Looking forward to the cast as well and attempting to regear myself to making webcomics again. Of course I have… distractions… that slow me in that department. Namely Star Trek Online and SSX for the XB360. I have yet to explore the online aspect of that game, but the feeling of speeding down a snow covered mountain is nice…

Close to getting a Defiant class ship dilithium-wise. Gotta grind that stuff to buy the currency needed to buy those special ships… the same currency that you can actually drop $$$ for if you're rich enough. Not that you need to though…

I played Star Trek Online for less time than it took to load it. My computer and internet slowed to dial-up speeds just after I had gotten the speed up again after dumping the old security software.
So away went Star Trek. For a brief time I had the USS Vladimir Rusen (named for my great uncle who died on Iwo Jima) I'd rather have the computer working nice and clean than have a time chomping obsession of an online game. Besides there's always plenty of porn to watch and that is what the internet is for. The Internet is for Porn.

So the watermain in Middletown NJ burst and I'm under a boil water emergency for the foreseeable future along with 20 other towns in the heart of NJ. Any NJ/NY DDers want a roommate for like the next couple of months till I get drinkable water again? And the wife is going to some awesome water park today and I'm not because I hate water parks. Don't worry the water park is not in the affected area of NJ so she'll have drinkable water today.

My favorite co-worker got fired. I really liked her as she was pleasant to talk to but the residents formed their lynch mob and got her just the same as they try for every security guard at one point or another. I love selective memories. “Oh they all like you…” Right, I remember the mob that was after me. I had to drive my car off a bridge to throw them off my trail and let them forget the nasty security guard and come back as the poor guy who had the car accident after working the double shift. How we remember the past is always being rewritten by how we are living the present. That is human memory.

That fuzzy memory stuff is annoying. It allows people too forget the fact that George Bush Jnr launched the developed world into not one but two useless, pointless wars a decade ago in which we are still stuck today, wasting billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, as well as permanently handicapping the US miltary by making it unable to have enough money for new weapon systems because they have to spend it all on replacing current working equipment and used munitions… and they blame Obama for that.

Ah whatever. >:[

I have a cold. I'm sick. I feel week. My throat hurts. I sound like a girly Bruce Sprinsteen. Grr. Cough, splutter, cough, cough!!!!!
cough

The Quackcast is out!!!! http://www.drunkduck.com/quackcast/episode-84-barb-jacobs-and-her-beautiful-comics
My voice is a bit different doing the feature and the joining bits because the cold was just taking hold of my voice when I did those.

I have a rather unpopular theory that the average human memory has a limit of about 4 months of the media not covering a topic… 2 months if a big news story hits. My proof?
-Killer Bee plague before 9/11
-Mexican Drug War
-Georgia
-North and South Korea conflict
-Lockheed Stealth blimp being mistaken for a UFO… twice
-there's probably a lot more like this but I'm in class right now and have a headache :P

I have officially been sick for two and a half months in a row spanning four different ailments… two of which being infections.
I'm currently under the impression that if I didn't have medical insurance, I'd probably be dead 8|

ozoneocean wrote:
That fuzzy memory stuff is annoying. It allows people too forget the fact that George Bush Jnr launched the developed world into not one but two useless, pointless wars a decade ago in which we are still stuck today, wasting billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, as well as permanently handicapping the US miltary by making it unable to have enough money for new weapon systems because they have to spend it all on replacing current working equipment and used munitions… and they blame Obama for that.

Ah whatever. >:[

And where does the constant re-writing of human memory and actual myth-making begin and end? I'm not talking “myths” as “false” but as creating a whole tableoux the identifies a group or position as opposed to just presentation of evidence.

The Operation Iraqi Freedom deployment could have been turned around in 18 months if we had fielded the force we had in 1991 as opposed to a bare shadow. Too few boots on the ground leads to a vacuum in which probelms will develop that make ending an operation impossible. You can't destroy a nation and not have troops in place to pick up the pieces. And now that shadow has faded even more. Fortunately the US has enough force multipliers to make testing its length of reach very painful so no one wants to be the first to test just how weak it is. But it will be subjected to a major test and the force needed to be successful will be lacking or maybe that's already happened and the US just isn't ready to admit it yet.

When you study the history of the Roman Empire, the US's current state kind of makes a lot more sense… What I get annoyed with though is when countries like Britain, the US, Russia, Holland, etc try to “civilize” the world by putting their politics on other countries… I mean I sometimes understand the thought behind it (though sometimes I think it's more out of bitterness) but how many problems were sparked by this? Native Americans scalping, Rwandan Genocide, Vietnam, North and South Korea, the people in power who attacked the US have already been proven to have been put in power by the US…. I mean I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing but does the intentions justify the end?

That's a cycle as old as time though, isn't it? You brought up the Romans: look at what happened to them from all those people they tried to “civilise”. :)
I mean, they did some nasty things to the Celts in Britain, but the Celtic population was pretty fricken horrible themselves…

And re- American Indian people and other native peoples around the planet; there's this strange utopian idea that before Europeans interfered that all native people everywhere were largely peace-loving, living in harmony with each other and their environments, with only ever token skirmishes and maybe some ritual violence at most.
But I know of nowhere were that was ever the case. Different tribal groups and empires always competed for land and resources and where there was apparent peace and stability for a decent amount of time it's usually because the strongest group committed genocide on all their rivals.
Even native Australian Aboriginals made war on each other.

That said, it in no way excuses European invasion and exploitation, quite the opposite- since if you think you're more advanced and superior (which they were only in terms of technology) you have a responsibility to act with ethics and compassion.

…./rant
hahaha, sorry. it's late and I'm not sleeping well here tonight :P

Hah! Trust me I definitely don't believe in Utopian civilizations… Actually I don't think we'll ever reach one in the future either. It's just always a goal we need to keep striving for even if we'll never reach. The Native Americans weren't even the “first people” as we call them. There's so much proof of nations older than them that were wiped out by them. So ya. Like anything it wasn't a utopia… but then the different nations which were split because of Russia and the US' war of Democracy vs Communism…. even go back to the French Revolution… why is it that the first thing nations seem to want to do once they get the freedom to rule by their own government is force other nations to do as they do?? I'm not saying they have no good reason or that they do… just it seems a little… self contradictory…

Well that “freedom” stuff is mostly bullshit, it just means “I'm the boss now, you can do as I say for a change”.
It's an interesting concept, I think the problem is that we only look at it one dimensionally: “I was oppressed, now I'm not, so I'm free!”
We don't really consider what “freedom” actually means- the meaning I mention initially.

In that sense “freedom” is much worse than “oppression” since it sets free a monster.
Interesting philosophical concept.

heh… growing up I experienced “freedom” to an extent… a world where people didn't feel constrained by laws, morals, or even humanity…. it really isn't all that pretty… actually it's probably the largest nightmare you can go into.
.
People argue for freedom when really what they want is responsibility in charge. Even a slave can have an amazing life if the master is good to them. The problem is that no government works perfectly because greed, selfishness, lust for power they all get in the way every time. And anarchy??? well… trust me that doesn't end well… at all.

“Free-dom? Free-dom Yang worship word! Yang worship!”
ST:TOS: The Omega Glory
You could read a lot into the portrayal of the Yangs in that episode as what things like “freedom” are supposed to mean as opposed to how a great National myth is written around it. Look at Kirk's speech at the end where he tries to strip away that myth to get back to what it all first meant… the myth of E Pleb Neesta as opposed to “those three words written larger than the rest” WE THE PEOPLE… and how the Yangs had mis-remembered their history and needed to rediscover it themselves.

To go back to Rome that is what many classic Roman political writers were trying to get across. The whole movement to get back to core values, except I'd argue that the ancient Romans had a better handle on their history and their nation's core values than the USA does.

Sorry to pop in unexpectedly…

Can anyone tell me from this horribly grainy photograph what you would call the type of hat these men are wearing?
They're construction workers around 1912…



I want a hat like that but I don't know what to tell the hat lady I want.
(Oz? I'm lookin at you!)

Friken nightmare migraines this weekend. I had no weekend, just pain and vomiting and many, many pills. Horrible weekend.



Hippy, great to see you again :)
save this pic to see the bigger version. I've worked it out to the best of my ability, but Bravo might be better than me at this, I dunno.
From a first view they looked like fur hats to me. Close in though most seem to be the squarish short peaked style cap drill cap popular with many armies:
http://www.surplusandoutdoors.com/shop/army-surplus-uk/army-hats-headgear/military-style-cotton-drill-combat-480858.html

One looked like a flat cap of the older, floppier style, not like those teeny things with the hidden bill that are all you can get today. Sort of like these:
http://www.glenalmond.com/shop/acatalog/FLAT_CAP.html

Lastly the others are both probably simply military style berets. BUT the one worn by the foremost man could be a visor cap or “captain hat”. I think it's probably just a military beret though.

The drill caps can also be “forrage caps”, but “forrage caps” comprise so many different styles and shapes depending on the country they came from and the time that it's best to go for Drill cap. :)

Thanks, ozone! The drill cap is the sort of thing I'm looking for. At least now I'll have somewhere to start when I go to the hat shop. For such a simple hat, it's surprisingly hard to find a nice one. The hatmakers all want to get fancy with tweed and suede and stuff(I guess they can charge more then). Flat caps are the big things right now, and I don't really care for them.

The construction workers look Eastern European from the collection of a “captain” peaked caps, tweed flat caps, tyrolian peaked hats and even a Polish pokalem? (the beret) The Pokalem could also be a sailors flat round hat or a Tam.
In 1912 the beret was still in it's infancy still being the small floppy hat with the stem as in France and the large floppy Pokalem from Eastern Europe. The peaked hats with no round crown are probably tyrolian alpine hats as worn by contempoary Austrian-Hungarian soldiers. A big floppy envelope style hat was worn by comtemporary Poles, Hungarians and Serbs. It could also be bag shaped as in the pokalem which was a big unshaped proto- beret. The “captain” round crowned peaked hat was contemporay Russian. The peaked tweed hat was universal.

I'd say if you were walking by you'd hear Slavic languages being spoken. Who knows maybe there are some Rusens, Evankos and Havrilchek's in there.

Well I finally got this week's Quackcast in the can, ready to go live tomorrow! This week lba (Alex Groh) talks about his transition from webcomicer to pro artist nd how webcomics played a big part in that, it's pretty interesting.
This Quackcast aslmost didn't happen… due to migraine issues and dodgey connection issues etc, but we finally got it. Phew. Biiiig releif!

bravo1102 wrote:
The construction workers look Eastern European from the collection of a “captain” peaked caps, tweed flat caps, tyrolian peaked hats and even a Polish pokalem? (the beret) The Pokalem could also be a sailors flat round hat or a Tam.
In 1912 the beret was still in it's infancy still being the small floppy hat with the stem as in France and the large floppy Pokalem from Eastern Europe. The peaked hats with no round crown are probably tyrolian alpine hats as worn by contempoary Austrian-Hungarian soldiers. A big floppy envelope style hat was worn by comtemporary Poles, Hungarians and Serbs. It could also be bag shaped as in the pokalem which was a big unshaped proto- beret. The “captain” round crowned peaked hat was contemporay Russian. The peaked tweed hat was universal.

I'd say if you were walking by you'd hear Slavic languages being spoken. Who knows maybe there are some Rusens, Evankos and Havrilchek's in there.

It's very likely that they were Ukrainian or Polish immigrants.

Hippie Van wrote:
It's very likely that they were Ukrainian or Polish immigrants.

Which puts them between Minsk and Pinsk and that is how my grandfather explained where he was from. However as my grandmother and aunt explained to me endlessly he was not Polish or Ukrainian but Slavonic or Low Russian. There were Poles, Ukrainians and then the Russians who were forceably resettled by the Tsars to live next to them to Russify the Poles and Ukrainians.

So there are the Ukrainians and Poles proclaiming their ethnic identity and then you say your ancestors come from the same place but are Slavonic Russian, and an uneasy silence settles upon the scene. That is usually broken because everyone can agree how awful the Tsars and then commisars were. Some of my grandfather's family got caught up in that and ended their days in the Gulags.

When it comes to imperial Manifest Destiny of resettling one ethnic group over another by force and or then forcing a group to give up their identity to become another the Russians got the Americans beat.

It is soooooooooo cold and miserable here and I have a face full of snot!!!!!!
ErrrchgharrrrghGURHGGLE

I'm gonna build an ark, already had more than 40 days of rain and it doesn't seem to be stopping.

Going to try for the umpteenth time to get back in the groove of posting on these forums. I miss it. But somehow I keep getting turned off by the little things :(
Also, broken teeth suck. I'm hoping mine will be history after this week.

Tantz Aerine wrote:
Going to try for the umpteenth time to get back in the groove of posting on these forums. I miss it. But somehow I keep getting turned off by the little things :(
Also, broken teeth suck. I'm hoping mine will be history after this week.

Hopefully the breaks, not the teeth!
I broke one a couple weeks ago. I have some cavities too. I'm going to be drilled on Monday for half of them.

Genejoke wrote:
I'm gonna build an ark, already had more than 40 days of rain and it doesn't seem to be stopping.

It's already too late now! Quickly! Rush into your bathroom, unhook your bathtub a hope for the best. Remember to put in the plug.

PP, I hope you duct tape a dragon figurehead to yours :)

Swam by to say hello, hope everyone is well.

Right, back to it.

I'm well, but this thread isn't.


WooooheeeeeeeeOOoooooooooOooooooooooooo…




ghosts

There's plenty to cry, bitch, moan and complain about, but I just don't feel like it.

Other than that, just waiting for the voting to be finished on the DD Awards. VOTE damn you!

Ok, I'll post stuff, because I like this thread :)

I tried to watch Inception last night.
I couldn't get through it all because I started watching it quite late and I needed to get up for work the next day…

Anyway, I got almost all the way through and was fairly disappointed. It had such an amazing reputation but the storytelling is bog-standard “heroes journey”, and I mean to the point of ticking boxes! The story itself is just a pastiche of a typical William Gibson story without the brand fetishism. Exactly- travel around the world, lots of action, cyber-punky computer stuff (albeit with the “dream” idea).

The shooting, hitting, kicking, punching action/editing was really fricken annoying and made it hard to focus on the story, like trying to listen to what someone's saying and having an idiot yelling in the background.

It just seemed to be an exercise in writing a movie around SFX- a story made to show off their clever computer graphics…

Maybe it all comes together better at the end, but so far it just seems a film about clever SFX, really stupid and totally illogically silly ideas about dreams… sort of wanted to be a David Kronenburg film but just getting scared and whimping out.

———-

I don't mean to sound elitist, or pretentious, or “too cool for school”, or hipsterish, or whatever, I was just really genuinely disappointed. People all said this was original and actually clever so I was looking forward to it, but so far it isn't at all. It's just the usual Hollywood fare in every sense.
At least it does have those good effects.