That just makes me think of dogs cleaning themselves XD


As I get older I have less and less interest in sexual things (I do still have a basic level of interest)- which is not indicative of my age because most people I know at my age or much older are still as obsessed by it as ever without any change.
It's probably because it's not something hard to get or mysterious in any way.



Aaaaand I won't go more into that subject because it's inappropriate LOL!
Tomorrow's Quackcast is on the way Intelligence is depicted in fiction and why it's usually wrong. XD

I will say that one of the things I've become displeased with as an adult is that my mind is more apt to wander into gutteral territory because I'm not knowledgeable about this stuff than I was as a kid, and innuedos could fly right over my head.

And I'm getting to the point where sex is merely a way to promote good prostate health. LOL 😆

Hey guys sorry to interrupt the discussion, but if you feel like it consider adding more questions to the interview questions thread!

I still have unused ones, but I'll begin running out soonish. And while it's not a problem, I can come up with questions for creators, I like the uniqueness of these interviews in that they're a composite of the entire DD community.

But again, it's not a problem if you don't feel like it, I'll keep them coming anyway :D

Tantz_Aerine wrote:
Hey guys sorry to interrupt the discussion, but if you feel like it consider adding more questions to the interview questions thread!

I still have unused ones, but I'll begin running out soonish. And while it's not a problem, I can come up with questions for creators, I like the uniqueness of these interviews in that they're a composite of the entire DD community.

But again, it's not a problem if you don't feel like it, I'll keep them coming anyway :D

At this point the biggest challenge for me is not to come up with questions but to read through everything that's already been submitted and find new ones. :D

I really think all the good general questions are done. All I can come up with are silly ones.

bravo1102 wrote:
I really think all the good general questions are done. All I can come up with are silly ones.

Go for it.

Nifty sig banner, Inky!

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Nifty sig banner, Inky!

Thx, took me a few hours. :)

InkyMoondrop wrote:

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Nifty sig banner, Inky!

Thx, took me a few hours. :)

That really is WELL done!
The animation isn't irritating and the file size is nice and small too. It's clever!
Most people aren't smart enough to manage those two very key factors.

That really is WELL done!
The animation isn't irritating and the file size is nice and small too. It's clever!
Most people aren't smart enough to manage those two very key factors.


I basically started experimenting with Filter Forge for my new comic on top of the work I was already doing for editing Blessed Days. So far I only animated character posters, but maybe after the comic is done and I'll have no better thing to do, I'll use it to animate the whole story properly for youtube or something. It was a good investment.

This whole JK Rowling thing with her hating transgender people is so sad and silly.
Why is she doubling down? XD
I mean… just leave it at this stage you crazy person. LOL! History is leaving you behind you fool, you're damaging your legacy. She needs to learn to concede and move on gracefully!
People need to know to do that more these days.

I don't like how it hurts the whole Harry Potter thing too. I couldn't give a crap about Harry Potter personally, I've never read any of it and only seen the first movie, but I know that so many people love it and it was a massive part of their lives so I respect it for that. I think people absolutely need to separate the art from the artist there.
By liking Harry Potter it doesn't mean you support Rowling and by hating it it doesn't mean you hate her, it's a fully separate thing.

Also by not paying for books or streaming or whatever you're not harming her earnings. She's already made all her wealth of it at the stage. More or less money to her is irrelevant.

Because yesterday was International Trans Visibility Day, which coincided with Easter?

Either way, I see somebody has compromised my debit card . . . if this is an April Fool's Day joke, it's a sick one.

Cancel the card and get a new one. Has to be done :)

————

Watched an episode of Banes again- for a show that imagines it knows about science it sure gets a lot of basic stuff wrong!! O_O

In one egregious example the FBI were storming a compound that had automatic mini-guns in places… That's a 7.62mm, six barreled, electrically powered rotary machine gun with an incredible rate of fire.
So this agent gets hit full in the chest close range with a blast of multiple rounds, he was wearing a vest and he survived… some got through and he was bloodied and needed surgery but he lived.

In reality no normal vest will give you any protection what so ever for that. If you hare caught full on with a half second blast from that gun you are 100% dead. That's 50 rounds of full powered long range rifle ammunition. They would have passed through the vest AND his body without slowing down.

Even vests that can stop full power rifle rounds can't do it from that close and never more than 3 at a time.

This just caught me as SOOOooo silly.

Ozoneocean wrote:


In one egregious example the FBI were storming a compound that had automatic mini-guns in places… That's a 7.62mm, six barreled, electrically powered rotary machine gun with an incredible rate of fire.
So this agent gets hit full in the chest close range with a blast of multiple rounds, he was wearing a vest and he survived… some got through and he was bloodied and needed surgery but he lived.

In reality no normal vest will give you any protection what so ever for that. If you hare caught full on with a half second blast from that gun you are 100% dead. That's 50 rounds of full powered long range rifle ammunition. They would have passed through the vest AND his body without slowing down.

He had a layer of plot armor under his vest. 🙄

Dammit! Maitreyi Ramakrishnan stole my joke before I even had the chance to use it! Now I understand how Buster Baxter felt when Binky Barnes stole his King Tut joke.

bravo1102 wrote:

He had a layer of plot armor under his vest. 🙄

A full body suit of it AND massive plot armour ear protection! Without it firing that mini-gun in a narrow concrete basement corridor would have let them deaf for life too XD

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Dammit! Maitreyi Ramakrishnan stole my joke before I even had the chance to use it! Now I understand how Buster Baxter felt when Binky Barnes stole his King Tut joke.

This is all a non-sequitur.
Like… wha…?

Actually have you noticed that people don't preface things with “like” so much anymore? That was a massive and sudden millennial driven fad in the mid 2000s or early 2010s (I can't remember). It was SOOOO annoying but so all encompassing that all the rest of us started doing it too. But now it's not really a thing anymore except for out of touch Gen Xers like me I suppose.

ANother annoying vocal thing that became big with Gen Z was “What EVEN is that”. It just sounds so awkward XD

Okay, so here's some context:

In case nobody here has heard of her, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is a young Indian actress and model from Canada who Mindy Kaling discovered years ago, and has had her starring in a teen drama she's produced for Netflix, and she's been a rising star ever since.

In the latest Steve D'Monster movie I've been working on for the past few years, Steve has been making really crappy artwork to break into the art scene, and during an art show, one of his pieces he was going to show off was a noodle statue he made of Lord Krishna, which he put on a tray, and the joke was he called the piece “My Tray of Ramen-Krishna” (a play on the pronunciation of Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's name). As it turns out, Maitreyi had a Food Network special up in Canada entitled RAMEN-KRISHNAN, so she stole the joke before I could actually use it. The whole situation makes me feel like Buster in the ARTHUR episode where he tried a King Tut joke he made up for an oral exam to Binky, only for Binky to tell the joke before he could, which caused Buster to really lose it.

As for the “like” thing, not only has that been around for a much longer time than you may think, but it seems to be cyclical. I know the hippies used it a lot in the late 60s and early 70s (just look at Shaggy from Scooby-Doo), then it seemed to make a comeback among the young hipsters and cool cats in the late 80s and early 90s when everything was “totally tubular” (speaking of which, “totally” seems to have come back in recent years too), now since the 2010s, it seems to be a thing among valley girls. It's even a TV Trope called Like Is, Like, A Comma.

Apparently, the one verbal tic that people (well, mainly Boomers) have been complaining about (from mainly Millennials) is prefacing things with “so” so much. From my own personal observation, and I know that I'm very much guilty of this myself, is when people preface things with, “I mean” a lot.

Technically if it's a business venture rather than a comedy skit, it's not really meant as a joke and you could still point out how funny it is by making it a joke. Plus you know… it was an original thought, you don't have to feel bad just ‘cause out of the entire population of the planet someone else thought of it before. It’s still valid as humor.

Like OMIGOD! All that without mentioning Moonunit Zappa. The 1980s incarnation like was valley speak and like went national with the song “Valley Girl” from Frank Zappa. It was everywhere and suddenly one was in this huge sea of “like” as the conjunction of choice.
Most humans have some word as a conjunction to tide them over while searching for the next word. Public speaking classes have exercises where you count them as part of the critique. Some people use “um” or “ah” there are extraneous “ands” and “so's” as well as “like” . Ed Koch the late mayor of NYC was notorious for his “ah” but he made it his own. There's also the Canadian “eh” which also includes parts of the US surrounding the Great Lakes made popular with Bob and Doug MacKenzie from SCTV.

And a big RIP to Joe Flaherty of SCTV fame who passed away yesterday at 82. He will be missed. Who can forget Count Floyd the SCTV horror host who introduced such classics as The 3D House of Stewardesses.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Technically if it's a business venture rather than a comedy skit, it's not really meant as a joke and you could still point out how funny it is by making it a joke. Plus you know… it was an original thought, you don't have to feel bad just ‘cause out of the entire population of the planet someone else thought of it before. It’s still valid as humor.

Maybe so . . . but now people will think I stole it from her . . . then again, even if I did manage to complete and release this thing before, people in hindsight would still probably think I stole it from her, because they at least know who she is, while nobody knows who the hell I am, lol.

FWIW, the original joke was that one of Steve's pieces of art was a clay sculpture he made (which was basically just a variety pack of Play-Doh squished together because he didn't know what he was doing and got frustrated), and as he describes the creative process, mentions he felt a lot of achin' as he made it, hence why he called the piece “Clay Achin'.” A pretty good joke, but it nagged the back of my mind that Clay Aiken hasn't been a thing in years, so the joke feels a bit dated . . . the whole My Tray of Ramen-Krishna joke came about as a brainstorm, and with Maitreyi Ramakrishnan being a much bigger star right now, it shows that Steve still keeps up with the times, and it better fits his Casanova Wannabe character since he develops crushes on female celebrities all the time.

bravo1102 wrote:
And a big RIP to Joe Flaherty of SCTV fame who passed away yesterday at 82. He will be missed. Who can forget Count Floyd the SCTV horror host who introduced such classics as The 3D House of Stewardesses.

Or in my case, one of the bad guys from the SESAME STREET movie FOLLOW THAT BIRD, in which he and Dave Thomas are a pair of sleazy carnival operators who kidnap a runaway Big Bird, paint him blue, and parade him around like a sideshow attraction.

If you make a joke about someone who's not very relevant today you might not reach the widest, most up-to-date audience, but the one that would stick would stick because you can get on the same page more easily. Besides… memes killed humor. If you can't make a joke anymore that people would still understand 2 years from now without bitching about how “outdated” it is, perhaps the problem is in our standards.

J_Scarbrough wrote:

Or in my case, one of the bad guys from the SESAME STREET movie FOLLOW THAT BIRD, in which he and Dave Thomas are a pair of sleazy carnival operators who kidnap a runaway Big Bird, paint him blue, and parade him around like a sideshow attraction.

Dave Thomas also played Doug (pronounced Doog) McKenzie from the Great White North eh. Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas also played the two mounties who detain the Eric, Hyde, Kelso and Fez in That 70's Show. Another treat for us 1970s types.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
If you make a joke about someone who's not very relevant today you might not reach the widest, most up-to-date audience, but the one that would stick would stick because you can get on the same page more easily. Besides… memes killed humor. If you can't make a joke anymore that people would still understand 2 years from now without bitching about how “outdated” it is, perhaps the problem is in our standards.

Oh yeah. This is perhaps the most embarrassingly-dated thing I have ever made in hindsight, since the whole thing was basically nothing more than an homage to two then-prevalent memes that I think most of society has all but forgotten over a decade later. . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCS1rKzEeUk

The Valley girl take on it was better because it was cocooned into that particular character and style… the 2000s version was horrid because it spread to everyone, no matter the age or culture :(

bravo1102 wrote:
Count Floyd

:(
I remember him from the Ed Grimly cartoons

We hear a lot about plastic usage and plastic packaging these days. And there are all these wild solutions being proposed all the time…
You sort of get caught up in the idea XD

But then I remembered that back in the 1980s when I was growing up we actually didn't have all the plastic we have now. Even straws were often paper. Shopping bags were paper then, so much food packaging was paper and glass! There were no plastic bottles when I was little: soft drinks, milk, juice was always in glass!

I still remember when plastic bottles were introduced in the mid 80s, we thought it was weird and cheap.
When plastic shopping-bags were introduced we loved it- you could actually carry them by their handles and they were way more useful and reusable, unlike paper bags which were terrible. Most of the time you have to use old boxes.

In the shop food was rarely packaged in plastic.

It really brings to mind the fact that the real issue with plastic usage is NOT individuals in any way at all- it is completely on plastic producers, retailers, and food manufactures. Those c***s are lying in order to retain their profits and make consumers feel guilty and pay for every single little concession they make to green-washing initiatives.

They could very easily god back to using far less plastic, just like they always used to, but it's so much cheaper for them so they don't- Plastic bottles are lighter and far cheaper to ship, plastic packaged food lasts longer so they save on buying fresh food etc. They're all invested in that infrastructure.

But that's not all, simple things like garden sprinklers were never plastic for example, most consumer goods, white goods, and hardware didn't used to have much plastic as part of them, but the use has expanded massively in the last 30 years.

Not to say it's a new issue. A while ago I read a SciFi short story from the 1920s by an Italian author about the disastrous day when everything went wrong with plastic- It had been used for everything from cars to furniture, to artificial limbs, but then suddenly all plastic started to swell and expand like giant balloons and melt together, destroying everything XD

That is so accurate. Being a little older I remember seeing plastic as something rather precious. My grandparents house was devoid of most plastics, but there were door handles from the 1930s made of earlier plastics. They were quite beautiful and clearly seen as something special. You definitely didn't see any cheap product or food item wrapped in plastic.
The change began to happen later in the seventies, with cheap plastics starting to be forced upon us for exactly the same reasons that so called AI is beginning to be forced upon us now. Shareholders benefit, while the rest of us suffer an ever decreasing quality of life. The idea that individuals have some responsibility for this is a classic distraction technique.

I just now realized that even if you guys may not have heard of Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, you might be familiar with at least one character of hers: she was the voice of the Indian goth girl in TURNING RED.

This in and of itself brings me to another subject. I have a confession to make: with the exception of FINDING DORY (and I mainly saw that out of curiosity, as FINDING NEMO was one of my favorite Pixar movies growing up), BRAVE was the very last Pixar movie I've ever seen upon its initial theatrical release (never got around to seeing UP). Honestly, not only has Pixar lost most of its charm in the last decade, but they've also lost all credibility and integrity as they continually succumb to unnecessary prequels and sequels that nobody asked for . . . I mean seriously, TOY STORY 4 was already unnecessary after TOY STORY 3 wrapped up the arc so beautifully; why, why, why do we now need TOY STORY 5?! Come to think of it, DreamWorks has seriously lost all charm as well. I know a lot of it is because the novelty of CGI has long died out, but it's also because once upon a time, Pixar and DreamWorks were the top dogs of CGI animation studios, and they were in such fierce competition with each other, that they always brought their A-game in an attempt to outdo the other with each of their movies. Then Blue Sky came along with the ICE AGE movies, so now there was a third major player in the game, so the competition got a little more fierce. But, as time went by, more and more of these little off-brand CGI studios were opening up and coming out with their own outings, and pretty soon, the market became flooded with subpar CGI movies, that there was no longer that sense of having to outdo the others, so Pixar and DreamWorks gradually became more and more mediocre with what they had to offer.

I do remember though that when BRAVE was first released, my initial thought process was it looked to me like Pixar was trying to come out with its own HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, which IMHO, was one of the best non-SHREK DreamWorks movies of the time . . . and then a friend of mine kinda used my commentary in his own webcomic at the time:

http://idget.keenspace.com/d/20120101.html

But there's also another reason why I haven't seen any new Pixar movies in years: the older I get, the less of a spectator I am; I just really don't go the movies or see shows anymore, because there's no longer a sense of a draw for me, no lure, no excitement, nothing. I think Martin Scorsese said it best when he described the current state of mainstream cinema: everything comes and goes too quickly in this here-today-gone-tomorrow world . . . a movie is released, it may stay in the theaters for a week or two, then it's gone, and that's it . . . in his own words, “There's no nourishment,” and I totally get that. I can't get invested in anything new these days, because they don't stick around long enough for me to really invest in . . . not like the old days when I was growing up, where if a movie was successful, it may remain in theaters for months, giving you an opportunity to go and see it more than once if you wanted to (not to mention going to the movies is a communal experience that adds to the enjoyment). Then, I remember there was always a big waiting period for the movie to come out on home video, sometimes up to a year or longer, but that waiting period always added to the suspense and anticipation of finally being able to own the movies you so loved seeing, and being able to watch them over and over and over again until the point that you become sick of them, stick them back on the shelf, and let them collect dust. That's the nourishment Scorsese speaks of that we no longer have; everything comes and goes so quickly, it leaves no lasting impression or impact on you. I can remember when Aardman came out with that pirate movie several years ago, that looked so good, and I really wanted to see it, but going to the movies has gotten expensive, and it's like I never had enough spare money to go see it, and pretty soon, it was just gone, never got to see it, and after that, I found I just lost complete interest altogether.

On the flip side of it all, we have George Lucas, who clearly cares less and less about the actual creative process and overall art of filmmaking, and focuses more and more on the business aspect of it all, who counters Scorsese's argument in that in this day and age where there's thousands of other movies being released that looks like yours, getting your movie into theaters as quickly as possible is like a vendor fighting for shelf space in a grocery store.

But yeah, all of this and more is the basic reason why I just don't really bother with new things anymore: new shows, new movies, etc. It also doesn't help that most new things suck anyway; either they're remakes/reboots/rehashes/rip-offs of older properties that we already know and love, or it's just smut. Another reason why I'm a Content Creator; I make content that I'd like to see more of, but we don't get because it doesn't fit in with the mainstream zeitgeist.

With all the services and streaming it's become that you find out about something you want to see? You have to go hunting for it. It's not like a day at the multiplex. You have to mount an expedition to find your entertainment among all the 85% of crap out there.

It's like it was back in the day hunting through a pile of newspaper movie sections trying to find the one theater playing that one movie. Except now you do it all on your phone.

I've actually taken to watching movies on my phone because I hate HD so much. See it on a screen that's any bigger and I really hate it. Back in my torrenting days I'd intentionally get the smaller files because the super high quality images just threw me off.

I don't mind true HD in terms of crystal-clear quality (although I will admit to prefering the warmth of VHS or DVD quality, much like music lovers prefer the warmth of analog on vinyl or cassette as opposed to digital), but what I've never been a fan of is how everything in HD has to be cropped into a 16:9 aspect ratio. There has been a common misconception that you lose more of the picture when something is cropped into 4:3, but it's actually just the reverse. You lose a percentage of the picture when cropped in either aspect ratio, but you're actually losing a larger percentage of picture when cropped in 16:9 than you do 4:3 - its especially jarring when older shows and movies were framed and formatted for the 4:3 display, then you lose whatever the visual joke was when it ends up being cropped out in 16:9, as this episode of SEINFELD demonstrates:



But even so, like on my computer for example, 99% of the time, I still keep my monitor's aspect ratio at a 4:3 setting, such as the classic 1024x768 that was so common for so many years, and even my TV, I'll adjust the format display to rid myself of those black bars if I have to (or if something is auto-tuned for HD), but I'll otherwise keep the display setting on 4:3 by default.

As for myself, I decided I was tired of cropping something in either 4:3 or 16:9, so I eventually began to just leave my productions in an “open matte” format of sorts where nothing is cropped out, and I've since discovered that the native aspect ratio of something that's neither cropped in 16:9 or 4:3 is 3:2.