*motions with my hand*

You did not miss the update yesterday.
posted by Tim at 1:23 AM

Hooray! I have finally joined the 21st century!

How so? As a Christmas gift (which I "picked out" today), I got a Playstation 2.

Now before I get a lot of angry emails berating me of my poor choice, I'm going to share with you my reasons for selecting the PSX over the other consoles.

Games - not counting multi-platform games (natually), it seems to me, and I could be wrong and needed to do more research, that I could've gone with Gamecube and played Mario/Zelda games, or XBox and played online sports games. I had no interest playing online - and if I do I'll buy the adaptor - and I can live without playing Mario Sunshine. (Though I am missing out on Wind Waker and Viewtiful Joe...oh well). Plus, I was more interested in platformers and RPG's, so PSX seemed like a goot fit.

Library - now I can buy all the pre-owned PS2 and PS1 games I want for relatively cheap.

Points - I happen to have a credit card where I earn extra points for buying Sony products, and can trade said points for free Sony products. This was the last point I thought of this morning, and of course not a major factor...but it helps.

And now I won't have to rearrange my computer when my sibs and I gather to watch DVDs. There's a plus.

I was looking for The Simpsons: Hit and Run, but couldn't find it at the particular store I was at today. But I needed a game, so I picked Jak II. And came to realize, after like 5 hours of playing this afternoon, that it is pretty much like Hit and Run. So yay! (Still want Simpsons though...cuz I'm a fan...but you already knew that).

Now I'll just have to get Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for my computer instead. And I'll be frequenting Blockbuster a bit more often that I have before. So this will be yet another thing that will be vying for my attention...but I'm still committed to the comic and I'm gonna work on more tomorrow. In between Jak II ;-)

posted by Tim at 1:27 AM

Saw Return of the King tonight. Great movie :) My only complaint is that the ending just dragged. Little too much of hobbits hugging in slow motion. I bet the movie could've squeaking in under 3 hours if Jackson had cut some of the fat out of those scenes.
posted by Tim at 2:24 AM

OF COURSE as soon as I get my Secret Santa fanart (which is really neat, by the way), and I edit up some page to go with it, the Keenspace servers are down as I try to upload it all. Man, it's bad enough not to update from my own incompetence, but now it's just a matter of the servers going wonky.

Still, Merry Christmas, everybody. =)

posted by Tim at 1:12 AM

Blarg!

OK, here's the deal. I was supposed to get my Secret Santa fanart on the 21st. Didn't get it, but did get an email saying it'd be late. No big deal, better late than never. Said email mentioned I should have it for Monday. For me, Monday has come and gone. I did draw a comic, but I was hoping to have the fanart to put up for Tuesday, and since I have neither, well, you get this lame explination.

SO...this week is going to be kinda weird as far as updates go. Let's hear it for hectic holidays! Like I mentioned before, free time soon, more drawing/scanning/editing/writing to be done, so just bear with me for a few more days and I'll try not to be so flaky anymore.

While you're waiting, check out the Spider-Man 2 teaser trailer. I point to the Quicktime site since that's the only one that gave me sound, for whatever reason. It's gonna be cool! Gleeee! *deep breath* Though I still have to see Return of the King, which should be sometime this week. Plus the whole, you know, waiting until July thing.
posted by Tim at 3:13 AM

Evanescence's "My Immortal" is an absolutely beautiful song.

Anyone who says otherwise has no soul.
posted by Tim at 3:17 AM

OK, now it's time to apologize for the lack of comic updates. It's just one of those "I just need to sit down and write out some dialogue" things, but my mind just isn't up to the task. I'm hoping not to take more than a week. Also bonus, production will be slowing down at work toward the end of the month, so I'll be getting some free time, and, dammit, I'm gonna work on something! Of course, that's what I said about this weekend, too... =P

So, let's see...stuff...

Doing my usual radio surfing, trying to avoid the stations that have converted to 24/7 Christmas music for all of December. Unfortunately, one of these stations happens to be one of the few that come in clearly during my entire commute, so that kinda sucks. The trick (for me anyway) is to try and find a less-traditional XMas song to enjoy. One such song is "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch". Now, I don't think anyone will deny that this is considered an XMas song. The funny thing is, the previous statement is true despite the fact that Christmas is never specifically mentioned during the entire song. Hell, it's not even remotely hinted at. Taken out of context, you can play the song any time of the year...all the song is generally insulting the Grinch, explaining what an awful person he is. The only reason it's considered a Christmas song is that it's part of the "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" special. Funny, huh?

I'm only now starting to get into the XMas spirit. I think that's partly because I was fighting so adamantly not to get into the spirit until at least December 1st (as opposed to, say, October 1st)...and then it's December, so now it's like, "OK, now I guess I can start thinking about XMas." Of course, being isolated during the week and not frequenting the malls also helps...plus our family tends to decorate for the holidays rather late. That is, we still haven't put up our XMas tree. With that being said, in addition to the previous thought, I now present to you Christmas Song that I'm Already Sick Of, and Christmas Songs They Need to Play More Of:

I'm sick of:
- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This would rank #1 (or if not, at least top 3) of my least favorite XMas songs. Not so much that it's a bad song...it's just that SO many recording artists try their hand at it, and EVERY ONE always takes the slow, moving ballad route. This song is hardly ever jazzed up, or made funky, or anything else. No, everyone's always got to belt out the same line: "From now on, our troubles will be out of SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!!!!!!", showing off their vocal talents. Uh huh.
- Traditional Christmas carols. OK, these aren't overplayed as much, but they are stale. Admit it.
- Non-traditional Christmas songs. On the other hand, there are a bit too many songs that recording artists write to avoid the whole carol route. Non-denominational, always about going home for Christmas and being around the fire with family.

Need more of:
- Carol of the Bells. Here's one I'd like to hear more of. Cuz it's KEWL. C'mon, you know you want to rock out to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve and Other Stories." I know I want to.
- God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. This is the style of carol I like...lots of harmonization. Plus, it's the only XMas carol to specifically mention Satan by name. See also "The Holly and the Ivy".

Now, returning to TV XMas specials...I watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special the other night. More out of the reason that it's one of the few specials that everyone still enjoys, and is now getting some more airtime, so I thought I'd watch the whole thing (and not fall asleep during Linus' speech) to refresh my memory. And the funny thing I got from that was this. The basic story behind it is that we need to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas, since it's gotten way to commercial. And this was made thrity years ago...notice just how much MORE commercialized it's gotten since then?!

Speaking of old comics (talk about stream of consciousness =P)...
I see a lot of talk about how stale syndicated comics are now. Most of the comics you'll see in the paper either outright suck, or have been around so long that the original writers no longer work on it, either passing the work to minions, or, you know, just dying or whatever. Don't get me wrong, I like "Peanuts" just as much as the nexy guy...as obviously shown by the fact it's still going as "Classic Peanuts". I was thinking about this due to the recent news of the new anthology of "The Far Side" coming out (like, EVERY "Far Side" cartoon ever made, in a 20 pound book for $130), plus Brethed (however his name is spelled...too lazy to look it up right now) coming back to the comic pages, plus the "Garfield" movie coming out soon. Of course, "Far Side" and "Bloom County" seem to be the perennial geek favorites, in addition to "Calvin and Hobbes", and people seem to want them to come back, and I wonder, "Why can't you just let these comics rest in peace?" They've retired, you've been entertained, let them do their thing. Kinda like always asking for Johnny Carson to return to late night. On the other hand, some people need to retire or die...I'm looking at you, Bil Keane. Every day I read "Famliy Circus" (not because I want to...it's just there, staring you in the face...by the time you realize it, you've already read it), I want to put a bullet into each of the kids' heads. I don't mean to get so violent, but c'mon, you know you want to do it too.

My brother and I were talking today, and (for whatever reason) I decided to show him the dreidel I got as a kind of gift. You see, the UMass Marching Band does the Merry Maple festival in downtown Amherst every December...just parade to the common and play Christmas carols. Very casual, and some bandos really get into the spirit...putting on blinking lights and what not. One of the girls I knew, being Jewish, dressed up all in blue and white with gold stars, and handed out some dreidels. Anyhoo, I showed it to my bro, and since he's a bit of a ancient-language buff, was trying to figure out the Hebrew symbols. Looks at one, turns the driedel clockwise to read the next, says "Oops, ought to go this way", and turns it back counter-clockwise. That made me laugh for a good while. =D
posted by Tim at 12:43 AM

Sorry for the lack of blog updates recently. Don't know if anyone cares. Got a couple things circlin' around my head, hopefully I can get them out when it's not late at night and I'm tired. =P

posted by Tim at 2:54 AM