Some people observed the Golden Globe statue award program in my house. It sounded like Church but with tackier music and more applause breaks. The major difference is that Catholicism’s rituals are slightly less abstract and impractical. I think the ceremony could have been improved by a few pantocrations.
The film titled “Boy-Hood” won a few of the year’s best picture awards. I think there were about five different “best picture” awards given out but Boyhood won two of them, so that is a pretty good score.
I did happen to witness Boyhood some months ago; it is a film recorded across 12 years, focusing primarily on one child from the age of 4 to 16 years. Note that this is not Boy in a Hood, who would probably not have gotten through many years like that. Other characters appear, and then they disappear and we hear no more about them. Just like in REAL LIFE! Yes alright, I have been watching that for 31 years, and I consider its lack of recurring purpose and closure one of the more frustrating matters. A filmmaker has the ability to show just the ones that are important and not waste my time. In the second half I kept thinking it was going to end at literally any point, since it seemed like it had stopped building to anything, but it kept going, adding new people, then dropping them, and when it DID end it was just as abrupt as it would have been when I first expected it to end.
I do think it improves upon the other film directed by Richard Linklater that I saw, Waking Life, but watching a phonograph record spin from start to finish without audio output would be an improvement on Waking Life because it would be over sooner.
In fact neither film has a point and both are too long, and primarily interesting from a production standpoint, but I did not feel the urge to apologize to the person I was with after “Boyhood,” although in that case it was not my idea anyhow so I would not have been at fault, but I did not expect an apology either! Still I felt somewhat empty.
It WAS interesting, and somewhat sad to watch somebody go from periods I recognized, 4-8-12 year old child with no real control, and suddenly jumping to somebody driving a car, living alone, doing sex, things that never fully happened in my life of nearly twice the length. Even choreographed on a screen I missed the transition. Not that I WANT to do all those things, but it would be a change to have the choice to do or not do them. In fact I can drive a car but it always worries me, and I am afraid to do it alone and have never been certified. I passed the knowledge test but the road test was for some reason scheduled for months later and I could not find anybody to drive me to it!
If you are not familiar with Waking Life, good. It is a series of rotoscope-animated scenes of dorks talking at the camera about abstract concepts that lasts two hours. Around the time when I watched it there were also in circulation advertisements called “Talk to Chuck” that were cartoon-filtered “real” upper class scumbags talking at the camera about NOTHING. Imagine watching those for 90 minutes, just with less plot. It is supposed to be like a “dream,” and it is, in the sense that when analyzed after waking up it has no meaning and determining what order events occurred in is impossible. The difference is that if I tried to walk away from the movie my legs would actually have found traction on the ground and I didn’t bother to try. So Boyhood is better than that. It increasingly turns into a series of dopey philosophical interviews as the boy whose hood it is gets older and the script gives him more lines, but at least he is talking to other people. Sometimes he is driving, sometimes someone else is driving. Sometimes he is in a forest.
I would like to see a story filmed in order across a number of years, but Richard Linklater does not typically deal in “stories.” The screenplay was also nobidated for a yet different award, which surprised me via the revelation that it has a screenplay. I thought Dumb and Dumber To had a more solid narrative (but just as much driving). Gosh even that was sad, these people who are supposed to be the stupidest in the universe never have an anxiety panic turning left at an intersection, or any trouble getting on or off a highway or parking.
On the topic it strikes me that studios would not make a Space Jam 2 without Michael Jordan, but went ahead on an official Dumb and Dumber follow-up without Charles Rocket.
not quite; this guy can actually live with himself (and is still administrator of that website).
I made this website logo a while ago and forgot to put it on the website anywhere. I also forgot to make it so that it actually would fit anywhere. I suppose it fits here. Unfortunately it is now hopelessly out of date and I will have to make a new one.
It has been said, possibly by me, that if we compare the amount of people simply shot with firearms, deliberately or otherwise, in this country, guns whose current state of regulation may not be touched, except to make less so, without strong public and corporate protest, it greatly overwhelms the number killed by “terrorism,” which we are regularly forced to forgo civil liberties as part of the “war on.”
To me, organized terrorism differs from the usual mass shooting we get in the US, because “mass shooting” often involves the perpetrators shooting themselves at the end, and it is difficult to determine what they thought they could accomplish. The recent Paris murder-fest was planned in advance, threatened about in advance, the people who did it knew exactly who they came to kill, and they got away. By NOW they have mostly been captured (by death by bullets), but the fact remains they intended to go on living afterward. Is that justification for monitoring my telephone calls and humiliating me at an airport? Not at all. If anything, I think the abuse of citizens by their own government is more valid justification for criminal acts than insulting drawings. But it proves these matters should not be considered the same thing. It is not just plain old murder. It is as bad as murder, but simply getting mad and sad at the idea of “terror,” a basic emotion that all people can experience, is not going to solve the problem. I do not know what will solve the problem, but I feel obligated to think about it, since I did not have an emotional reaction, but observed many such reactions.
Why are depictions of Muhammad banned? Allegedly because they might lead to iconography, worship of the symbol. Muhammad did not care how he was shown, he just did not want people to worship it. Or, rather, one segment of his followers thought he did not want his image, and possibly any images, worshiped, and then across a few centuries some subgroups remembered the main part of the rule but forgot why and got really serious about it. Would anybody worship an INSULTING picture of Muhammad? Of anyone? Killing over it makes no sense, even from a fundamentalist perspective. In fact this seems like the opposite of the prohibition’s intention, since you are holding the ban as sacred and infallible. The Law is your idol, your god, and you cannot be convinced that whatever you think it says is wrong.
It is difficult for people from non-fundamentalist-islam backgrounds to grasp the iconography issue, because so much of our culture is defined by ancient art, that was generally financed by religious fanatics, because they had all the money.
The odd thing about iconography, to me, is that this would seem to be descended from similar judeo-christian bans, bans which really did not stand the test of time, despite two iconoclastic periods in Byzantium and an entire dark age in which people were just too impoverished and miserable to make art. Consequently nobody actually knows what any of these constantly depicted figures looked like and Christianity’s number one symbol, the +-shaped cross is highly unlikely to have been the implement of Christ Christy’s crucifixion; evidence and records favor an X. Anything that shows a t cross is automatically wrong.
At some point The Church realized that its rituals and LATIN masses made no sense to the lay people, who all spoke mangled mixes of french, german and elvish, so then we had elaborate paintings, stain glass windows, decorated facades, all of ostensibly instructional value, plus gold to instruct peasants that the church is better than them. All in all a general business of exploiting people for money to pay for opulence for the church, forcefully financed by church patrons who probably cannot even afford to bury their kin who die of ludicrously preventable diseases. And they liked it! Or thought they did. They would travel all across Europe to visit all the churches and church relics, often body parts of saints, or just boxes that they were told contained such things. It’s really the thought of Saint Francis’ mummified trachea that counts. It is only the newest pope who finally considered, hey maybe the amount of money us popes hoard is totally incongruous to the message of humility and generosity we teach/name ourselves after.
And then this week, in a story that I admit I only read in the first place for a totally different reason, ol’ popey will be attending an event in Manila, in which people parade a statue of that darn Christ through the streets, a statue that supposedly has magical power to heal the sick and whatnot, and bring “good fortune.” Idol worship, witchcraft, greed, incontinence, all sorts of nonsense going on. It is ridiculous and has nothing to do with church doctrine, and yet it is a happier celebration than the mopey Catholic stuff I grew up with. Although I am also inclined to believe the home lives in any society so focused on a religious ritual is probably solidly patriarchal, abusive and opposed to change (but they always get cranky when they need one so no sense putting it off). We need to separate our joy from religion, and we need to separate our mandated misery from it. If Catholicism had been more jolly maybe I would have stuck with it and never gotten to the point where I realized there was no need for it. But if I did not have the freedom to quit church, or access to parts of life unrelated to church, and had been forced to believe in stuff that was made deliberately arcane and impossible to fully grasp, and thus impossible to question any aspect of, I might well have become the angriest, murderiest person on the planet.
And this was in the era of “Jesus loves you.” Jesus did not always love the proverbial you.
“Christ Pantokrator.” I know it is called that. I had to memorize what this was during my ill-advised art education. But what is a pantokrator? I do not know, but I presume it describes someone who does whatever jesus does when he makes that face.
Who cut this tin can in half and glued it to my plastic wig? Just because that knife you bought off the tv CAN cut a can that you subsequently attach to Christ does not mean you SHOULD. Christ is displeased. Thou shalt be pantocrated.
Religion, in general, does not wish the best for us, I think, overall. If you grow up thinking God is angry, and you aren’t allowed to think about anything else, you will be very very angry. There are indeed nations, entire countries, where it is ILLEGAL to quit the local brand of Islam. In United Arab Emirates, the punishment for trying is death! Like it is not enough that Allah will hate you and condemn you for your deed, you have to die NOW. In 2015! Or at least in 1996, which is when wikipedia’s source dates from. But the shooters, they were my age. I lived through 1996. Don’t think I don’t remember when RENT and that third Mighty Ducks movie came out. This stuff didn’t happen so very long ago.
And there probably are Christians today who think all depictions of Jesus are evil. They just do not get angry or motivated enough to shoot anyone. Over that reason. Maybe they will shoot you for being gay. But arbitrary conditions for slaughter is certainly a part of their Christian history. It is part of American history. This nation is as backward as it is because we “won” all our wars and were never forced to pay for our bad history by people badder than us. A murderer is a hero in a land claimed by murdering. Beside the point!
And I wonder, for people angry enough to plan a spree-execution like our recent one in such detail over insults, past the point of reasoning “hey I GOT to France, nobody has the legal authority to kill me for not being angry here” what makes them happy? If they believe the path to salvation involves wholly forgoing joy or whimsy in life, perhaps killing is the only fun they have, and the only fun they learned to have. This article‘s writer thinks the shooters actually are not so bothered by cartoons and just want an excuse to shoot people and jumpstart retaliations toward Muslims in general so that they can plan more counter-retaliation attacks. That almost makes more sense. Since up to that point nothing made sense, I will go with that idea. In fact I know somebody who thinks the Newtown, Connecticut shooting, a few towns over from where I am, was arranged by the US government as an excuse to take away The Guns and/or encourage a race war for some reason. Which does not mean I also believe that, but there are people out there who think a race war is really coming or could come, and maybe they would do what they could to encourage it if that sounded like fun to them.
I wish they could find more socially acceptable ways to have fun!
I have been on the internet too long, because this comes across to me like the person being interviewed is way too into the idea of people wearing diapers. This can be read as if he is issuing a general recommendation for all people to wear diapers in their every day lives.
I like the statement that he will “try” to wear one also. As if to suggest it is a challenge that only the most worthy and dedicated may take on, and he wants to pretend he has not been doing it all along and looking for an excuse to pretend it is someone else’s idea, then pretend to be surprised when he takes to it really well.
He is turning into a Charmin bear in my mind and that is really not what I came here to-
Cease this talk at once! And don’t you dare try and touch my sequined copy of my book about me! Pantocration is imminent!
american where-dope in paris
I would be glad nemitz is lost, but if I am lost too then that increases my risk of meeting nemitz.
Based on a sketch I did in Paris in 2013 a few days into my trip. I thought the picture would go somewhere when I added color, but it didn’t, really! It is not the worst thing to happen to Paris this week, though. And now my tablet is useless — I wrote an explanation of how it became useless, but thought I should make my post about the Paris murders before I did anything so self-serving, if I was going to post it at all, because I am obsessed with what imaginary people think of me, even though I specifically resolved not to be, and then that took too long, but I felt obligated to say that I wrote something, even if I cannot show it, so I could allow myself to post something that makes it seem like I am willfully ignorant, even though I actually meant to have it uploaded two weeks ago– so I will need to put it away for a while.
People ask me if I like turkey and if I eat turkey as if those are the same question. I do NOT like turkeys, and I EAT them because they are my ENEMIES. Especially if they fancy themselves conqueror turkeys.
Nat King Cole was a merry Nat soul.
Page 5 of part 3 of this.
This sometimes seems like a series of related vaudeville routines more than a story. This was initially a more antagonistic exchange, and although elpse’s recusement on the previous page was meant to show that elpse anticipates one just like those the antagonistic exchanges it had earler, I decided I did not want to be as repetitious as I had already hinted I was about to be. I may have written that out BEFORE I drew elpse’s first argument, in 2008ish, and I may have subconsciously plundered those remarks for other arguments. I remember scribbling it in a notebook my FIRST time in college. I did not know what lope had done at the hospital but I knew getting back into its apartment would be troublesome. Anyway this way is less “funny” but considerably more lopey, which I think is funny, but some people mistake it for sincerity, and pity the creature, and that may have gotten me some print sales at my previous art exhibitions, so perhaps this way is best.
The backgrounds are getting vaguer. I think I can solve my problem with losing patience with my base sketch before it is done and my boring environments at the same time. Going abstract will be easier and will make the settings seem less mundane, I hope. I AM alarmed, however, by how much this lobby inadvertently reminds me of a sega master system game.
To put that comment in perspective, I like them so little that I never use the emulator and thus do not even remember how to get it to start the real game for me to take a screenshot from it, and had to take one of the demo, indicated by the score of 0. In actuality I have several more points than that.
Snow today. I am already tired of it.
The local television news stations try way too hard to seem upset when there is not snow on Christmas. The anchors really heckle the weather dorks, as if they have some control over it, as if this control would be worth employing in this way in this instance. It is fabricated nonsense nostalgia! They are probably ordered to act like Christmas snow is crucial to their happiness. But they smile so consistently that I question if they even know what happiness is. They could stand to not smile, for their own health.
These days many people have to work on christmas, more than before, and they have to drive all over the place. And people who aren’t at work still have societal stigma forcing them to make long distance visits. Less snow is less hassle and less danger. It is cold and miserable. It looks nice for a few minutes, then it turns brown, and LINGERS for weeks. We do not need snow, and there usually isn’t any, anyway! Consider that most of the American traditions originate in northern Europe, where snow is more common, assuming there ever is none. I am in Connecticut, the northeast, and we rarely get much snow by that point. But half the country never gets any. We need to re-evaluate this. Meanwhile we get more snow than we need in january and february, then more in march, and these days in April too. Our climate suits a white christmas less so than a “white presidents’ day,” and seems to be shifting toward a white mother’s day. My mother is as white as I am but not everyone’s is, so we should not discriminate.
These entries are still too elaborate for one a day. That is no good. I need to work on putting less work into them.
Another art exhibition done. I never told you about it nor the one before it in the same place because neither was interesting enough to devote a large, weekly update to. But it is just useless enough a tid-bit for a brief, daily update!
My current art show is playing at a storage unit in Westbrook Connecticut. I hope not to see you there, because that would be a considerable security breach.
I never liked the idea of a “blog.” Being the ugly contraction of web log, I dislike the idea talking even when there is nothing to say, just for the obsessive-compulsive sake of being able to say you said something every day. Supposedly it helps maintain interest in viewers. That is how so many bad comic strips thrive. That is ridiculous. I would never say something every day if I had nothing to say. And I would not do it today. Not any sooner than I would draw something if I had nothing to draw, right?
Do not live by someone else’s rules for no reason. You just waste everyone’s time, including your own, when you could be doing something great. Do not expect daily posts here!
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!