We tease because we love.

Actually, while Beefy Guy and I were at Perkins doing this strip (not stripping, that's a different restaurant), as he drew it I knew (and he knew as a result) the very things in the drawing that Rini would most likely point out. And so, for your enjoyment (and hers, even though she will protest) I point out that the drawing of Rini has 1) Huge eyebrows, and 2) HUGE breasts.

She has neither.

Which is fine! I don't mind women not having either. I actually prefer #2, actually. The whole big boob thing baffles me, but that's for another rant.

Oh, and I think she'll very much enjoy the inclusion of "twiddlefuck" in the strip. I think its probably the most often uttered word by Rini, right behind "the" and "hot monkey fuck".

Now you'll excuse me while I run away.

Well, tonight I actually did the strip on Doujinshi paper (B5 bristol-y paper). As you can see... it didn't quite work out as well as I would have liked. The paper feels kinda different, and I think it didn't help that I was pressed for time, multitasking, and learning new Photoshop things at the same time.

But hey, live and learn...

Oh, what the hell is this about? You know that scene in Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf is sitting, in the dark, smoking, and mumbling to himself? He doesn't even notice when Frodo walks in until he clumsily wakes from his stupor!

Obviously, right after Bilbo departed (not in the same way that Boromir Departs, thankfully.... a single Uruk-hai arrow would basically be a Vlad-style impaling our poor 111 year old friend), Gandalf found his secret stash of pipe weed and went right to it (its understandable... he just got zapped by the Ring, after all).

Try it! Go load up the scene, and when Frodo asks the question, in MST-fashion go, "Man I'm high...."

Works like a charm.

Well, not quite madness. More of an extended period of delirium. Or something.

You must understand my state of mind at the moment. I work for a very very large University system which currently is having assloads of problems with its web registration system. Seeing as this happened when the freshfolk are trying to register, a literal flood of phone calls have arrived. Panicked newbies worried that, somehow, because they can't log into the seriously munged registration system, other people (trying to log into the seriously munged registration system at the same time) will magically be able to snatch classes out from under their twitchy little noses.

Relax, we tell them. Spanish 1001 will still be there when it comes back up.

I continue to experiment with things like nibs (and I still like the word "nibs") and ink and what not. I figured out last night how to make my printer use B5 (what Deleter assures me is standard-sized Doujinshi-size) paper. Unfortunately, its got rules on it, and for some reason grey-scale scanning picks up what was (allegedly) supposed to be non-photo blue ruler lines.

What's with this pre-Christmas movie madness for the geeks-at-heart? Two Towers, Star Trek, some other movie I can't remember off the top of my head... it wasn't always like this, was it? I tend to not remember things back too far. That's what those soul-stealing photograph machinations are for, I thought.

So I ordered from OmochaBox a bunch of manga supplies to give them a try. Some pen nibs, ink, etc etc. This is my first strip actually trying to use that stuff (and is pretty damn sloppy if you ask me). The experience has lead me to draw a few conclusions.

• Getting ink darkness consistent on inkjet paper is very hard by hand. Rini's hair in this is touched up a bit with Photoshop because I couldn't get it exactly like I wanted. The paper absorbs the ink way too much. I've got some deleter doujinshi paper, but I've yet to get the courage to ruin it.
• Using pen nibs takes practice for the stroke you do with your hand to have the desired effect on the page. With tech pens (sakura pens, etc) you get a nice, consistent line. If you want variation, you use different width pens. With these nibs (I love the word "nibs", by the way), you get a huge range of different lines depending on your hand position, pen pressure, etc.
• Drawing small makes inking with brushes (or brush pens, see Sakura tech pens above) is very difficult. Which leaves me in a conundrum, since doing it with the nibs would take forever.

Very certainly, a learning process.

In other news, Rini went on her DDR rant because I was talking about some girl at the MOA who was rocking on the DDR machine across from Hooters on the 4th floor. Sorry all, my bad.

Have a good turkey day everyone. Don't OD on the triptophan (or however the hell it is spelled).

So, this last week I got up at 4am to watch the Leonids meteor shower. Nature conspired against me, and what I got was a partly cloudy sky and a full moon. The clouds were of the high, thin, stratus kind. The result? A thin layer of clouds illuminated brightly by a very bright moon. I didn't experience the huge number of meteors per hour that was prophesied by the astronomers amongst us, but I did see a few cool ones.

The other thing that I experienced was a bit of what best could be called "genetic nostalgia". It had to do with the motion of the clouds as they passed in front of Orion (the constellation, not the film company). For a few short moments, I could see why people thought that the stars were fixed in a firmament.

My other adventure this week was to get my flu immunization, then have to leave work early on Wednesday and stay home Thursday because I had a reaction to it. Rini is also sick, but I think from a different reason (that being Kurama). My theory is that the CDC has slipped some sort of immunization for biological warfare agents into the flu mix this year, secretly trying to immunize everyone who gets flu shots.

Ain't conspiracy theories fun?

I still think that this is somehow Beefy Guy's fault. But, in the interest of being apologetic, I give you this little bit of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn goodness.

To defend myself against his slanderous onslaught, though, I must point out that what I _really_ said was, "If I can keep the amount of material coming out of my brain and through my pencil consistent, then I'll not have a problem." Of course I'm gonna miss the occasional comic, that's the problem with having a full-time job. What does this mean for you, the valued reader? It means I'm going to be very poor as the result of bribing Beefy Guy, Rini, and Kurama into doing guest strips when I keel over from too much somethingsomething.

So the whole "Fellowship of the Ring" extraspecialbonusspermygoodness version came out this week. Yes I bought it, I can't believe you asked that question in any seriousness. It is FULL of great stuff. The best of it being that you really, really get a better feeling that the Fellowship is actually a group that is looking out for eachother and trying to work together to get this quest done, in spite of their differences. There's good number more scenes that flesh out the relationships between the characters in the extended edition, most interestingly a number of them that give more details on now Aragorn and Boromir relate to eachother. It makes them more multidimensional as a pair than they were in the theatrical release.

Of course, the fight scenes are better. They're more of the same, except MORE more of the same, which in this case means Very Cool. There's one towards the end when they are fighting off the Uruk-Hai where this "EVEN MORE COOLNESS" is pretty literal, and I think that Beefy Guy will know exactly what I'm talking about when he sees it. It's like you're holding your breath for the whole sequence, going, "woah... Woah.... WOAH.... WOAH DUDE!"

The similarity to orgasmic utterances was already noted. Feel free to not email me about them. Unless you're in your mid-20's, cute, and want to make them with me on a regular basis. Then you're exempt. Here, have a free pass. Just don't pass "go", cuz some sneaky Go player from a Ranma movie will prolly try and get ya.

[2002-11-13] Sorry folks, accidentally fell asleep too early last night (blame Beefy Guy, its his fault somehow!). I'll have the strip up later Thursday is all. Thanks for sticking in there.

I just want to take a moment to say "hi" to all the new people who have apparently been reading the strip for the first time this month. We're excited to have you (all of us, really... not just me... and Beefy Guy too, even though he won't let on)
^_^;

The whole "consistent, more than one day a week schedule" has been pretty handle-able so far. I thought maybe it wouldn't be... of course, now I've jinx'd myself.

Beefy Guy is a Chick Magnet, there's no way around this.

Ummmm, I'll add more to this rant later.

Oh, also, on the extras page there's some link banners for you folks to plaster up if you so desire. Did I already say that? Well, I guess I said it again if so.

You know, it was really hard to not do a political strip this week. I don't know why I care so much, it's not like I should expect anything else from the general population of the US, other than voting for someone who is a complete dolt, but has a fairly adequate staff to cover for him.

I sometimes stop and think when I'm doing the strips how "blatant" I want to be with the imagery. I mean, sure, I'm not exactly a manga-ka, so I can't get too explicit without it basically looking silly ("wait... what's that supposed to be? two ovals mating? what?"). And I know Rini in particular doesn't mind explicitness at all (we have to tone her DOWN in real life).

Then I think about it for a while, and decide that a good judge of how "edgey" one can get is Penny-Arcade

Maybe I'll add a bit more to this later. Gotta go TA for a class.

[Starting Oct 29th, I will be attempting to do strips on Tuesday and Thursday]

Not much to rant about today other than how airline pilots and now, apparently, dock workers on the west coast make entirely too much money, and should get their overpaid asses back to work.

Gimme Anime revamped their site. Go check it out.

I just know that I'm gonna get an email about this strip from some dumbass that says that it (and by virtue Rini, Beefy Guy, and myself) are racist. Which is just plain stupid. Us three are about the least racist people you're gonna meet, ever, without being stupidly bleeding heart liberals (though granted I'll still vote for Wellstone...) Not to mention Beefy Guy is Jewish and Rini is Korean. So if you were thinkin' about hittin' that send button just now, don't. Just move the mouse pointer over to the little "x" instead. Yep, there ya go. Now click it and don't save the draft. Very good. Now go watch your "Friends" rerun like a good dope.

Great, now I'm gonna get email from "Friends" fans.

[Strips will update on Fridays now until further notice]

Sorry about the lack of a real comic last week. We'll try harder. Now, on with the show.

Excel Saga.

If you haven't already watched it, make sure you do it in a group, because, well, you saw what happened to poor Jared this week.

Actually, Excel Saga holds a special place in my heart for a particular reason up, above, and beyond (no space) the face that it is one of the weirdest of the weird when it comes to anime.

See, the first time that I saw Excel Saga, I saw it with a group of people (of whom at the time I knew two people, one was Rini, and one was her then-boyfriend-now-legally-bonded-sex-slave Kurama), some of whom I now count as friends (albeit long distance ones). One problem... this was about 3 years ago and it was a tape directly off of Japanese TV. Now, if you have watched Excel, you know that its bizarre enough with translations, but the vast majority of us had almost zero clue what the hell was going on when watching the first episode. But you know what? It didn't matter, cuz we got the jist, and we loved it.

It harkens back to the first time I ever saw anime (well, if you don't count Robotech, but it was on early in the morning, and as such I couldn't watch it because my parents deemed it necessary for me to sleep in on Saturdays) in my youth. The local comic shop had sold a Japanese-only VHS dub (no doubt pirated, naughty shop owners) of "Macross: Do You Remember Love?" to one of my friends at the time. So we watched it. Now, DYRL is basically a movie which is a tribute documentary to the Macross series written by the characters in the series. As such, there's a lot that you are assumed to know about the plot (the whole series is summarized in 90 minutes). We knew a little about Robotech (okay, a lot, we were Robotech RPG addicts), and the characters and situations were recognizable (to say the least, the animation at the time -- 1986 or so -- was incredible), so we liked it. Even though it wasn't until I got a fansub about 3-4 years ago that I had any idea what the real dialog was.

This also explains the odd power that Mari Iijima holds over me...

For the life of me I cannot draw anything tonight. I have a strip I want to draw, but it just isn't working out. I hope that it is just cuz I was sick mid-week and can't concentrate worth a damn right now.

If I can draw this weekend, I'll put up the strip.

Meanwhile, here's a pencil freehand I did out of an Inu-yasha monthly of Kikyou.

[Strips will update on Fridays now until further notice]

Well, it was 5 days ago now, but Nan Desu Kon has come and gone once again.

I've been there 4 years in a row now, I think, and it has been interesting to see the Con go from this little gathering where I didn't know anyone except Rini, to this rather large Con where I (by one order of seperation) know a ton of the people who run the Con. Furthermore, this year for the first time I experienced the Con from the perspective of being a Dealer. Well, kind of, since Rini and Kurama are actually the ones who own Gimme Anime (whose ad you see at the top of this page, and whom you should click on to visit)... I was just willing slave labor. Yes, I know, deal with it.

Anyway, of all the things we were selling at the Con, we had something like 200 bottles (or more) of Ramune, this really sweet soft drink that all the anime fans seem to go for. We sold so much so fast, that by the mid-day of Saturday we'd sold out (we had an edge on the competition in that our Ramune was cold...). It was an interesting experience that brought back memories of my many years working at Media Play and EB. But I digress, and I'm tired, so I will leave you with this:

Kurama wrote up a little list of lessons learned from NDK this year, and I thought I'd kept it, but apparently it is in my quagmire of email folders. Maybe I can get Rini to post it...

And at CONvergence =)

Hey hey, it's me again.

And that means almost nothing unless you happened to be reading my other two, ill-fated comics. So I'll make this short and sweet.

"Unthinkable!" is a comic about weirdness. All sorts of weirdness. More on that story as it develops.

I'm distracted, cuz there's two witches on my TV nekkid in bed together. And people wonder why I like Buffy.

Anyway, this is the start of what I hope will be many, many strips. I'm learning a ton about how to make Photoshop work for online comic production. Some of the intricacies(sp?) elude me at the moment, but I have confidence that those particular bouts of confusion will pass.

Anyway, welcome to the new strip. I'm kinda amazed you found your way here so early (assuming that you're not reading this a couple years later and I've successfully managed to amass a wealthy archive of non-sucky material). But we (Rini, Beefy Guy -- even though he prolly won't let on --, and I) are all glad to have you.