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Tags: civilizational-decline
Current Music: Veealune valss - Loits

There's something going on outside my living room window right now...


(Click to be confused)

... And I have absolutely no idea what it is.

http://www.tencentticker.com/projectrooftop/2009/07/10/wolverine-look-sharp-contest-update/

Hi there, P:R fans! Thanks for all your recent comments about how awesome we are…and how much you’d like us to hurry up and post the Wolverine: Look Sharp winners. We appreciate your support and impatience. Well, the first one anyway. Running massive public contests like these takes a good bit of time and hard work, as I’m sure you can imagine.

This week, however, we completed the final judging on the Look Sharp entries, including reviews and ratings from our usual P:R Staff, as well as from Wolverine: Weapon X creators, Jason Aaron and Ron Garney (both of whom, by the way, included a few extra prizes for our winners)!

We will have the final results posted here next week, but thought you might enjoy these two ineligible entries from P:R regular Maris Wicks, who just missed the deadline, and our own Jon Morris, who just can’t win anything since joining the crew here. See you next week! - Dean Trippe

Maris Wicks

Jon Morris

The whole family went recently to Legoland. Everyone had a wonderful time. Kit (6) discovered the thrill and terror of roller-coasters, a thrill and terror Sam (8) is not quite ready for, in spite of being 18 months older than Kit. Kit rode with me on The Dragon six times, and Coaster-Saurus once with her mother.

Last night, I read Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee to the kids, which they both enjoyed quite a bit, and the following conversation ensued.

KIT. I LOVE roller-coasters!

TODD. I know you do.

SAM. (a little fearful) Do I have to ever ride a roller-coaster?

TODD. No. You never have to ride a roller-coaster. There is only one power on Earth that can compel you to ride a roller-coaster, and that is: a pretty teen-age girl.

(KIT lights up at this idea. SAM, not so much.)

KIT. (excited) REALLY?

SAM. (fearful) Really? How?

TODD. (to SAM) One day, you'll be a teenage boy, and you'll be at an amusement park with a bunch of your friends, and a pretty teenage girl will say "Will you go on a roller-coaster with me?" and you will have no choice -- you will have to go.

SAM. Really?

TODD. Absolutely.

KIT. WOW! Will that happen to ME?

TODD. Well, for you it will be different. One day, you'll be a pretty teenage girl, and you'll be at an amusement park with a date, and you'll want him to feel all confident and strong, and you'll say "Will you please protect me from the big scary roller-coaster?" and inside you'll be thinking "Yeah!"
 

(This very much strikes Kit's fancy. She immediately tries it out.)

KIT. "Will you protect me from the big scary roller-coaster?" "Yeah!" (She falls down laughing.) Will that really happen to me?

TODD. Kit, I promise you, you are going to have more boyfriends than you can shake a stick at.

SAM. Then why don't you just take two sticks?

Tags: kids these days

It's been a little over two months at the gym, and I hit a good milestone today. After starting with very low weights and slowly working my way up week by week, I bench-pressed more than my weight! I currently weigh about 61 kg (134.58 lbs), and I today benched 62.5 kg (137.79 lbs), and did 5 reps at that weight. Back when I first got this gym membership, I made myself start with extremely low weights, significantly lower than I knew I could do, because I really wanted to avoid injuring myself and I wanted to take a nice long time to let my muscles go from very atrophied to good and sturdy before I started adding much heavier weights. So two months ago I was only letting myself bench 25 kg (55.116 lbs), which even for a scrawny runt like me is pretty easy. But I'll admit, after being so rusty, even that small amount of weight gave me a real burn after a couple sets. So anyway, I'm extremely pleased to more than double that in a couple months, although I'm pretty sure this current amount will be a real plateau for me; I'm definitely in diminishing-returns territory now, and I don't think I'm interested in putting in the time and effort it would take to push my strength to a level much higher than it is now. Besides, I mostly work out in order to look good, not be strong, so I'm definitely okay where I am right now. But it was a good symbolic landmark to bench my weight today in any case.

Incidentally, the most I ever bench-pressed in my life was 150 lbs, back when I was about 20 years old. I only weighed about 125 lbs back then, and I only benched 150 once or twice, basically as a stunt. Being younger meant being more injury-proof, and I could push myself like that and not hurt anything. Nowadays if I tried to suddenly lift a few dozens pounds more than where I'm comfortable, I'd almost certainly strain (or even tear) something, probably a rotator cuff, like I did in my mid-twenties in yet another gym-obsessed phase of my life. I really learned my lesson that time; I wasn't able to do any upper body exercise for a few months, and even driving my car and playing guitar hurt for a few weeks. But now that I'm taking this safer, healthier, more patient approach, and also due to the fact that I'm eating better and have gained a little weight, I'm suddenly wondering if I might be able to slowly, gradually get myself back up to the point of being able to bench press 150 lbs again. I bet I could do it in another month. See how this stuff is habit-forming?

Okee-doke, two things to cover real quick: First off, I'm selling all of my PVC Justice Society and Justice League of America figures over on eBay. I sort of hate to get rid of them, but I just have no room to display them anywhere, and they've been sitting in a box for the last year and a half. SO! Wildcat, Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder, Dr.Mid-Nite, Aquaman, and a bunch of other figures all over on my eBay merchant space; if nothing else, they're neat figures, you ought to go over and check 'em out. I find the Spectre in particular to be a really nicely designed piece.

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Secondly, for you lovelorn and lost souls out there just looking for someone to answer all the big questions in your life, now you can check in with the wisdom of Deke Zibinski, bartender and co-owner of the Northside Tavern in Baltimore, MD. The truly excellent Wasted Words podcast is now accepting new questions for their Ask The Bartender segment, you can learn more here, and enter to win fabulous prizes (that is a blatant lie, there are no prizes). Says The Wasted Words website:

"Please send your question to info@wastedwords.net with the subject line “Ask the Bartender.” Be sure to include your name or something fake and clever, so that we can can attribute it on the air. You can also submit questions through the discussion board on the Wasted Words Facebook page."

And that's all. PS Wednesday Comics was amazing, wasn't it? And 'ta!

DC Comics is debuting today its Wednesday Comics project - a beautiful, full-color broadsheet comic weighing in at a whopping 14"x20" and featuring single-page adventures of some of the company's best-known and oddest characters, as illustrated by some really amazing artists, all under the auspices of the truly brilliant Mark Chiarello.

I'm going to be picking up my copy later today, and I'm looking forward to it immensely because I'm simply excited about how this thing is gonna look. Alongside that, though, it's a little heartbreaking, inasmuch as, in the project's early stages, I was evidently under consideration to take part. My Little Batman samples had attracted the attention of an assistant editor over at DC, who brought me to Mark Chiarello's attention, and unfortunately, in the long run, I was ultimately passed over for stronger talents. I can't disagree, I'm not even in the same class as the artists currently assigned to the project, much less better than any of them. Correct decisions all around, frankly (and I got to walk away from it with some really flattering and kind words from Chiarello, which is 'be still my beating heart' kind of stuff). Still, it would have been amazing to have been part of this, and even more amazing to work under Chiarello, whom I honestly believe is a bonafide design and graphics genius.

Still, I was thinking about it, and I realized that I could (and probably would) spend twelve consecutive weeks eating my liver out every Wednesday, OR I could instead get caught up in the spirit of the thing. It's a great idea for a comic, and even though I can't participate directly, I can participate alongside it. So, I've decided to try, over the next twelve weeks, to come up with a new comic strip every Wednesday. I say "try" because I am currently still unemployed and job-hunting, which takes up a goodly amount of time, and also working on some other projects, illustrations and comics. I also say this because I only decided to do this last Sunday evening, and lord knows how my enthusiasm will wane, but still ...

At the very least, I figured I can finally wrap up the story arc I left unfinished over in Jeremy a couple of years back, where Jeremy has decided to run away from home (Lead-up strips here and here).

So, yes, the goal is six new Jeremy strips a-a-a-a-and six not-Jeremy comic strips over the next twelve weeks. Awesome, right? Right, and therefore, without further ado ...


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I had another one of those dreams last night, about an imaginary comic book. This time around it was some weird Western affair, all cowboys in strange costumes - I don't know if you've ever read any of those old Marvel Western comics they were putting out around the same time that super-heroes were getting popular again, but all the villains in them are crazy: Cowboys wearing deep sea diver helmets, desperadoes in little green alien masks (!!), badmen on flying horses or skeleton horses or horses that appeared to be on fire. Strange, inspired, genre-busting stuff.

So I had a dream about a comic book in the weird western vein, and I cannot tell you for the life of my about most of the characters who appeared in this four-color phantasm, they rushed by in droves; I recall one fellow who dressed like a normal cowboy, except for a wizard's hat, and another gunslinger who wore a mask made to look like a realistic horse's head, then rode around on his horse under the sobriquet The Centaur (!!), cowpokes with bat's wings, robot cowboys, des-mer-adoes, the whole nine bizarre yards and then some.

But, amidst the faceless dozens, there were three which stood out - cover features, the lot of them: First off, a crimefighting barber called THE BARBER, all handlebar mustache and tightly coiffed hair, he carried a six-gun, a razor and a pair of shears, and kept the peace in this little town where he maintained a modest barber shop. Secondly, a guy I imagine was called THE EXECUTIONER, who dressed in the manner of a medieval executioner - shirtless, black hood, gloves - and whose shtick was that he had a rifle which more resembled a harpoon gun, and which rather than bullets shot AXES, and he would shoot these axes at his opponents and cut their heads clean off.

BUT THE BEST OF ALL OF THESE was a gunslinger who I don't think I dreamt a name for, and who rode around masked, and wearing a short black cloak which hung to just below his waist. When he'd get in a gunfight, he'd throw back the cloak to reveal A BELT OF DYNAMITE STRAPPED TO HIS MIDSECTION. He was SUCH A GODDAMN BADASS that he'd go into gunfights wearing a belt of live dynamite, knowing that he could outshoot even guys who'd only need to nick him to make him explode. Plus, HE WAS OKAY WITH GETTING EXPLODED! No quiet bed-death for this guy!

Man! Of all the comics I've dreamt up, I honestly wish this one were real more than any other before it. And that it had swearing in it. Explodin' Deadwood!

One of the guilty pleasures of the internet is websites made up of nerdy looking people's portraits from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I have to admit, I have a good laugh at some of them. Either because it's a bad picture, the clothes and hair are really dated, the person displays false bravado or because the people in the picture have absolutely no clue as to how to dress themselves. Some of them, I completely miss out on the joke. Perhaps because my peasant ears are incapable of resolving the high pitched squeaking sounds hipsters use to communicate irony. For example: why is a photo of two pretty little girls supposed to be funny? I get why a hipster twat would think Military Uniforms or Bishops are ironic and funny, but actually, the hipster twats are much more ironic and funny than Bishops or Military men, who will dress in the same way for another 1000 years. As such, the time has come to expose the preposterousness of the present day. There is so much retardedness in how people dress up and look now a days, I don't even need more than a couple of google search phrases to find examples.

Doubtless the imbeciles who attire themselves in modern raiments think themselves above dated ugly looks, like feathered hair, bell bottoms, wide lapels and thick rimmed glasses from the 70s, or big hair and mullets, shoulder pads, dumb sweaters and wacky glasses from the 80s. Not all historical looks are ridiculous, just as not all contemporary ones are ridiculous, but the horrible ones stand out like warts on a bald head. And of course, it's really funny that contemporary numskulls can't tell how stupid they will look in 10 years. Of course, they all look incredibly stupid now, but in a few years there won't be anyone left to tell them how kew-ul they are.

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Tags: misanthropy