My derogatory reference to "model sheets" was not intending to imply that I think it is bad to know the proper way to draw a thing, and indeed there are usually some elusive, not readily thought of details which inhibit a character's ability to be rendered recognizably by someone other than the person who did it first. However, those important yet minor aspects typically do not include how many chest hairs Duck Man has. The only thing on that page which looks terribly wrong (in the context that the first one is "right," anyway) are the cross-focused pupils, and even that with time can appear normal if the gap between the eyes is big enough, a gap that a helpful note says to aim for. Otherwise, I cannot tell which is the real Duck Man (though the idea of a convincing fake and thus an apparent two Duck Men frightens me to no end) , and that's with a static image. I wouldn't know at all if it was moving around and doing things.

I tend to think Claxy Supso cartoons only stand to benefit from artists drawing intuitively rather than from a creepy chart. I seriously doubt whoever drew the first Duck Man had done all that much refining, if any. "Huh? Whuh? You want a character called Duck Man? Ah, alright, *scribble scribble* there, there's Duck Man. Remember to always draw Duck Man exactly like that, with all the same arbitrary strokes and whatnot or I'll sue ya bastids. Now give me a million dollars and let me get back to inventing Furry Fandom."

When seeking out that link, which I had first seen months ago, I had to look around a bit, because as its url suggests, it no longer is where it once was. Yes, and while searching for the phrase "off model," I found this, notable for being written by, if my sources are correct, the person who devised Rennenstimpie, the show which while terribly unique ensured it would be impossible to watch a new Amelican animated series without gagging for the next decade. If he has to step back and say "yuck," then maybe we all should. Or that might mean we're heading in the right direction and should change nothing. Arrrgh, I've lost the model sheet that explains how to manage my personal biases!

Another problem is that before being colored, it is possible to merely imply the presense of certain things much more easily. So easily, that I can leave things such as background objects, panel distinctions, and whole limbs implied (or rendered in an extremely vague fashion) and not realize they aren't actually there until the page is already long past scanned and then I have to sort it out in the computer program, which slows things down a great deal, especially when it turns out their absense allowed other things to be quite definitively drawn in out of proper alignment with each other, which is always. In other news, I recently tried using the phamous Photoshop and a version of Paint Shop Pro from this century. I hate them both. At least now I won't have to feel bad/paranoid about not paying for them when I eventually don't buy them.

Quite some while ago, actually just about a year, I mentioned that I could not wait to stop watching NBC's The Office. Alas, it has not happened yet. You have to understand that most new shows get cancelled very quickly, so it is unreasonable to expect any to last very long, so I would not likely get stuck viewing it for more than two months of 9:30pm Tuesdays (and I didn't, because they switched it to Thursday at random times entirely without consulting me). I suspect this is a major reason other people, who like wanting to watch television, avoid new shows: because they don't want to get attached to a new show and then see it deleted from the schedule. So anyway, The Office is still on, and of all the awful things to have happened, I started to enjoy it. Note that this fortunately was before any awful emmy nominations/wins/subsequent obligatory NBC "we dare ya ta hate this" campaigns. There is no chance in Connecticut State Governor Jodi Rell that I would have started once they started.

History: Back when the comic strip Dilbert began getting really popular, maybe ten years ago, all the advertising was suddenly set up to resemble Dilbert environments. Lots of people in grey rooms who have no emotions or first names wearing uncomfortable looking clothing whining about "veepees." But it didn't work on television, in advertising, because Dilbert has a new strip every day, rather than shoving the same joke done the same way at you seven times per day each day for six months. Also, Dilbert is mainly about despair, and excitement is only had over really pathetic things, and we are meant to laugh at rather than with them. However, while that does sell lots of merchandise, regardless of whether it should, that is all Dilbert specific merchandise, rather than Vanilla Coke and internet service.

So the advertisers decided to make everything about offices themselves, and tried to make me feel the fictional workers' enthusiasm for the Dodge Neon or Geo Metro or Edsel II or whatever car it was, and it doesn't work, [on me, because I'm not a moron but also] because when I see those emotionless (and now somehow also confident and self-assured) grey room people, I hate them if I'm supposed to think about them realistically and/or identify them. Oh, that's right, these are people who write buggy software and charge money for it and probably invented the concept of "15 days or uses, whichever comes first." These are people who go inside Starbuckses willingly and frequently. These are the people who have "water cooler conversations." These are the people who get an e-mail titled "I love you" and download and run its attachment and flunk up their entire networks so badly that whatever product their company sells mysteriously costs 5% more next week and continues costing more when consumers don't refuse to buy it at the bloated price (I'll be right amazed if gasoline ever costs less than $2 in this country again without the invention of a competing fuel source by a totally unrelated company with no interest in sabotaging such a thing). I hate these people.

The rich movie executive tworps who swap jokes with the rich advertising executive tworps all have ad-skipping t-voh's and/or are totally retarded, so they don't get so oversatturated with the bombardment of unfunny, idiocy, and misconception about the way non-rich people live that those expected to buy things do. It may have begun to die down for a while after the movie Office Space performed less than satisfactorily in theatres, but at some point a person to whom such terms are important heard it referred to as "cult classic," and ever since then apparently every adult person in the United States rides to work in a carpool, builds spreadsheets in a cubicle and goes to lots of board meetings. I'm here to say that I like Fruity Pebbles in a major way this way of life is completely alien to me or anyone I've met and I refuse to part with any quantity of dollars that might further bring forth this message. Not that I know a lot of people or buy a lot of things. Lucky for you.

Which brings me to the television show called "The Office." It is not about office work; it took me several months to even figure out that the company whose office is depicted sells paper. I see the characters typing at their keyboards and talking on their telephones, but they generally stop once the camera focuses on them, and then they begin doing something entirely unproductive. They seem more like children than responsible, dead-end job adults. I don't know where they buy their staplers or who provides their "business solutions." So far, there hasn't been an entire episode set up around the copying machine not working. If I don't work in an office, I probably can't identify with it, and if I did work in such a soul-sucking sitcom continuity office, why would I want to watch more of that tripe on television, let alone a trivialized version trying to get my master to buy a better copying machine?

The new season begins next week, but I'm not going to advise you to start watching it if you never have, because I don't have the influence to think you would consider any recommendation from me, and if I did, inevitably every episode that aired from here until you gave up in disgust would be terrible, just to spite me, so don't you bother. When the ads aren't claiming "funniest hour on television," they're trying to play up some nonsense love drama related to the last new episode that aired, an aspect which wasn't even done particularly well, I don't think. It would have worked much better in the boat episode or the more recent Chili's episode. But eh, the show isn't about that, and if it starts being about that, then I will like it less. For now, don't believe NBC, and don't watch because you believe me.

Somehow that doesn't relieve me in the least.

I wonder how many gay icons daytime television needs before the space aliens who steal our satellite signals start assuming every human on earth is gay and procreate entirely through artificial insemination.

I don't want to hate Megan Mullally, because Conan, my love, seems to think she's funny, and I do enough despising anyway, but she is making it really hard. Whatever this ad thinks it's telling me about is probably better than The Charlotte Church Show, but that shouldn't be enough.

Also, apparently Charlotte Church finally stopped being 12 years old, and despite the flash of a possibly unique career that would make classical music seem less inaccessable to the people who insist music be accessable, and thus have it be more likely to be played in public areas, possibly in place of the usual things that make me wish I was deaf, Miss Game-Save House of Worship wised up and jumped for the overexposed teen tripester path at just the right moment to more effectively become indistinguishable from her American counterparts. Music album deliberately classifying self as "pop?" Yes. Followed around by, probably leading on any dumpsterbait dork with a camera? Yeps. Given massive media exposure in fields she has no experience with? Affirmative! Drunk at high profile parties? Yes indeedilydiaper! Involved with creepy, though legally not pedophiley photo-shoots? Probably, I don't want to look. Unreadable fansites? It would seem to be foretold by legend. Don't click those, just be aware they are there. I can't say for certain how bad the show named after her is; I saw a clip and at worst she's a bit annoying, but not retarded. But once again, that shouldn't be enough.

Well, you probably ought to.

not actual ventriloquist puppet

In the end, I hope Ronn can prove me to be wrong, because I watch television to be entertained, after all, though if he doesn't that's also great because I hate being wrong. I also acknowledge that most human guests on shows like this bother or bore me, and that even an unfunny puppet is typically more interesting to watch do very little.

I'm personally worried that this "30 Rock" show is going to lead to a whole new unbearable level of self-referentialness at uh "30 Rock." The real one. I can imagine "30 Rock," the show, which will always, always be within quotation marks until Rockefeller Center officially changes its name to "Rock," having an episode about the writers of the show portrayed in it writing a sketch about a show depicting what goes on behind its own scenes. And then real Saturday Night Live will have a sketch which is a step by step recreation of a scene from that episode except a couple of the words are changed and theoretically much funnier. It will feature Special Guest Tracy Morgan doing an impression of Kenan Thompson doing an impression of Tracy Morgan yelling at Lorne Michaels. "30 Rock" will retaliate by showing the writers watching low priority news coverage the next day recapping the whole thing. The NBC programming department should have never hired Vince Russo.

I'm sure Saturday NL will survive, even with the alleged massive budget cuts that resulted in plenty of people who didn't want to quit and risk film careers being fired recently, but this other show I do not expect to do well. Most blatantly, it uses the same ha'penny three note saxaphono promo music that Father of the Pride did. That is not as bad as the Vonage "woo ooh, woo ooh ooh" music, but only because it lacks a voice saying that.

By the way, this, what I'm doing, is different than reporting that Osama bin Laden might be dead but might not be. It would be the same if I was relaying someone else's absurd guesses and framing them as a huge important story. What I did is, at worst, one third as bad.

Also, maybe I'm behind the times, but I'd like my telephone to have every number.