Y'know something?

I ate leftover curry and chocolate chip cookies (plural) for breakfast. And for lunch I'm going to drink like three cups of coffee, and then maybe some whisky.

'Cause I'm a grown-up and I can eat whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I feel like it!

Yeah!

Har de har har

Back to back to back...

Okay, so I ain't been on for a while. That's 'cause I've been getting re-married. Which isn't to say that I was divorced, but that the first time around was done on the quick and on the Q.T. It was almost like we eloped, except for the questionable choice of moving right back to the same island her family was on.

D'oh.

So once I got the visa I could get to work, which was a prerequisite for paying for the reception that seemed to be much in demand amongst people who'd heard that my special lady friend was now rocking a legally recognized husband.

Except she's already got a professional reputation in her field, and thus is in no hurry to start rebuilding it under a different name. And she's not my special lady friend!

Anyway, turns out that planning and executing a wedding reception takes up time. A damn lot of time. Time spent worrying about stuff that I would ordinarily never even be aware of. Like caring who sits next to whom, or whether there's going to be enough space on the dance floor, or whether the omnivores are going to eat too much of the vegetarians' options.

Okay, seriously, there was a whole roast pig to eat there. Like, over 175 pounds of slow-cooked pork. The pig roast was the most commented-on thing on the invitations, and people were lining up to see the pig before they even noticed the bride's dress. But for some reason, people still nearly ate all the fucking vegetarian lasagna before the actual vegetarians got a chance to.

But I digress. I've been busy, doing nuptial-type stuff. But today was my first Sunday off in a while, so it was a perfect chance to do some manly-type stuff. I bought lumber, saws, nails, big-ass brooms, and a bunch of cast-iron weights. Butch, man, butch! GRRRR-RARR!

Oh yeah, The Professor Brothers rock my historical world. (NSFW)

Next time: eh, whatever, man. You know how I live.

Kate Beaton!

There aren't nearly enough comics about history.

Wait, scratch that. There aren't nearly enough good comics about history.

No, hold on. There aren't nearly enough good comics, period.

Fortunately, Kate Beaton is making hella funny comics, many of which involve historical figures. Her linework is clear and evocative, her sense of comedic timing is great, and I really can't choose which of her comics make me laugh the most, because there are so damn many of them that leave me in fucking stitches.

Go to Kate Beaton dot com, now now now!

I never got to say "Thank you."

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits!


Thank you, George.

Who do you trust?

Okay, so it seems that the infamous '2 Girls 1 Cup' film is at the center of a court case to decide just how far the 1st amendment goes. And the judge responsible for the whole thing is taking some heat for a web site he maintained, which seems to have some smut of his own selection.

I don't know if his collection of naughty pictures represents some sort of conflict of interest. But I do know that I would have much more faith in a judge who knew a little something about the topic in question. I mean, you wouldn't trust a referee who'd never watched a game, you wouldn't trust a baker who only ate Wonder Bread, so why would you prefer a judge who'd never seen a money shot?

What's dorkier than dorky?

Imagine, if you will, the kind of mind that would do the research needed to answer this question:

What was Stanley Kubrick's favorite font?

Oh yes. A fellow got the chance to look through Kubrick's archives, and made some interesting observations about the man and the things he left behind. But between the history of the creation of individual fonts and arguments about whether sci-fi writers would have known what the official house font was at NASA, it seems there remains a great deal of uncertainty as to whether Kubrick's purported favorite font was actually used in his films or not.

Can you dig that? So much effort and knowledge and interest, and it's all focused on something even the most obsessive film fans probably overlook.

Glorious!

[typographica.org]

Excelsior!

Generally, I don't have a great deal of interest in Discovery News. Most of it seems to be the dry, simplified, stripped-of-sensationalism news that fails to interest the spectacle hungry like myself. Yeah, I'll probably chuckle when I read the story about an ancient coprolite, or the one where scientists stuck needles into elementary school children to see if their pain was better soothed by a mother's touch or television cartoons. But in general, not much there gets my attention.

But then I noticed a couple of interesting headlines right next to each other:

Robotic suit? Rocket man?


Robotic suit?
Rocket man?
Robotic suit?
Rocket man?

It's about damn time. Onwards and upwards, true believers.

Forward, fast

Going back to work next week. I've been enjoying (sort of) a two-week break between semesters. I say "sort of" because even though classes ended two weeks ago, I've been unable to be completely finished with the semester's work. There were exams, workbooks and stacks of powerpoint presentations to grade. There were essays to read, evaluate, and penalize for plagiarism. Then there were the on-line student records to enter, correct, and re-correct. And there were the students who, finding they were going to fail because of a lack of attendance, participation and work submission, began making desperate and repeated attempts to show an interest in passing the course.

All of these things took up time. And now, with half the break gone, I find it's time to start preparing for the coming term. As a condition of my employment, I am paid fairly well per hour of class taught with the understanding that I must consider myself compensated for the the work done outside of class.

Funny, but when I'm called in during my 'holiday' to clear up errors resulting from a lack of foresight, planning or effort on the part of management, I find myself less inclined to accept the terms of the contract with good grace.

Am I lazy? Oh yes. But am I justified in feeling like my employers are taking advantage of everyone on these sorts of contracts?

What do you think?

Ugly and beautiful

A long time ago I studied animation. Like, the actual nuts-and-bolts mechanics of making moving cartoons with paper and ink and film. Come to think of it, it was real 19th century stuff. Except for the plastic cels we used for the final project, almost all the other materials and technology would have been easily available 100 years ago.

Anyway, one of my fondest memories was of trying to figure out how something moved so that the motion could be rendered in individual poses and then animated on film. I suppose that computer animation techniques make that sort of thing somewhat quicker, and that motion capture just gets someone to make the motion and then it's recreated automatically.

But I liked the process of working out how the motion went step by step. And this little video made me think of that:

Dance, fat man, dance!