Couple quick things, nothing big...

Once in a while I check out MetaFilter, which is a kind of community weblog...people post links and stories of the day and then discuss them. Today, I found this, talking about adding an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban homosexual marriage. Now I'm not going to rant about gay marriage...nothing associated with that is my concern. And I certainly don't want to get into some kind of political discussion...that I just find boring, usually. But I do have a problem with people thinking they can tack on an amendment for whatever cause they want. My feeling is, amendments are for REALLY BIG ISSUES that affect the Constitution and the way our government works (which is what the Constitution outlines). Lowering the voting age to 18, fine. Right to free speech, fine. But I don't think there's anything in there that outlines strict guidelines about marriage, and I don't think it's something we have to change the Constitution over. A federal law of some kind, sure, knock yourself out. I'm just tired of hearing about people wanting to make amendments over trivial (compared to the operation of the government) issues. Who knows, you might end up with another prohibition situation...something that'll just get cancelled out in a few years (not that gay marriage is necessarily one of those things...I'm speaking in general).

And now for something completely different...
Why is Bruce Willis the choice for something's voice? It seems to me whan a male animated character is going to speak for the first time, they get Bruce Willis to do it. I say this because he's the voice of Spike the dog in Rugrats Go Wild (which I only know from seeing the commercial...of COURSE I have no interest in seeing the movie). I know he's done voice work in the past, and what I'm claiming probably isn't true...but I'm too lazy to look it up. He just seems to pop up at weird times doing voice work, I guess.

I think there was something else I was going to mention, but I've forgotten it. Oh well...if I remember, you'll be sure to hear about it ;-)

posted by Tim at 12:55 AM

Concerning the comics of June 20th and June 27th...

The Happy Flower Welcome Song.

Hopefully some of you out there in Internet-land have heard of Yankee Candle. It's a chain store that sells candles (duh). The flagship store is located in South Deerfield, MA. It's huge, with an accompanying overpriced restaurant and car museum (including one of the Batmobiles, and I think a DeLorean...I'm not sure, I've never actually been in that part). There are animatronic figured littered sporadically throughout the store, and many of the sections are Christmas themed...including Santa's Yankee Candle Workshop, where the old man himself arrives by helicopter every year and sets up shop for a part of the Christmas season. Anyway, in the food court/register section, there are tables gathered around a stage with an animatronic band, The Oom-Pah Boys. Three fat German guys with the accents and liederhosen and everything, with a show that repeats every 20 minutes. Of course there's your "O Tannenbaum", but the inspiration here (ah, the point!) is their opening/closing song, "It's Always Christmas at Yankee Candle". All I really remember of the song (as I've tried my best to forget it) is the first couple lines: "It's always Christmas at Yankee Candle / Where it's Christmas time all year round..." Sorry the tune doesn't carry well in this medium, but it's for the best, trust me. This is the song that plays in my head when I came up with the first couple lyrics for the flower song. I can only imagine what it's like for the cashiers that have to work across from the Oom-Pah Boys for 8 hours every day, with them playing that song 6 times an hour. *shudders* Hence the song getting stuck in Mandy's head in comic #128. I'm well acquainted with songs stuck in my head...it happens to me all the time (hell, I've got one in my head now!)...and during band camp it was especially frustrating.

Oh, and the "6 1/2 Hours Later" is supposed to be spoken in a lazy French accent. An homage (I'm saying that "oh-magzz") to SpongeBob Squarepants, in case you didn't get it.


posted by Tim at 2:59 AM

Hey gang. OK, sorry for the recent lack of updates, but these are things that are out of my control. Firstly, I have no idea why Keenspace hasn't updated in a few days. I'm just assuming it's some kind of normal Keenspace-servers-are-retarded deal that will be correctly as soon as possible. I do have comics, all set and ready to go...in fact, all set up till July 8th or so. After that MIGHT get kinda tricky, since I'm leaving on a trip this Tuesday (the 1st)...I think I'm just panicking a little bit since my buffer of done-comics is dwindling rapidly. So I apologize in advance if the comics coming up soon are of poor artistic quality (even more so than usual).

Also, I would've let you know about this sooner, but on this end, Blogger has decided to update as well, and I couldn't edit the blog the last couple nights. Who knows if anyone is in the habit of regularly checking the blog, but, well, here's the info anyway. It looks all nice and spiffy as I type this...hope it looks good on the viewer's end too.

Take care all.

posted by Tim at 1:20 AM

Sure, this is a little weird, but I just felt I had to share.

The "tires" on my forklift got replaced.

My job requires me to drive a forklift. A little thing...we call it a BT (I think that's the company that made it), but you stand as you operate it, and the forks are only maybe a couple feet long, so it's not like I drive this huge honkin' thing. There are two little swivel-wheels underneath (like on a shopping cart) which are maybe 6 inches in diameter, and I'm sure there's another larger wheel that actually powers the thing, but it's too far underneath to really see. The swivel wheels have a kind of hard rubber tire - not pneumatic like a car. Last night a sizeable chunk of the left tire finally wore out and fell off, leaving a gap of about an inch or two. This results in a relatively violent shaking when driving the lift...it's going "ca-chunk-ca-chunk" every 1/10th of a second. Now, I'm used to a moderate level of vibration with this thing, and this has happened to me before. Basically, it's very uncomfortable and most of the time whatever you're trying to carry on the forks is sliding off (and if it fell it would be bad).

But I show up to work today (working Saturday this week...not fun to truncate my weekend, but fortunately things went pretty smoothly), and there are two new tires on the truck. And the ride was smoooooooth, like buttah. I think it ran smoother than I had ever felt in my whole three months working there so far. And it felt good. :) It was actually enough to brighten my mood a little bit and I made for a long drive down the hall (and I need all the mood-lightening I can muster some days). Whee!
posted by Tim at 2:47 AM

Waz up peeps? Yeah, I'm so cool like that... =P

I've been hanging out a bit at the Elf Only Inn forums, and there's been a couple threads where I wrote a lot, and I thought "That'd be perfect for my blog." So I'm copying and pasting a small bit of my opinions on The Matrix Reloaded, then The Simpsons and Futurama. If anything seems out of context, go to the forums and check it out. I can point you to the right threads if you need some help.

First, The Matrix Reloaded...
OK. I finally got around to seeing the movie today. The short version: I liked it. I could've read up all I could about the story before hand, but as we know that would've been a bit much, so I went with the intentions of enjoying the special effects and trying to understand the plot while I was there. And generally, I liked both.

Now that I was finally able to read this thread without being hella confused, I'm going to make several small points referring to what's already been mentioned. Those not interested can move on to the next reply.

I could've dealt with the love/rave scene, except it went on for too damn long. It's uncomfortable enough to watch a Hollywood sex scene (especially in that kind of movie) with family present, but to make it go slow-motion, interpersed with dancing? Yeesh... :-P

The cause/effect talk with Frenchy there was also too long. Certainly wasn't expecting a full-frontal shot of the orgasm girl (even if it was in code).

The Architect's speech: This one was OK to be too long as it was an important plot point. But the guy used too many big words. It's one thing to be trying to understand another level of the whole "what the Matrix really is" thing, but doing that while constantly referring to a thesaurus was too much work for my brain at that point. Maybe subsequent viewings will help...or at least a transcript.

It's been mentioned about what Neo/the One really is (program, clone, etc.). From what I gathered (and I'm running on only one viewing, mind you), is that the One is the result of the fundamental flaw that the Architect mentioned. It sounded to me that everything goes according to the machines' plan, when one person every few generations or so winds up with latent potential (by virtue of the remainder, or whatever) and through a series of events becomes the One. The machines are aware of this phenomenon, prepare for it, and yada yada yada system reboot or whatever.

I, too, was slightly disappointed in the "Burly Brawl" scene (Neo vs. multi-Smiths). It was supposed to be some great feat where I was supposed to forget there was only one or two real people (not counting stuntmen) in the scene. It didn't help that the agents, including Smith, all kinda look alike anyway, so they could've had just 100 agents beat up on Neo and I wouldn't have noticed - not the point, I know. Plus there was the "virtual dummy" effect, made worse by bullettime. It reminds me of Spider-Man...I was disappointed that he was CGI half the time. I wanted to see a real person web-sling, dammit! If I wanted to see a cartoon do it, I would've watched a cartoon. Yeah, his arms might've been ripped out of his sockets, but that's not the point! But I digress...

While I applaud the Wachowski brothers on breaking the story-telling barriers by fleshing out the story through other media, I don't want to have to go through all that extra work to learn all that other information! Is it revolutionary story-telling...or just great marketing? (Like Warner Bros. won't be making enough money from the movies...)

And Simpsons, Futurama...
I'm not entirely sure what happened, but it's either Fox cancelled Futurama outright, or they simply haven't ordered any new episodes. Due to all the sports events and whatever else, Fox still has a backlog of several episodes, which they can show as "new" until they run out. Then...well, I don't know what then, but it'll be a very sad day.
:(

Always bugged me to wait all day Sunday for Futurama, only to turn it on to be pre-empted by either a late running football game, baseball, or even (*dry heaves*) NASCAR.

I love the Simpsons, but I'd have to agree with the consensus that the later years have not been quality years. You're right, there have been a couple gems here and there. Problem one: they've become too self-aware. They know they've been on the air a long time, and have a huge fan base, and now they're just pandering (is that the word I want?) to said audience. It irked me the last couple episodes where Marge has explicitly said they've been married for 10 years, but elements of the show have suggested they know it's been longer. (ie. The 305th "Everything's Back to Normal" Barbeque) Anyone else disturbed by the fact that Maggie should be almost out of high school by now?
Problem 2: their ideas have gotten repetative. This last season (I think) Marge has altered her body twice (muscling up, and getting a boob job). Plus I can't even count how many times Homer and Marge's marriage has been on the rocks.

I agree with Sketch...Futurama is a better show. The Simpsons is a better satire, I think, but no other show has MOVED me like Futurama. For example: Leela discovers her parents, the 7-leaf clover, Fry ingests the worms which enhance his body and mind, and last week's, with the space-bee honey.


So yay. Peace out, yo.
posted by Tim at 2:00 AM