http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20091122

Cartoon for Today, Nov 22, 2009

http://links.userfriendly.org/lotd?http://lunchbagart.tumblr.com/

Nice artwork on an interesting medium Lunch bag art! Thanks to Hieraco for the link.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/seADTKEe2EA/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-11-22/

• 07:42 It is 7:42 am here and I have been up almost 2 hours - surely something is wrong - on a Saturday morning dammit. #
• 10:09 I can't believe that I have been up 4 hours already today and it is only 10am ish. Not complaining, it is just weird and not like me. #
• 11:51 @LeighBarlow Sounds ominous? #
• 11:58 @LeighBarlow I let you off, since I lub you. #
• 12:00 @LeighBarlow Much improved. #
• 21:28 Joe on the x-fact
  or was absolutely amazing !! myloc.me/1De4n #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

If you're in Akron, and want to head to a neat con for charity (and possibly game in a game DMed by Yours Truly), you should go to the Child's Play Fundraiser tomorrow.

I would love to Watch and Listen to Yehudi Menuhin.
What more could I wish for ? (well lots actualy!)

I remember when I used to live for Sunday comics. The best comics, all in color, in extra-big strips! I couldn't wait! Every morning, I'd rush next door to my Gramma's house and gut that newspaper to find that inky goodness.

Now? Most of my favorite comics are dormant on the weekend. Penny Arcade? MWF. Shortpacked? Monday through Friday. PVP? Well, sorta whenever now, but never on a Sunday. Sheldon does Sunday-style funny strips any day Dave damn well feels like it, and Schlock Mercenary usually has extra panels on Sunday, but will go to a Sunday-styled double- or triple-strip if the plot demands it. Order of the Stick is always a Sunday-style strip, and updates whenever Halley's Comet is in zenith.

So what's left? Doonesbury. That's the only day Doonesbury traditionally has a chance of being laugh out-loud funny these days.

I feel a little sorry, though. The kids these days will have no special attachment to Sunday as a day of extra fun and joy. It will be barren, just another day off to them. Alas! I imagine this is the same feeling people got in the 1940s when they realized the kids would no longer enjoy the special days the milkman delivered fresh milk to their icebox.

http://yafgc.shipsinker.com/index.php?strip_id=1273

For the time being. We'll see how long it lasts.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20091121

Cartoon for Today, Nov 21, 2009

http://links.userfriendly.org/lotd?http://lunchbagart.tumblr.com/

Nice artwork on an interesting medium Lunch bag art! Thanks to Hieraco for the link.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/r0DNV46zQjE/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-11-21/

I am shovelling instant coffee into my mouth with a serving spoon; when it is full I shall simply pour in boiling water and hope for the best! This is because I have not slept very well. There is something slightly obvious and unimpressive when you consider that I ate free food in an airport lounge in Delhi without so much as passing wind, had curry for breakfast for a week, and drank strange local brews made from fermenting millet seed and didn't suffer so much as minor discomfort; and yet the food from the place at the end of the road has had me up all night sweating and ripping great holes in the ozone layer. This morning I frightened the cats. It was Marlowe's fault for jumping on to my stomach, but the reaction was involuntary.

I'm struggling a little with my assignment for college on Monday: to produce a piece of self-conscious narrative (750-100 words) in the style of Byron, Iris Murdoch, Henry Fielding, and or Jorge Luis Borges. There are so many opportunities in those four that I'm really not certain what to do. Both Byron and Murdoch's set texts are epics ("Don Juan" and "The Sea The Sea"), all four are revolutionary or rebellious so there are many themes and structures to play with. This piece is for critical discussion in class, so I'd like it to be of a standard, but it is not going to be assessed so I can afford to experiment a bit with the forms.

You see the course handbook says "Experimentation is encouraged". So I ask myself how far I am willing to push the envelope of "creative writing" in front of my peers? I've got a few ideas, but I'm not a twenty-something art school type - I never was - and it does feel a little strange, deliberately setting out to be transgressive at my age: Not unpleasant, just odd.

Now before anyone worries, I have no plans to write my piece on the walls in excrement, or take of my shirt and show the words scrawled on my own flesh and punctuated with hooks, but I want to do something a little different. Now the Borges essay is literary criticism, but also fiction as it is about an author who does not exist, so I can mix this style with, say Byron, with some effect I think. But how to experiment ... hmmm?

Ladies and Gentlemen...

We at Firecat Masquerade are proud to present:

http://www.firecat-masquerade.com/winter.html

Beta Version is up and running.

There will, undoubtably, be changes between the Playtest on the 12th of December and the game in March, but for now -

Enjoy!

• 10:46 The introduction to Rod Stewart's Maggie May is one of my all time favourite song openings - can't resist doing the drum part of my desk #
• 11:31 @perception101 It certainly is. Made me laugh though - I still have a lot of my bank statements - I need to have a good burning session! #
• 11:35 @perception101 I don't keep them anymore - I don't even get them anymore come to think of it since I do all my banking online. So NO then. #
• 13:00 I love Roy Keane (well not in the biblical sense of course) ... news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8370497.st
  m ... get over it Ireland #
• 14:36 @perception101 Yeah I liked it - stop whinging about idiosyncrasies of the game Ireland and put in a good enough performance to win !! #
• 15:38 Hmm, Marie forced me to go to the doctor again - more steroids and yet another bloody inhaler - seeing doctor again on Tuesday. *sigh* #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

I've been meaning to update for such a long time that I can't remember all the things that I wanted to include. Oh well.

There were certainly some nice cars, particularly in the form of a number of lovely Jaguars that the silly people wanted me to play with on their proving ground. They seemed to think that I might have £70k available to buy one - I chose not to disabuse them of that notion until after I'd burnt some rubber. The new XJ is pretty ugly in the metal imho, sort of a cross between a BMW and a Cadillac - no style or class at all. The XFR was a very pleasant surprise, and something I would be more than happy to own should one ever come my way, but the star of the day was (unsurprisingly) the very lovely XKR. I made the instructor guy giggle when I insisted on opening the window just before I accelerated away, all the better to hear the exhaust note. I have also now broken my previous record, and the fastest I have ever driven is now just a shade under 170mph. Nice.

There has also been some drinking and dancing, more particularly in the shape of a night out in aid of my birthday. Too many people came for them all to be listed, but it was fabulous to get out and have fun in that way again. I even managed to make it home without losing my hat.

Godzilla is currently costing a fortune that I don't have: her 50k service (complete with belt changes) and a new set of tyres came in at just over a grand, and I know she needs new brake discs. This is particularly bad given that they are a custom upgrade, and I think I need to either go to the dealer or have the parts custom-machined. I haven't yet had a quote, but am thinking that I will need a swift drink immediately afterwards. Hell, she stops okay at the mo!

I went to the Hellfire Festival at the NEC - no, not the LG Arena, but the exhibition centre itself. An indoor festival was quite an interesting concept, which largely worked imo. Unfortunately it was appallingly attended, to the point that Viking Skull delayed the beginning of their set for half an hour because they didn't want to play to so few people. When they did come on they were really good, and I would have liked to have seen more of them, but I'd come to see Fields of the Nephilim and didn't want to miss them. They were absolutely excellent, and not at all like the reports I'd heard in days gone by. As ephraim doesn't like them, I don't get to listen to them much these days, which is a shame. This gig reminded me just how much I love them, but what's with the inflatable goldfish? It was particularly nice to end up in exactly the right place in the crowd too, with a good view and no-one jostling me, yet everyone around having a good old dance. Hurrah for that. So I danced my arse off before taking my aching feet home, chatting most of the way through the concourse with a Welsh RMT unionist chap who was quite a giggle. I love going to gigs and am really looking forward to seeing Monster Magnet on 10th December, although I am a little concerned that the tentative babysitting arrangements may fall through as Jane has a lot on her plate atm.

People have been visiting me and I have been visiting people. Long may that continue.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/cb4a/?cpg=wnrss

http://www.thinkgeek.com/cb4a/

You loved the book. Now wear the shirt! A truism for you: everything is better with bacon. Also? Everything is better with zombies. Does it then follow, as the night the day, that everything is better with undead pork? We are not certain, but we intend to find out. Zombie bacon. For science! $18.99 - $19.99

http://www.thinkgeek.com/c14d/?cpg=wnrss

http://www.thinkgeek.com/c14d/

Play. Create. Share. Wear. Medical practitioners have a wide variety of products to put us back together: sutures, staples, Super Glue, Dermabond. But they have few choices which allow them to go back in and have a look-see. We recommend the humble zipper as the closure of choice. $19.99