly tilt your head upwards,” as his neck doesn’t move and his tunic is made of hard plastic so I can’t get the camera into the right position to make it appear that Link’s head has moved. Oddly enough his hair is made of eminently malleable peanut butter.
Marketing-approved, somewhat deranged Bravemerida, the first resident I found in the next room at 1:30 in the A M when instagram issued its challenge, while also having an immobile neck, was able to finish on account of having a disproportionately large head that the camera could get under,
but unfortunately this selfie adventure took so long that video was too large to upload on my crummy internet, possibly to store on my crummy memory card.
My ever-helpful butler Alfred fortunately handled the reshoot with his usual grace and professionalism.
This had literally been in the box it was purchased in for over 20 years, waiting until the right occasion came along, which was apparently this. I have confirmed ebay people are trying to sell these for about $40 in prime boxed condition and I would say my box’s was condition is somewhat less than that. And you know some people are selling just the figure but nobody is selling just the box so I don’t know how they expect me to remedy this.
back to the point, assuming there is one:
I dislike that the ubiquity and uniformity of mobile trashnology means corporations can assume that every user has a working compact video camera positioned precisely to record their own faces. Even with people supposedly able to opt out of letting software access these cameras, the corporations can still demand that a user “opt” in to be allowed to use the software, even when it is a non-essential, possibly non-beneficial feature of the software. Any decent person could observe the user’s setting, that of having the camera blocked, and suggest an alternate method of humanity verification. Unfortunately, since there is only humanity on MY end, I get forced into doing things the robot’s way.
For now I can fool it. However, every time a test like this comes up, that trains the facial recognition machinery a bit, and eventually they will make more specific demands, like “blink your left eye” or “say the word papaya.” And most dorks will do it! The tests will not be administered simultaneously so users will never be able to collectively refuse to participate. And they probably wouldn’t anyway, since these tests also train the users to be obsequious. With all their hashtags and memes, and knowing almighty “algorithms” can cut out anyone for any deviant behavior, users are already less and less unique individuals than ever.
oh how I talk
at LEAST I have something to SAY, and am not just some entitled oxygen-stuffed dinosaur trying to tell people what to do!
also, “stress-free?” this thing has seen some trauma. admittedly I just criticized it but you know what, dinosaur, that’s part of not being extinct, rising to meet challenges. Do you think that pig doesn’t have rough days, or a rough future, or get raised in an environment so noxious and debilitating that its excrement has to be disposed of in a special “lagoon” that is literally fatal for a living being to breathe near and consequently referred to with a vague euphemism to keep people from realizing it is a death pit?
grape grimpity I am eating pork and roasted potatoes while writing this. why did you bring this up, you dumb deflated diplo dorkus?
oh nuts I didn’t realize you were part of a gang. You really do need help! (g-g-gulp and so do I)
I am too tired to proofread this but you probably won’t notice since it details a series of messes anyway.
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Oh right LAST time I mentioned that none of the worked-over pieces have elpse (green imp) in them. It simply was the case that none of them particularly suited elpse, in the coloring of the figure or the demeanor of the scene. I was informed shortly after that, the my-website-breaking-garbage from august is still lingering in the form of an all white page with unreadable text, but only for SOME people, none of them me.
I have been entirely unable to determine the source of or fix that problem. on the twittor website I requested if any persons who literally had nothing better to do, might glance at the front page and report if it was broken to them. I quite FORGOT that the post at the top of the page could be interpreted by a casual reader looking for something to take issue with as saying “the people I know on twitter are freeloading louts” so without getting into more details, I can say the site is still as broken as then BUT not to everybody and there also now a scene to redraw that suits elpse much better!
not necessarily this one; it may be worth giving elpse some stupid jewelry or changing the pears into something stupider but not harder to draw than pears.
or simply remove some of the terrible effects so that the dope I drew in with them temporarily turned off is no longer concealed by them
OTHERWISE I have not yet had cause to make over one that was mostly green, I suppose elpse could theoretically also go into that.
it would be simple to just put nemitz into all of them, but some scenes would not be applicable since they already HAVE nemitz or worse in them, as I needed a second figure to be receiving or granting insult, and I REFUSE to have two nemitzes in one picture. OR the central character is morbidly obese, or the central character is a vague mass of “glitched” body parts that I should never have agreed to draw even for money, much less none.
Grahamted, elpse has been unusually large in size the last few times I finished a page of the comic strip, but that isn’t something I particularly enjoy drawing nor want to indicate is a permanent, pleasant, commemoration-worthy state for elpse. WHICH IS not to say that nemitz is pleasant but I enjoy getting annoyed at how stupid nemitz looks. What I don’t enjoy is people with a sexual fetish for something I drew incidentally assuming I share that with them and encouraging their fetish buddies to acknowledge my efforts for that component alone and talking to me like I also fetishize it in defiant obliviousness of 978% of every other drawing or sentence I have ever posted or any most rudimentary concept of etiquette, then sending me random videos of fat people or pictures of themselves wearing fat suits in direct messages. Which hasn’t happened, for that, and I prefer to keep that aspect of my existence consistent.
this came about back when I attempted to post drawings on the reddit website in 2020. the person was threatening to commission me to draw something but wanted me to say that I would “have fun” with soles-of-feet-focused imagery and “experiment” with it, and I would not, because that isn’t fun for me and experiments mean extra work for no money and also require a base interest which I lack. And so the person stopped responding. Which is probably for the best since I was not going to draw anything this person really liked except inadvertently. plenty of artists in this game do so regularly and do not care if their customers are displeased, but I care about everything, so I prefer to avoid it, and more so I prefer to avoid the consequences of not making certain such customers know how much fun I am not having as soon as possible.
This is actually the rubber clothes humanoid again, before he got to that part. I should have gotten out long before getting there. That garbage went on for days. I was worried about losing a customer, and was intrigued by the weirdness, besides. In the end I realized I didn’t want this person as a customer if he wanted us to be friends, or even casual acquaintances, or under any other circumstances.
that actually isn’t the end. he told me he deleted me as a contact at least twice, and then shortly after I mentioned him here, which was itself more than a year from this chat bit, he sent me, with no other words or context, a creepy semianimation of a bunch of partially melted naked bootleg backstreet boys with the text “so disappoint” printed on it, which I simultaneously wish I had saved and am relieved I will never have to see again. then I found it anyway.
wow you sure showed me with this scornful half-literate slime orgy
unfortunately at the time I did not understand.
should have been
but it evidently wasn’t, for three whole years, since I hate the word in quotation marks so much that I put it in quotation marks and forgot that quotation marks abort the text string and cause any additional text to go nowhere. although i dislike now how wide this picture of it is on my screen!
but don’t worry, anybody who can see this page already isn’t coming back!
frumblegrumble the jackhasslers who decided 20 years of webpages need to retroactively be made smaller to fulfill the whims of willfully inferior technology want ME to “fix” something? Yes they certainly do. Anything they can’t break from their end by deprecating bits of code or requiring more and more “security certificates” on a site running 0 advertisements and off-site scripts that continues working just as it should they are going to try and guilt trip me into dismantling myself.
I know it’s not my fault! It never is! But it’s always my problem. Yet I am not bitter and covetous, and I gladly share it with you.
not surprisingly a number of the “free sketch” recipients from a few years ago eventually lost interest in what I was doing apart from free stuff, or never had it to begin with, especially when I was unable to reciprocate such an appearance of interest. Obviously I am not entitled to attention but my sensitivity to the matter defies the obvious. Since I already had the poses and colors laid out it seemed worth the bit of additional effort to change the characters into my own morons, thereby letting me upload them to try and get attention a second time and also receive a spiteful catharsis that a reasonable person might not have thought necessary.
a lobster which looks to be pretty good at what it does is ridden by a lizard-like being that is objectively terrible.
nemitz don’t forget that for every finger you point there is eh one other finger pointing back at you.
that dreadful mitz was also in this group. nemitz is a functional substitute for most dork anthropomorphs that stand around pointlessly and smiling since that is what nemitz does best.
I started to explain why none of these have elpse in them and it got surprisingly complicated so maybe I will get to that next time, which typically means “save that part elsewhere and forget about it and probably be better off for having done so.”
look at this, candy accumulated by my seven-year-old niece on Halloween, even two nights later, after she went to bed, and there is still good stuff left and milk duds. Where was this kind of payout when I was that age? No necco wafers, no monster munny, no bit-o-honey, no good-n-plenty, laffy taffy, walnuts, candy corn. Meanwhile, maybe twelve or fewer actual children came to my house collecting candy this year. Based on that and the load before me there must be substantially more people giving out candy than going out to be given candy. AND behold the humble expectations of this shoddy little plastic bucket. everyone i knew in the oaf days brought a big old pillow case or shopping bag when collecting, and probably ended up with less stuff than this in it.
granted, in addition to the shoddy stuff I don’t see, I also don’t the generally edible whoppers, 100 grand, rolos, junior mints, not even nerds or bottle caps. There are definitely fewer TYPES of candy being given out. Some of the fun of collecting is in the weird variety, and there isn’t much here. Did everybody in this area go to the same store? SOME of whom may have done an inordinate amount of shopping at that same store after hearing a local rumor that kids from other neighborhoods get driven over to this one in great numbers and quickly deplete the candy reserves of those who are unprepared?
maybe that is a local hazing prank. This is all the candy that was left over, not including what was still in the offering bowl. I had naught to do with it, however; I never buy reese’s junk. Because I want to be able to eat it afterward if nobody comes to take it. I noticed, with rare exception, the chocolate variety bulk packages at stores -always- try to force some peanut butter junk in there because peanut butter is cheaper for the companies than chocolate but they can charge the same amount and also get to act like it is a feature. I hate Reese.
and now you’re disgusting. I don’t know WHO it is but I want to KILL Reese with a spoon. To think I felt BAD for him when I watched Terminator. saying “not sorry” is like saying “not gonna lie” or “wait for it” in that it communicates absolutely no direct information but does provide indirect information that you should be punched in the nose.
I saw this and questioned if charleston chew was anybody’s favorite anything, except for adults who enjoy punishing children at halloween. They look like they are firm on the outside and soft on the inside and will be pleasant to bite into, but they have the same pencil eraser-like consistency the whole way through. Afterward I experienced an, i thought, unusually high amount of replies claiming to actually enjoy eating these things. to be fair, while frozen, something I never thought to do as a child, but did find necessary and functional with incidental milk duds in later years. Meanwhile reese cups remain distasteful to me at any temperature in ever-growing numbers, while Charleston Chew, good old Charlie C, who was always there for me, and I never realized it, thought I hated him and left town. Has Reese ruined my one true chance at happiness?
A bit more disturbing to me personally, the mother of some children across the street, prior to seeing off her brood for the candy-grab jaunt, was talking to my sister about one of her sons, who appeared to be dressed as Iceman from Megaman, of all things, with a pale face and blue parka, though I could not hear what she was saying. I saw my sister issue a gesture of “no I don’t know what that is” as I got closer. Then the mother saw and turned to me instead, to ask, “are you familiar with the video game under tayul?” and having that suddenly off the internet and real was so bizarre and unpleasant that I forgot what was real and half-consciously said “i try not to be” without considering that the person wearing that costume could hear me, and I noticed he looked rather sullen in the moments afterward before the group journeyed onward. Or maybe he is always like that. Or maybe that is part of the character, despite the smirky memes I have been accosted by. I didn’t exactly say “it is so ubiquitous and associated with easily-manipulable socially mutated mediocrity fetishizing cultists who think they are great people that it literally makes me sad and unlike the cartoon horse worship of ten years ago it never goes away because its members have convinced themselves it is “independent” even though people with followings larger than the population of Estonia have been financing and promoting it since before it existed” so I may be overthinking the incident. Having that as a costume, an unrecognizable cheap costume at that, for a few hours, is a long way from trying to sell or trying look like you are in good with people who sell non-fungible tokens. All he wanted were fudgible tokens.
NO, “trunk or treat” is NOT normal, it should not BECOME normal, nor should it become twit-commercialized and robbed of what little organic value it has. potentially the fact that I didn’t see any discounted candy but did find a full display of these on november 5 indicates that it isn’t being bought like it’s normal yet. Not that I NEED discounted candy because my house is already overflowing with full price “but it was on sale” pre-halloween candy but I still like to check on it and see how it is doing.
I should be glad I haven’t see under terror merchandise in any stores, (as much as twitter dorks will go quite out of their ways to let me know they acquired some) even though I know substantially more about every nuance of it without ever once trying than Overwatch, which I HAVE seen on junk at the super market, yet the only fact I know about it is that one of the main characters wears ridiculous skin-tight yellow pants. I suppose I could call the lot of them under-desired and over-exposed. haaaaaah my back hurts.