Wow, so Penny Arcade’s “Child’s Play” earned $310,000.
That’s astronomical. Good job, guys.
New link: The Webcomics Examiner. It’s only going to be issued quarterly, but right now they have a Best Webcomics of 2004 article up, some I’m going to cut short my blog and go check them out. Most of them are subscription though, which makes baby jesus cry.
This evening last, from about five o’clock on,
I spent many indelibly delightful hours perusing a
new (to me) webcomic and investigating yet more new musics.
Perhaps now my favoritest webcomic of all time
(right up there with Something Positive!) is:
(drumroll)
Questionable Content. It is, simply, ingenious.
And my favorite new musics I found, so far, is Nellie McKay.
She’s a delightful medley of soul, jazz, showtunes and hiphop;
try to rap your brain around that one.
Catchiest, happiest song ever, with a silly flash.
Finally, I’ve linked to a new blog, Lohans’ World.
I discovered Questionable Content through her link,
so just for that she gets mad props.
Reading all 260 (or so) strips of QC in a night, and the joy I derived from it, made me realize how wonderful a good webcomic can be. As such, I’ve decided that I may try one, completely solo, despite the fact that I can’t draw worth snap, just to see how it turns out.
If I do, you’ll be the first to know about it.
Other webcomics I am investigating for permalink worthiness:
I’m sure I could find more, but that seems like enough to keep
me occupied for quite some time, if not … ETERNITY!!!
Oh, and before I forget, I also linked to Websnark.com,
which is a blog all about webcomics. How cool is that!?
The last two days have been gloomy-gloomy,
with little hints of teasing sun, poking through;
an hour here, an hour there. It’s been chilly,
but I don’t dislike it. This is weather I know.
Poking through some old Diesel Sweeties today,
I ran across this and this, which I thought cute
enough to share with you, the rest of the world.
Yes, I’m thoroughly addicted to web comics.
They’re the best thing since ralley monkeys.
If you loved the 80s, you should buy a memento.
Had I the money, I would buy about a hundred of them.
Who knew I was such an 80s dork?
I really try to stay out of political debate. Everyone’s got their opinions, and most of them aren’t going to change. But I ran across this article from The Independent Weekly, and had to post it. I discourage any of my conservative friends from reading it, though I realize you will anyway.
Leaders like G.W. and (yes, it’s a fair comparison) Hitler rise to power by exploiting the support of the weak and stupid, so it’s in their interest to encourage weakness and stupidity. That’s where universal education becomes a threat. Education encourages creative thought. Creative thought empowers people. Fascists hate creative thought. So it’s incredibly convenient for the GOP that you folks actually want your kids to be dumb. Which is why the No Child Left Behind initiative you endorse has, in fact, done nothing! Happy? Perhaps ignorance really is bliss.
On a much, much lighter note, this made me shoot milk out my nose, if I’d been drinking milk, anyway. I mean, what’s lighter than Hello, Kitty? It’s so light, it’s almost gone all the way around to the dark side, really. Oh, and speaking of the dark side…
In the mornings, I invariably make coffee,
strong, strong coffee; and listen to Diana
Krall sing some great jazz in DTS.
The music really fills the house, and it’s
a great way to start a day. I got a Norah
Jones SACD, but I can’t get any volume out
of it. Saddest thing ever.
So we picked up Burnout 3 yesterday, thanks
to the rave reviews of Tycho at Penny Arcade,
and I’d just like to take this opportunity to curse
him for being right. This game has everything a good
racing game should have, including the wanton destruction
of, well, everything, including your opponents,
and vast hordes of rush hour traffic.
Theo, at least, had the good sense to go out
on a date, have some dinner, see Arts Walk.
All things I had certainly planned on doing,
once, long before Burnout took me in its clutches
and forced me to play it all freakin’ day.
I feel so used; good thing I have to work today.
Work: the anti-crack.
Darbey Conley can do amazing things
with four little panels. Be sure to check
out today’s comic if you haven’t.
It’s pure genious; like smores.
Also pure genious: tokyoplastic v.2.
So, waiting by the phone for my big lunch date.
A few butterflies, but mostly a solid calm.
I haven’t even had the date, yet it’s already
been a positive experience for me;
an excellent chance to examine my thoughts,
question my ideals and assess my values.
You know, all that stuff.
There’s a lot still there to learn and
my faith in the beauty of this world is unshakable.
Carpe diem. That’s the short, latin version. I like the american version by Bill Watterson, too.
Calvin: ‘My elbows are grass-stained, I’ve got sticks in my hair, I’m
covered with bug bites and cuts and scratches…
I’ve got sand in my socks and leaves in my shirt. My hands are
sticky with sap, and my shoes are soaked! I’m hot, dirty, sweaty,
itchy and tired.’
Hobbes: ‘I say consider this day seized!’
Calvin: ‘Tomorrow we’ll seize the day and throttle it!’
Well, my day was not precisely throttled. I’m sorry to say I spend it feeling unwell, physically, and very reflective, mentally (not so sorry about that part). Reading back on old writing, some dating back to 1995, always reminds me of how foolish a creature the human is … or if nothing of so broad a scope, how foolish I am, particularly. On the bad days, this gets me down. On the good days, I revel in it. After all, the implication of looking back on your life and not feeling foolish is that you have not grown, not changed, and can’t blush at your own naivety because you have not yet realized and overcome it. This victory, of course, only heralds in new battles, more naivety … of a heightened kind, maybe so and maybe not, but new. Every day IS a new day, and we awaken as new people not only every morning, but every hour and every minute. What I am now is not what I was even 30 seconds ago, where I was only beginning to formulate a thought that the present me has already had and the future me will one day have long since forgotten.
Today, I work in a library, and it is, in many ways, a standard 9-5 type of job. Tomorrow I may be in my car driving to New York to make my living as a street poet. That there is only a tiny fraction of a percent of a whisper of a chance that that might in fact come to pass does not really lessen the idea as a possibility.
And the point is, we have choices. Not just little choices like: “What tie shall I wear today?”, or “What shall I have for dinner this evening?”. And not only big choices like, “What will I do for a living?” or “Should I ask her to marry me?” In every second of every day there are a million (literally) and more choices waiting to be made, turned down, ignored, hesitated upon, and overlooked. Every positive choice I make is a million negative choices at the same time. That I choose to type this also means I’m choosing not to get a drink of water, not to write something else, not to watch TV or read a book, get more firewood, build a swimming pool, go for a walk, move to New York, call a friend, learn to speak Polish, buy a gun, kill someone, overthrow the political system, streak the town or go out dancing. If you think about it, the amount of “no” you say everytime you say “yes” is staggering.
The point of all this is that maybe some of the “no” should become “yes”. I think a lot of people make decisions because they don’t realize that there are other, valid choices out there. I feel secure in my choices because I am willing to recognize the other possibilities. I am happy doing what I do because I choose to do it, out of a million other things I could be doing. Most of the time, saying “no” to a choice is subconscious, an automatic response that accompanies saying “yes” to another choice you may have grown so accustomed to making that you have, in your own mind, raised it from beyond being a choice to now just being “how things are”.
“How things are” is a lie. It’s a comfort we want to use because we are afraid, as Mandela says, not of our weakness but of our great strength. It’s not scary to have no choices. What’s frightening is having countless choices. Each of us is nothing less than a god, with complete dominion over the most essential: ourselves.
You are responsible for every minute detail of your life. You can change, and you can stay the same, and either involves making one or numerous choices. There is ABSOLUTELY no such thing as being powerless, especially not concerning who you are.
In twenty years, I’ll look back on writing this, and I’ll surely feel foolish for sounding like a damned fortune cookie. But I chose to write this, instead of a million other things I could have done, and I’ll not regret that.
“Action is choice; choice is free commitment to this or that way of behaving, living, and so on; the possibilities are never fewer than two: to do or not to do; be or not be.” -Isaiah Berlin, From Hope and Fear Set Free
In the end, all it is: carpe diem.