Comic: CAPTCHA comics

I owe this blog two reviews, but I just haven’t watched any new films or TV series… Well, aside from BBC’s Sherlock, which is certainly interesting, but that I couldn’t review meaningfully due to not having been able to hear or decipher all of it satisfactorily – I am hard of hearing, and often rely on English subtitles to get me through rather than deafening the neighbourhood with a TV cranked up too high. I’m going through another Wodehouse, gave up on a horrible, horrible Mary Shelley novel, and am lazily working through a WWI romance of sorts, but until I finish one of them or see a movie I can’t provide. That’s as much of an excuse as I can muster. Sorry!

I do intend to repay that debt, though. Here’s hoping.

In other news, I’ll be travelling from tomorrow, so there won’t be a comic this weekend, but there will be two next week.

Madame Zizi seems to be the popular vote for the comic-I-will-actually-hold-to-a-standard. So be it! Next step is to find a name for it that isn’t French for a penis, and start writing it in earnest. In the meanwhile, weekly silly whatever-comics will continue.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Category: Notes

Comic: But It Would Be Awesome

Posted on | August 22, 2010 | No Comments

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Category: A Most Curious Comic

Thursday Links

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | No Comments

Section: O Males of the World, It Can’t Easy For You

“No excuse” for a sleeping man leaning on another man. What the…?

Section: Jackals

Predatory Lending and Health Services, a report by abby jean on FWD/Forward. A pair of barely competent LA doctors are aggressively marketing a life-threatening weight-loss surgery for people who don’t need it, saying they “accept” health insurance coverage which won’t cover unnecessary surgeries anyway, and looks like it’s actually all a scam to get people to sign up to a predatory lending scheme. I’d rather stay fat, thanks.

While on the subject, here’s Diet Products analyzed on Cracked.com.

Also, 6 Devious Ways Farmville Gets People Hooked, also on Cracked.com.

Since we’re linking to Cracked now, here’s also 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail. This makes me feel strangely safe; not just from zombies, but from nature in general.

Section: Coding

Mr Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book is a handy introduction to Ruby for coding newbies.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Category: Links Post

Comic Pitches Summed Up

Posted on | August 17, 2010 | 3 Comments

A selection of… five and a half! I will pick only ONE of these to pursue and develop, and it’ll turn into a series that will last at least one whole storyline. That’s a lot of work, so of course I give over the decision to the Internet.

Geeks & Dragons
Original Pitch
- A strip-form comic about five 16-45 year old geeks – a tech geek, sci-fi gamer geek, music geek, fantasy geek and a sex geek – who find a miniature dragon and have to figure out what to do with it, where it came from, and how to get Ruth to stop embarrassing them all by believing in fairies after this.

Suffragettes Vs. Aliens
Original Pitch
- An NSFW comic with only minor violence and no nudity whatsoever, SvsA would follow the adventures of four turn-of-the-century feminists as they try to stop Space Rangers and Space Monsters from dragging Earth into their silly little pissing contest. It would have dick jokes. Lots and lots of dick jokes.
NSFW extras on Dreamwidth: one – two – three

Madame Zizi
Original Pitch
Madame Zizi may have to be called something else in its final form, but it’s a light adventure about an ornery vampiress who doesn’t look the part, her man-servant, and her mad scientist. They were forced out of her ancestral castle and are now on the road disguised as a fortune-teller act, and they are travelling the land trying to find out what happened to the rest of Zizi’s clan.
Extra on Dreamwidth

Gods of Cabaret
Original Pitch
College student Blue Connor returns home to the Cabaret Palourde, only to find out one of her mothers is, for a functional value, the Greek Goddess Aphrodite. She had been living a low-key human life to hide from her crazy family – and to stay with the family she loves. Now, she’s been found.

Eve of the Gods
Original Pitch
Eve Albertson and her uncle Carl Blake run a detective agency in the 1930s. He is the face of the organization; she’s the brains, and kind of the brawn as well. They get mixed up in a case of a stolen museum artifact that unravels a supernatural secret world leading right back – to Eve. (Hint: It’s Ragnarök Tiem.)

And finally the “half”…

Amir the Wolf
Original Pitch
This is really nothing but a jumbled collection of ideas right now, not much to show, but if it gets picked on the power of “trans werewolf”, “future people” and “possibly some pirates but they’re not important”, I’ll damn well work on it until there’s a storyline in there, too.

Poll in the sidebar! Vote, and watch me dance like a puppet on your string.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Category: Notes, Other Comics

Book Review: A Man of Means

Posted on | August 17, 2010 | No Comments

A Man of Means
P.G. Wodehouse & C.H. Bovill
P.G. Wodehouse Society

Perhaps it’s a mistake to even attempt to review a P.G. Wodehouse novel. If you’ve read one, you have a pretty good idea of what they’re all like, and you’ve probably already decided whether or not you like them. I happen to like them.

In case you’re one of the people who haven’t read one, they are light comedies with plenty of mix-ups and broken engagements, clever language and inanely blathering young gentlemen. Pip-pip, what ho, stiff upper lip and so forth. Eminently charming – somehow only made more attractive via the passage of time, though this may only be true to people used to overlooking early 19th century race and gender fail and the occasional touch of classism. As much is inevitable.

A Man of Means consists of a series of six short stories that originally appeared in The Strand in 1914, a chronological and a consistent whole that – perhaps due to the co-writer C. H. Bovill – read as particularly snappy and satirical for Pelham Grenville W. The theme might have been the corruptive power of sudden wealth, but turned in the end into a light farce on greed, in which a simple and innocent young man, Roland Bleke, learns to avoid traps laid by mercenary characters after his prize winnings. The most biting of these depictions is the unscrupulous stock broker whose operation eerily resembled that which led us to the global financial crisis almost a 100 years later. He ends up losing while Roland gains via the vagaries of the stock, and Roland never even realizes that he was being used. The most oppressive and dare we say sexually charged of the stories is an affair where Roland finds himself engaged to a beautiful dancer from a fictional South American state, who turns out not only to be after his money to finance her country’s royalist revolution, but also married.

The stories read easily and segue into each other seamlessly. For a fan of P.G.’s, this makes pleasant light reading. I’m almost ashamed to say how little I was bothered by the exoticism and classism, when there was so much simple and clever delight to go with it. At the same time, I do not whole-heartedly recommend this to anybody who happens to come from a South American country, or any nation torn with internal conflict.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Category: 3 Stars, Reviews, Reviews - Books

Thursday Links

Posted on | August 17, 2010 | No Comments

Section: What the Hell

Ralph Lauren and Ann Taylor photoshop stick-thin models to be… even thinner?? Disney Princess Recovery has photos. Jezebel has more.

Pole-dancing for little girls! If it really is a sport now and not an erotic tease, where are all the little boy pole dancers?

Section: Transformative Works

First of all…

No, I really don’t think that was too big.

Section: You’re Just Trying To Be Politically Correct Now

The character of Nico Minoru of “Runaways” could become the first Asian American lead role in a Marvel movie, except Marvel is not looking for an Asian American actress for the role. They just want someone “uniquely beautiful”. (Link via Havoc the Cat.)

Via the Wayback Machine and Das Dingsi: The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of “Political Correctness”

Section: Things of Joy

Ryan North finds love.

Tom Scott offers warning labels for sloppy journalism. You are encouraged to print them out and leave them on the papers you share.

Rating 3.00 out of 5