Thursday, September 29, 2005
Here's something I want to know more about.
Drawn referred to it as an 'animated novel' but the site itself just says novel/animation, so I don't really know what it is. However it does look really good and
Nik Daum's stuff in
general is
fantastic. Still, if anyone could illuminate me on Meatland, I'd love to know more.
I was just talking to Ed Godsell, director and co-writer of The Lump (I was the other writer), and he was saying he's just back from it's viewing in the
Manhattan Short Film Festival. You can read an interview with Ed
here, where the interviewer describes the film as "...may be the most grotesque film to ever be a finalist in the Manhattan Short Film Festival." Myself, I thought it was a sweet tale of two people finding...er...something or other. We're, also, off later to shoot some more footage on our
Cork City FC documentary.
Monday, September 26, 2005
It's kind of apt that, on the day that
General John de Chastelain announced that the Provos had decommisioned their arms, I should find
this over at
BoingBoing. The amateur photographer in question, a Dutch lass named Sasha,
explains in more detail on her
blog.
There are some very striking images there. On the subject of the decommisioning, I was watching the press conference and I couldn't work out why so many of the journalists in attendance felt the need to ask the same question over and over again. Do they get paid a bonus for asking a question or something? Maybe, they thought if they keep asking they might trip him up and he'll say something sensational. It was just ridiculous to watch and, in the end, I just turned it off because I wasn't actually going to learn anything new.
I have never, never, ever been able to shuffle cards properly. I just can't do it but now, maybe,
I'll learn how to do it one-handed.
Back when I used to play games on regular basis, we're talking the days of Nintendo64 here, Super Mario Brothers was one of my favourites. I was hugely dissappointed in the movie (myself and a buddy, Wolfe, had many a discussion on how they could have been more loyal to the game on this one) but now maybe the
opera will live up to my expectations.
Friday, September 23, 2005
I really don't think I have much to say today but I feel I can't leave a
new funny cartoon pass by without comment. Especially when Frank is being so
forthright and honest about it's development again. The truth is that the other night it simply seemed like we weren't going to agree on what cartoon to do this week. I know it's probably hard for you to believe that we would disagree over anything but I'm afraid it does happen. So, anyway, I sat down and decided to come up with something new and this is what I thought of - except the wording was a little different. I sent it to Frank and he liked it. So we went with it. Now it stands as one of my favourites, visually wise. I love the look on Death's face and the way his hands are raised in girlish glee. I also love the Bergmanesque setting. But is it raucously hilariously funny or nice little chuckle funny or even funny at all? I think it's funny, pretty much as funny as you'll fit in a single panel. It's as funny as we do most weeks, at least. It raised a smirk for me and that's about all I expect. Occasionally we do
one that makes me
laugh out loud but I'd rarely describe us as raucously hilariusly funny. Still, maybe that's just me not wanting to laugh at my own jokes.
As for whether it's our most original (another point Frank brought up), I don't know. Sometimes I come up with a
cartoon and I'm reluctant to
use it because I'm certain someone most have thought
of it before(and
sometimes I'm right). Today's one was, I'll admit, one of those occasions but, for the moment at least, I think we caught a
fairly original angle on it. Of course, by talking about it, I'm invariably inviting you all to prove me wrong. Shit!
Don't ask why I was looking at it but
doesn't this sound like the most boring film in existance?
Thursday, September 22, 2005
I watched two movies last night or, at least, I watched one and most of the other. The first was
Changing Lanes, which I'd never seen before and hope I'll never have the misfortune of seeing again. The second I had seen before, and really not so long ago either, but I was happy to sit through it again. It was
Being There, a
Hal Ashby movie starring
Peter Sellars at his finest. The only reason I mention it, besides the fact that I'm just grappling for something to post, is that Being There was this ultra lightweight, amiable comedy that kept you watching right up to the last shot and Changing Lanes was meant to be this taut, heavyweight thriller/drama with something to say about...well, something anyway I'm sure...but after an hour or so I was playing snake on my mobile phone. What's my point? I don't know. Maybe I don't have one, I rarely do.
Just noticed today,
Cowpunch has had a redesign. It's looking much cleaner now and the comics there are well worth a read.
A
funny post over at
Comixpedia about some manga publisher's 'innovative' idea of releasing a page a day of some of their new titles on a website. Remember the name, Del Rey, because it looks like they've just invented the webcomic.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Before you bother reading the rest of this dirge, I'll just point in the direction of the
latest Alien Loves Predator. It's quite possibly the best so far and certainly a long ways better than reading this.
I got an email through the site (
from this guy) the other day, asking do we do Star Trek parodies. And for a moment, I'll admit, I had to think about it. The fact is though, we don't and probably never will. It's just not our thing or, at least, it's just not my thing. I really shouldn't drag Frank's good name into this. Anyway, it's not so much that I wouldn't do parody but that I just don't really do pop culture references. If you're looking for that sort of thing, take a look at
Voices In My Hand (
as if just to illustrate my point) and, I'm guessing, a few other spots around the olde internet. Even if I wanted to, and Lord knows it could do wonders for our street cred, my knowledge of these things is pretty surface dust. I'm not a Star Trek fan, I have grown a near pathological dislike of Star Wars, I thought Kill Bill was boring, 24 is excruciating, Lost is almost worse, Irony leaves me cold, I haven't read a new comic in years and the last cd I listened to was
The Best Of Luke Kelly (it was either that or
Divine Madness but I was in a Luke Kelly kind of mood). I just don't have geek-chic. I know it's an appalling thing for someone, who writes funny single panel cartoons on the web, to admit but it's true. There you have it. I should point out though, as an aside, that Frank has oodles and oodles of geek-chic.
And just to finish off on a cheery note -
transcripts and mp3s of cockpit recordings and air traffic control tapes. Almost certain to be disturbing.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
When I come across
blogs by people in any area of the service industry, a slight shiver runs down my spine. Why? Because, without ever wishing to be, I seem to have a knack for being rude in a very dismissive, disinterested manner and people in the service industry usually pick on that sort of thing. It's never meant but, somehow, I don't imagine they'll ever stop to draw it to my attention so that I can apologise -
like some people I could mention. I've also been known to ignore people on the street but that's a story for another day.
Webcomic
You Damn Kid, by Owen Dunne,
has been optioned for television by Fox TV.
Most of probably haven't realised but Frank has a
poker blog because, I guess, since he doesn't drink or smoke, he needed some sort of vice to fill the void and gambling's as good a one as any. Anyway, I suppose to pay his mounting gambling debts, he's started designing poker based t-shirts through both
cafepress and
spreadshirt. I'll be watching with interest to see how the spreadshirt shop works out.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Ok, I went AWOL on Friday. Very hungover.
City lost. Roddy Collins is an ignorant langer. That's an end to that.
Watched
Liverpool v. Man. Utd yesterday and I have to say it was one incredibly dull game. Usually, it's a high paced, pulsating affair but not yesterday. It was so dull, we got more entertainment out of the stream of lasses coming in, from the
ladies mini-marathon, to use the toilet. Just to clarify, I was in a pub; there wasn't a stream of lasses walking into my flat to use the toilet.
Caught this through
BoingBoing,
Worth1000's
lastest photoshopping contest.
There are some very impressive entries.
We're also still battling away on to fronts at the
webcomic battle.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
This is how shallow I can be. I'm on
Blogexplosion, surfing through the myriad of different blogs they've got there and suddenly I realise I'm not surfing through BE anymore - I'm after wandering off.
Here's where I ended up. Nothing particularly shallow about that. Nope, there isn't but, then, I retrace my steps to find that I've also been
here,
here,
here,
here and
here. All of which I found through
this and I only ended up here because
this lass looked striking enough to stall me long enough to read her blog (that and
this being the top post). That's how shallow I can be but, to be fair, my shallowness serves me well sometimes. If I wasn't that shallow, I wouldn't have stopped
here long enough to read about the
IE View plug-in for Firefox. Which is a very handy liitle number. Oh yeah and all the sites in question are worth a browse but that could just be me trying to detract from my shallowness.
Here's an interesting one, liberal humorist, author, musician and radio personality
Garrison Keillor has sent a
'cease and desist' letter to a
blogger over
this. I'd like to know how this is could be construed as anything other than parody and why anyone would draw this sort of hostile publicity on themselves. I've always imagined that when large, faceless organisations do this sort of thing it's because of some over zealous middle-management or something but this I don't get.
City v. Slavia Prague tonight. So, likely as not, I'm going to be hungover and ranting about that here on Friday.
Well, it's the day after
one (Liverpool's) European game and the day before the next step in
Cork City's European adventure - so it's kind of hard to keep my mind focussed on much else. Still, the site refurbishment seems to have gone quite well. A couple of glitches popped up here and there but, by and large, we're pretty happy. Of course, the rss feeds have changed address, so anyone using an rss reader to view the cartoons will have to change that. We're sorry if this caused you any inconvenience but it really was neccesary to get all the background to the site more organised.
Zoinks Magazine #1 is set to ship at the end of the month. So if you haven't got an order in, get one in now. If you subscribe before Friday (16 Sep), $1 of your order will be donated to hurricane relief. The magazine is also full of interviews, comics and features; so it's worth the money in itself anyway.
The Webcomic Telethon is also in full swing and has, so far, raised over $20,000 for hurricane relief.
Google has launched it's
beta Blogsearch which, as
Tom Raftery points out, is actually a feed search. What interests me, though, is what effect this will have on blogs in the main google search.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Right, new site design up. Frank has put alot of effort, so I hope you like it. There's still a couple of bugs, mostly restricted to Firefox but I've locked Frank back in his room and I'm sure he'll sort it out soon. We don't think any of the cartoon feeds were disrupted but if they were, I apologise, for Frank.
Seriously though, as
Zampon said over at Digital Strips, it's about time Frank started taking more responsibility for what goes on here. Plus you've got to love the amiable, wouldn't-harm-a-fly expression on his face, compared with the cantankerous, vindictive-bastard look on mine.
Friday, September 09, 2005
First off, a lesson in not jumping the gun. I read this
wee piece, at
Modern Humor (humour) Authority, about how some
Ctrl+Alt+Del fan made a short video reenactment of one the strip's storylines for a school project; which he then planned on launching on the internet. He wasn't looking to make money, he made the effort of making sure that, CAD creator, Tim Buckley got full credit and he considered the work to be a tribute to a comic he rated very highly. He didn't, however, ask permission to do it. Buckley responded by calling his lawyers, a reaction that MHA fully supported even though they admitted he was a dick for attacking the fan in the way he did. At first, my reaction was that Buckley was in the wrong, not technically maybe but still in the wrong. But, just in case, I went and I read
through the forum until I found Buckley's response. Then I kind of changed my mind. His response was kind of reasoned, until he mentioned his lawyer but, even at that, he'd explained his reasons and you could understand why he was annoyed. So then I started writing this piece in defending Buckley and explaining why but then I noticed something - "I've said it many times on these very boards, I don't allow anyone to take CAD into their own hands, with the exception of fan art. Especially animation/film." Which smacks of trying to have the best of both worlds - understanding what engaging your fans can do for you but smacking them down, in the sternest way possible, if they crossover the line that you've drawn. In my opinion, a fan's tribute is a fan's tribute - whatever form it takes. In this case, as ever, Tim Buckley is 'in the right' but he's actually wrong.
Rolling Stone magazine is going to
publish a note left by Hunter S. Thompson, for his wife Anita, four days before his death.
We might have some downtime over the weekend, most likely Sunday, as Frank has done a huge overhaul of the site and will be putting it up sometime then. We hope you won't be too put out and that you'll like the new look.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Well, one stunning piece of magic from Henry in an otherwise deathly dull game and it looks all over for our World Cup qualification. Brian Kerr can claim otherwise but we didn't show much last night to inspire confidence. And if five guys, drinking beers and sitting around the telly, in Cork City know that Docherty (a centre-back who abjectly failed to make it in the premiership) isn't good enough a centre forward to trouble the French, then why doesn't the manager of our national team. The one silver lining on the night was that the North beat England 1-0, not that I wish to upset any of our English based readers. It's as much the whole underdog thing, as anything else. Also I'm delighted to see Micheal Owen jumping to the defence of Sven - the
players must share the blame for the defeat. No shit, Micheal. Incidently, just to make this all seem relevant to the funny cartoons, I watched the match with
these guys.
Cork-born footballing legend
Noel Cantwell has died at the age of 72 after a battle with cancer. The former Cork Athletic, West Ham and Man. United defender (and occasional centre-forward) was capped 36 times for his country. He will, forever, be remembered as one of our greats.
You can now get a
Firefox plug-in for the new Webcomics Wiki thingy.
Found through
Warren Ellis,
Scientists have developed an ultra-light limb that they claim can mimic the movement in a real hand better than any currently available. I have the use of both my arms and I still want one. I'm not sure where I'd put it though.
And, while I don't want to start turning this into a babes 'n' football site, a link over at
this is anfield reminded me of something odd. For quite a while after she arrived on the scene, I just didn't get
Scarlet Johansson. I mean, I was willing to acknowledge that she was, for all intents and purposes, an attractive looking lass. However, I just didn't go for her to any great degree. Until recently and now I can't understand what I was thinking because she's a fucking stunner.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
The new webcomics wiki site is up and running at
Comixpedia.org. Set up, largely, in response to
some discussion on
websnark from what I can gather, it looks like it could be interesting. At the moment it's, more or less, just info migrated over from the webcomic section at wikipedia but I'm sure that'll change.
I did this
little test (the first one) over at
this is anfield and, while I don't want to give anything away, I was one of the 2%.
Monstercake is the blog of illustrator Eugene Smith, where he posts illustrations of
some pretty odd looking characters every day.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
I think pretty much most days, I take, at least, a cursory glance over our site stats - mostly looking at referrer traffic. It's always interesting to see what sites are running the cartoon feeds or who might be mentioning us. It's also interesting when you find someone referencing you in a forum somewhere. Mostly you can't just click through to the topic and, therefore, you never get to find out what was being said. But, occasionally,
you do. Now it's been said that I probably take criticism better than I take a compliment, so it's no surprise that I don't mind someone saying we're
cheesy. At times we are cheesy, in particular the
Brian and
Martin cartoons. What got me about that exchange, enough to want to comment on it, was the way the original poster apologises for not spotting the cheesiness earlier; for not having investigated our suitability further before posting. Anyway, yes we'll continue to do some cheesy stuff but I don't think it's
really how you'd define our funny cartoons. I may be wrong. But I also probably don't really care.
On a different matter altogether,
Cowpunch is back. Actually one of the first webcomics I read, it's well worth a look.
Monday, September 05, 2005
I was in having a few scoops in my most
regular haunt last night, when Hughie (the dedicated follower of fashion), quite uncharacteristically, declared that I should get my comics. It took a moment to work out what he was talking about but, as it happens, it was on the barman's t-shirt -
Get Your Comics.com. Apparently, Roger the barman is also Roger the online comic guy. They're only getting up and running and, to be honest, it's that hard training in new bar-staff, I'm not sure I want it to work out for him but I'll give him a plug anyway.
Zoinks! Magazine are pledging one dollar from every single issue or annual subscription, ordered between now and Sept. 16, to the
Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon which was set up by
Blank Label Comics. So now you've got another reason to buy it.
We actually wondered whether our
contentious claim might cause a bit of controversy. Thinking, maybe, that Christians would take offense but
apparently not. We're not Christian cartoons as she says but, yes, if you dig you'll find
we've touched on the subject some. I have to say though that, while Frank would consider himself to be a Christian, I'm hugely apathetic on that whole front. Having said that, we're quite happy to have fans of any religious background.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Right well, I still haven't much to say. We've got a new funny cartoon up and Frank seems to be
boasting about how he tricked me into letting him do it his own way (after his almost obligatory complaint about how hard I make his life). To be fair, if he'd done it the way I'd pictured it he'd be a genius, which he obviously isn't. No, actually, it looks really good even if I'd never pictured it with Native Americans.
A picture of
a fat jockey on a fat horse - just because it exists. It's all a part of
this - a showcase of CG imagery.
We'd still like to hear about your
top ten favourite funny cartoons. Well Frank would anyway, I'm just filling in space. You could also do us a favour by
voting for us here but I know you won't because you never do. Frank honestly believes people read this part of the site. Which means I've just got to keep plugging away at it until he comes to his senses.
Oh and don't forget to put in your order for
Zoinks! Magazine - the relaunch special offer means you can get 8 issues for the price of six.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
So, I was browsing through files on the machine I work on, just to do a bit of a clean up, when I came across a copy of my last aborted attempt to write a novel. So, partly because I'm too lazy to think of something proper to post and partly because I'm very fond of them, I'm posting the first couple of paragraphs here.
Alf Schaffer woke abruptly, coated in a thin layer of sticky sweat. A bad drunken nightmare. Eleven-thirty, his bedside clock read. His head pounded and his mouth felt like he'd been sucking concrete blocks. He threw his bad leg over the side of the bed, followed by his good one. He stopped and wondered for a moment. How come, while everyone else had a right and a left leg, he only had a good and a bad one? He had a left and a right arm, just like other people. Left and right feet even. But not legs, only good and bad there. Hangover thoughts. He must have thought it a million times before; it just never stuck in his mind. It probably wouldn't this time either.
He pulled a cigarette from his bedside table, lit it and stood up. Taking a long, satisfying drag, he looked across the room at the full-length mirror he had propped haphazardly in the corner. He was a mess. His left eye was puffed up like a balloon and his mouth, though it was healing up a bit, still looked like some prehistoric crustacean had crawled up and died on it. The rest of his face belied his thirty years, bearing the wear and tear of a man twice his age, three times even. His body, bad leg not withstanding, was out of shape and had the scars of far too many fights; the souvenirs of too many smart remarks passed at inopportune moments. Suddenly there was a noise out in the hallway. A phone ringing. A door opening and closing. Bare feet shuffling.
'Yeah, I'll see if he's up,' he heard a young woman's voice say. Then the bare feet shuffling up to his door. Three solid knocks-'You up?'
'Coming,' he stubbed out his cigarette and limped out into the hallway. One of the young college girls from down the hall was standing outside his door, wrapped in a pink dressing gown.
'It's the phone for you, some…' her voice trailed off as her jaw dropped to within inches of the ground. At first, he just assumed the poor girl was shocked by the state of his much withered body, but then a sharp rush of cold air rising up between his legs served to illuminate him. Unfortunately, his memory bore many scars of it's own.Aside from that you should check out
The Cyber-Pope's theory of creation. He's got me convinced.
