Had to go and get a new video card. The old card is still good, but I didn't like the performance and had the funds to get a new one. Slighty more expensive, but great for its price.
This Gigabyte Radeon R7 240 is apparently made for overclocking. Not really sure I want to mess with the settings though. I'm not keen on this thing burning out due to overperformance…

So after catching up on Game of thrones I'm thinking of changing my user name to Braavos. But that might be a little extreme. Everyone else is like stuck in the 13th century and they're like Italian Renaissance and bankers to boot. Yoo-hoo.

Working on a script for another Belle's Best movie that I've had around for 12 years. It's almost done and it might clock in at under 30 pages. That translates into about 60-70 comic pages for me. Maybe it'll see the light of day before the 22d century.

Watching Queen's Blade and I'm into the second season. Now the translation for the dubbed version is pretty good, but the voice actors are unbearable so it's Japanese with subs. And sorry Oz but it is better written than I can do. I've read my stuff, this is much better. And funny it first appeared in Hobby Japan. That's a magazine devoted to models, R/C, trains. And it's running a comic about busty sword wielding babes who lose their tops as they fight? If anything it shows the ridiculous nature of most fantasy women's costumes. Wouldn't lose that top if you wre wearing something practical like a suit of chain mail or a leather jerkin. But a corset that barely covers your breasts? Yeah, not good.

bravo1102 wrote:
a corset that barely covers your breasts? Yeah, not good.

I realise I'm taking this comment out of context, but even in context it sounds wrong!

—

Weight gain thing - my wife had a temp working in her office last year who constantly bemoaned her inabilty to lose weight. She ate nothing but salad for lunch yet kept piling on the pounds. Only the salad was enough for a horse and dripping in mayonnaise! It's so easy to con yourself when it comes to food.
Last year I had to cut out fats and lost loads of weight just because I had to cut out so many things I would normally eat. A year later I've discoverd countless healthy alternatives so I'll have to watch it doesn't all pile back on again.

—

Something Ozone said about the site yesterday inspired me to start posting a new comic. With mild irony, the site won't let me post a new comic.

Ironscarf wrote:
Weight gain thing - my wife had a temp working in her office last year who constantly bemoaned her inabilty to lose weight. She ate nothing but salad for lunch yet kept piling on the pounds. Only the salad was enough for a horse and dripping in mayonnaise! It's so easy to con yourself when it comes to food.
Last year I had to cut out fats and lost loads of weight just because I had to cut out so many things I would normally eat. A year later I've discoverd countless healthy alternatives so I'll have to watch it doesn't all pile back on again.
—
Something Ozone said about the site yesterday inspired me to start posting a new comic. With mild irony, the site won't let me post a new comic.

I think it was wendys but one of the fast food joints had salads in their ‘most caloric meals’ list, like not one but two of them over greasy burgers. Doesn't surprise me in the least.
Post it here in the thread! :P
—————–
I got called for jury duty again, ARGGGGH. It's such a pain in the ass ,i even check marked the prejudice box to avoid it but apparently thats a load of crock.

Skullbie wrote:

Post it here in the thread! :P
—————–

I got called for jury duty again, ARGGGGH. It's such a pain in the ass ,i even check marked the prejudice box to avoid it but apparently thats a load of crock.

I'll post the comic banner!


—

I was going to comment on the part about your application but now you've changed it - yeah, jury service is a drag and they always need some prejudiced folks, hence the box. I tried to make sure I never got called again by saying how much I loved it and what a brilliant time I had talking the rest out of convicting that guy, just like Henry Fonda did in Twelve Angry Men.
It's a chance to catch up with that book you've been meaning to read at least.

So now I have a typhoon getting ready to hit us. Hopefully it keeps moving fast (or better yet faster) because the sooner the thing is gone, the better. The last tropical storm that hit us slowed down a lot, then transformed into a SUPER TYPHOON which devasted the island in a few short hours (my house got ripped apart).

Everything is prepared, but if this storm does that you probably won't hear from me for a long while. T_T

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Pongsona

Put all your best stuff into storage maybe Lonne? I don't envey you man. :(

————

Scarf, you ARE an awfully decnt fellow! Love that banner, you skill always astounds :D

————

Bravo, I've watched until the middle of Queen's Blade season 2 and I can safely say you're wrong. The writing does not improve one smidge and I KNOW you regularly do better than that.
I stuck with it because of what Skull said, just watching for the bods and trying to ignore the rest, which is hard because it's SO very badly written and clumsy, but those bods ARE compelling.

My number 1 fave character is Echidna, the wild elf, because she's semi bottomless 75% of the time and fully bottomless the rest when her snake undies slither away. That character rocks. Too bad no one ever cosplays her faithfully…
My second fave is the Protean assassin lady because of all the boob squeezing and my third fave is the blacksmith lady because of that ah-mazing bod. :)

Want another good quality anime series to follow?
Angel Beats is very good! A very usnusual take on the old highschool drama, it gets better and better. …highschool hevean, highschool hell, or highschool purgetory?
Black Lagoon turned out to be very compelling and high quality too, but very, very dark (to my mind). A drama action adventure about smugling and organised crime in South East Asia.
Pumpkin Scisors is one you may appreciate for all the 1930s style tanks in it. It's a weird show about trying to restore order in a country during the aftermath of war… Based loosley on 1930s Germany.
Fairy Tail is great if you want a fun, fantasy characher comedy that goes on and on for over 100 episodes. The only disadvantage is the slight “tournament” feel to it as characters grow stranger and have to fight stronger and stronger enemies… always a lame trait.

But, if you want nipply booby action like Queen's Blade, then Seikon No Qwaser is what you seek.
It's very pervy though. NOT Hentai, but about as close as ecchi comes before crossing over.

And that effectively tripled my list of anime to watch. Right now I'm viewing Gunslinger Girl which is gun porn. It makes modern firearms into mecha with very beautifully depicted firearms. And those girls better be cyborgs as some of the guns they fire with no problem would dislocate a pre-teens shoulder.
Just watched Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) for the first time in widescreen and some scenes finally made sense as I saw the other speaking character where before I just heard this voice. Well Oz I must apologize and admit I'm wrong about the language. It's stilted as if it was all dialogue as recorded in writing (period diaries like Fanny Dubberly) It felt like most of people were emulating speeches in Xenophon or other Clasical Literature when recording what someone said and not how they actually said stuff.
(long discourse on other historical inaccuracies deleted like leaving out half the battle of Balaklava like the whole Turkish army, the Thin Red Line, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade and the Charge of theChasseurs Algerins)

*whew!* Lucked out on that one. Watched the storm all night. It veered northward and completely missed us, and has weakened as well.

Of course it's the rainy season now AND there's an el nino going on, so there may be other storms on the way…

Glad to hear that. The worst we ever have to face is a broken fence panel, or maybe a dislodged roof tile. Really bad storms are so rare here they tend to be remembered as The Great Storm Of (insert year). Weather is definitely changing though. My plums are reddening earlier every year.

Then you should probably stop going bottomless scarf! Geez…

———–

I'm glad you're ok Lonne! BTW, when are you gonna find yourself a nice waifu? ^^

———–

Ahhhhhh! Thanks Bravo! :D
I took it as being a stylistic approach… sort of like a play. In line with those cool animaions they had. It's a good film but it can be a little hard to get into because of that.
Cardigan did seem to be a horrible dick though.

I tried to get into the Gunsliger girl anime, but it felt too creepy for me… The cold way those girls behaved, the relationship with the older men…
I'm enjoiying the Hagani Next currently! The second season is just as good as the first! Great writing!

I'm really glad you and your house are alright, Lonne!

—

I've been realizing lately that I have no idea how to eat properly. I'm sure they taught us this stuff at some point in school but I dunno. I often get hungry in the afternoons at work so I was looking for a snack that isn't just a bag of sugar or salt and I just have no idea where to start. I suspect that I'm eating too little real food and supplementing with sugary garbage, so it's not just a matter of cutting out the junk…I have to figure out what to replace some of it with.

HippieVan wrote:
I'm really glad you and your house are alright, Lonne!

—

I've been realizing lately that I have no idea how to eat properly. I'm sure they taught us this stuff at some point in school but I dunno. I often get hungry in the afternoons at work so I was looking for a snack that isn't just a bag of sugar or salt and I just have no idea where to start. I suspect that I'm eating too little real food and supplementing with sugary garbage, so it's not just a matter of cutting out the junk…I have to figure out what to replace some of it with.

When you live by yourself cooking is a very valuable skill. Or you can go on a Ramen diet (though the sodium level is pretty high). I find that cooking food for yourself can make it last longer (you take longer to eat it). Fast food stuff tends to be for just one meal, and for the price of one (assuming I have soy sauce and vinegar on hand at home) I could make some chicken adobo which can last me at least 2 days (depending on how much chicken is in the tray you bought).

I'm trying to stay away from rice now. Lots of carbs in that. Maybe corn or green beans (my two other favorites) or mixed vegetables to replace it.

Or maybe a starvation diet will work… y'know. Eat absolutely nothing (just drink plain water) and exercise vigorously…. hmmm (just kidding! that sort of diet is dangerous!)

HippieVan wrote:

I've been realizing lately that I have no idea how to eat properly. I'm sure they taught us this stuff at some point in school but I dunno. I often get hungry in the afternoons at work so I was looking for a snack that isn't just a bag of sugar or salt and I just have no idea where to start. I suspect that I'm eating too little real food and supplementing with sugary garbage, so it's not just a matter of cutting out the junk…I have to figure out what to replace some of it with.

Lonne's advice is good for dinner and stuff but for snacks it's a bit differnt I think.
When at work my goto lunch snack is an apricot bar. It satisfies my hunger, you get fruit… and lots of sugar. But it's pretty good overall.

The things you did as a kid are a good thing to follow though: make a sandwich. It's fairly cheap, you can make them really tasty, it will kill hunger, give you all the nutritian you need, not give you horrible sugary, fatty, salty rubbish, you can transort it and keep it fairly easily…

I found fruit on its own was no good as a snak. It's not filling, and it can do bad things to your stomach. We just digest it too fast.
Nuts could be good, but they can do strange things to your tum if you eat too muh of them and the're prety pricey.
Breakfast bars/museli bars are ok for a while, but they're not that healthy. Good thing to try though!
Peperoni or salami sticks are really unhealthy snaks. :(
Carrots aren't filling either.

I say try sandwhiches. They're an old, old tried and true work snack. :)
If I worked longer hours that's what I'd do.

A good filling fruit: apples. High source of fiber and part of the BRAT diet (bread, rice, apples, toast) that can calm a sour stomach.

Hagani Next is great just wait til you get to the amusement park. Gunslinger Girls is interesting to me because it really has some insights into child psychology and objectification. I've read studies about brainwashing disadvantaged kids and using them for stuff like this. The series really does a good job avoiding loli references. It starts to get interesting in the second season because the children get desperate for physical contact like a hand on the shoulder which is strange as the series is set in Italy because Italians can be very touchy feely.

But then you realize it's not the culture it's in the character of the men involved in the program. These are men who aren't touchy feely and have difficulty with relationships. Forget the sexual and think about it in the context offratelloor sibling relationships. That's a problem many in the west have. We forget that sometimes sex just isn;t in the relationship. And we end up like the toxic men in the Rape Zombie movies where every female is just an object for rape. The Rape Zombie films have some good satire on otaku and moe but are really awful otherwise.

I still find it creepy. Not in a sex way, just because it's cold, emotionless children working as assasins with those men as their farther figures who they look up to and respect.

Apples are prety low energy. Back many years ago when I was studdying art I used to always have a bag of apples with me in my studio that I could raid for snacks. I used to eat them down to the core. Not that filling though. It might depend on the kind of apple?
I prefer small, sweet, red flowery ones. Everyone here seem to love the bigger, sourer, crisper, juicier green granny smith apples, or pink ladys, which are just really sweet granny smiths.
Golden delicious are prettty nice.

Newtown Pippins are my favourite apples but you have practically no chance of finding one. They were replaced at the greengrocer by Granny Smiths, which are not as good.

Sandwiches are a great option and you can vary things by using different types of bread or wraps, pittas etc. For snacks I like to mix dried fruit and nuts together in various blends, or sometmis eat those ryebread things with cottage cheese and something like tomato, chives or chocolate fudge. That last one was a lie.

My local supermarket also does nice salt and vinegar rice cakes.

—

Went down to the shed this evening and Cynthia was hanging from the roof as usual, but instead of scooting across to the corner as she normally does, she just kind of hung there. It was getting dark but there was something wrong about her posture. She'd lost that spidery poise. I gave her web a shake but nothing. Not a twitch.

I'd like to think that's a discarded exoskeleton hanging there, but I know what those look like. I'll investigate in the morning, but right now I can't escape the conclusion that Cynthia, our faithful old friend, has spun her last silken thread. And now I feel pretty bad about rescuing that moth.

Poor Cynthia the spider :(
R.I.P Cynthia

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!
I like sandwiches but they tend to be more of a meal for me…I'm barely 5'2" so my calorie requirements are probably lower than most people's. Rice cakes are a great idea, scarf! Easy to keep in my desk, too. :) (Sorry about your spider, btw!)

I really don't like apples for whatever reason. I don't mind having a few bits mixed in with other food, but I haven't eaten a whole apple in years. The only exception are the ones from our own apple tree, which are wonderully tart and flavourful. Probably just like with berries, wild ones just taste better.

@Lonne: I haven't had green beans or corn in ages. I should incorporate those into a dinner soon!

ozoneocean wrote:
Poor Cynthia the spider :(
R.I.P Cynthia

She died as she lived- a spider

Tragic! T_T

This vid about Tumblr reminds me of what you guys said about the community at Comicfury:
http://youtu.be/yKC6XmsLWVQ
…also why I dislike Tumblr.
There's good porn there, but original content generally is very low, and there's almost zero commentary, just a gigantic a list of people who shared the posts, which is compltely meaningless and unimportant.

Now onto something that IS important: Pinky TA has updated. ;)
- http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/5462133/

Lonnehart has a point–A week ago, I spent a weekend hanging out with my well-to-do college friends, who all have very high tastes in restaurant cuisine. I decided that it would be the best economic choice to load up on carrots and water before going out so I would end up spending less on food and more on other fun things. Well, after the second day I started getting odd looks because of my choice to eat nothing but veggies and water. The joke of the whole thing was that I felt more energized and less lethargic at the end of each day. When I went out dancing later that evening, I actually got to enjoy myself without feeling that full feeling that happens after a heavy dinner. So this whole carrot experiment taught me two things: 1) Three large carrots are sufficient enough for each meal as long as there is an adequate amount of water. 2) The cost of food is ridiculously expensive especially when it goes through and leaves your digestive system within 24 hours. I still have some carrots in the fridge that I need to blend up to make carrot juice soon. It has just been hard to even think about eating carrots after eating them for
fifty hours straight.

So I started unpacking all the boxes and furniture that I had in storage for one year. It is amazing how much nice stuff I have accumulated over the years. I finally have my desktop computer up and running and the monitor is much larger than I remember. I did buy a pretty slick wi-fi USB drive that is so small, I forget it is even attached to the machine. No more CAT5 or CAT6 wires running through the house! After using a tablet all this time, my computer feels so foreign. I am determined to get better at drawing directly on screen with my old wacom tablet, but the learning curve is pretty high compared to drawing on the iPad.

Other than that, I have been spending the last two weeks driving, going to the beach, and hanging poolside. I am trying to fix my uneven tan lines I started earlier in the summer.

ozoneocean wrote:
I still find it creepy.

I finished the series. It isn't creepy what you mentined was one of the main points of the series. That these people are cold and have troulbe with interpersonal relationships even if they aren't with conditioned gun toting cyborgs. And just how do you define person? And what is condiditoned behavior and what isn't? Cultural conditioning? How much of our behaviro is conditioned like those cute little cyborgs that need to please everyone and just want a kind word? All kinds of stuff about childhood development and adult-child relationships going on that could get lost behind the guns. But then some readers only got the creepy doll fetish out of the Robofemoid series and didn't get the satire and insight into objectification versus empowerment and male-female relationships.

You know that could be a Quackcast topic. Subtext and meaning in comics. Do your comics mean something more than just a story?


Red delicious. They can be huge but you have to live where they grow them. I love Granny Smiths the best. I grew up in apple country NJ with Red Delicious and MacKintosh orchards nearby in Colts Neck. I used to get full-size Granny Smith not the bite size ones you see imported from Washington and Australia. But the thing about exporting fruit, a lot of times growers keep the good stuff local and the bad stuff gets exported. Even if they tell you otherwise ain't necessarily true. I've been to local farm markets and seen these great huge firm tomatos and the same grower sells to the local supermarket and the tomatos are tiny and squishy (as opposed to juicy)

Bravo, that is so interesting that you would say that - I'd been thinking we could do a Quackcast on Theme. Sounds like a great topic!

Skullbie wrote:
She died as she lived- a spider

I can confirm that Cynthia has gone to the great web in the sky: thanks for all the kind words guys.

—-

That tumblr vid is hilarious. The righteous venom these people spew out reminds me of crazed religious extremism, but without the dress code. On second thoughts, they probably do have a dress code.

You're opressing my cisgengerality!

You know, apparently Mavel have made Thor a woman now. :)
I really do think the pro comic scene is totally fucked. They say that the idea is to be more open to female readers… no, it's absoloutely not. If they wanted that they would create a new character. They're falling back on their stupid old marketing tactics of strirring up controversy by messing with an established character to get the blogs buzzing and a few press inches.

Will it work? I don't care, I don't read that stuff… the transparency of the marketing ploy is anoying though. Mainstream pro comics seem to have to jump the shark on a pretty regular basis just to stay on people's rader hese days. That's pretty sad.

I heard something about that - from my 7yr old. The lack of vision and willingness to take a punt on something original is pretty depressing, a cynical marketing ploy as you say.

If they were serious about female readers they'd be studying the boom in young adult fiction, which is largely driven by female readers. I'm not saying we should have a slew of Twilight styled comics - there's plenty of good stuff out there as I've found from the books my daughter is bringing home. Hunger games was great, considering the hype - we need some heroines like that, not sex change superheroes.

Some would argue that sex-change super heroes is precisely what is needed. There is the whole subgenre of transgender supers so might be Marvel going for that. There are plenty of hardcore Norse female characters out there without changing the gender of Thor. Do it to appeal to the LBGTQ and upset the bloggers? Tempest in a teapot to get readers?

And whatever happened to Ms Marvel and She-hulk? They were great female characters. Why transgender unless it's to be transgender and specificially not female.

I think that the whole reason for people “crossplaying” characters like Thor is because it's transgressive and interesting, simply making the character female doesn't do anything at all to adress this aspect
I mean, when people go to watch a proffessional drag show, it's not because what they actually want to see is performers who ARE the gender being impersonated.

On a complete tangent from that, it reminds me of a discussion I had with my dad years and years ago… My dad is all about “real expereince” (as are most people).
Basically his idea that reading a book or watching a movie of some interesting expereince like traveling on a sailingship or scaling a high mountain can only ever be a pale, pathetic, distant reflection of the real thing (my words, not his), and not as “valid”.
MY own contention is that the expereinces are different and non-comaprable, but both are equally valid: you get something very different from reading about an expereince as opposed to participating in it, and niether is superior to the other, they are different activities undertaken for different purposes.

-One example I gave was the expereince of voyaging on a sailing ship as crew, which I've done a couple of times- Reading about that sort of thing or watching in a movie is exciting and cool; watching that ship cut through the water, seeing the crew up high in the rigging furling sails, seeing the big ship tack an manouver to the wind, seeing the ships master issue orders and be obeyed, crew dashing about purposefully, hard at work etc.
-Doing it for real your perspective is completely different; you almost never see the ship swooping gracefully through the waves because you're always ON it. All that beautiful imagery is completely cut off from you. Working in the rigging is hard and exhusting. You don't get orders from the captain or master, you get them from the bosun or bosun's mate… And really the most fun times tou have are eating in the galley or a few snatched moments lying on the deck in the sun doing nothing but staring up at the sky.

ozoneocean wrote:
You're opressing my cisgengerality!

You know, apparently Mavel have made Thor a woman now. :)
I really do think the pro comic scene is totally fucked. They say that the idea is to be more open to female readers… no, it's absoloutely not. If they wanted that they would create a new character. They're falling back on their stupid old marketing tactics of strirring up controversy by messing with an established character to get the blogs buzzing and a few press inches.

Will it work? I don't care, I don't read that stuff… the transparency of the marketing ploy is anoying though. Mainstream pro comics seem to have to jump the shark on a pretty regular basis just to stay on people's rader hese days. That's pretty sad.

At least they're being a little more honest about it this time. ‘Black spider-man’ was initially advertised as a complete reboot - what did it end up being? The first issue was an unintelligable flashback to peter parkers deal with the devil or whatever the fuck. Basically you could not read that issue without knowing the last 40 clusterfuck issues of amazing spiderman. Last thing i've heard was they made miles so retarded everyone hates him and brought back peter. gj