No TV: Day 1

Ate dinner at the table instead of on the couch. We compromised and listened to the Daily Show and part of the Colbert Report. I did sit at part of the table where I could not see the TV so I let Walter know that he can turn on the picture if he wanted to watch. He chose not to.

I have a bit of a temptation on March 29. Family Guy will feature the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast as guest voices. They will play themselves. I love Family Guy, I love ST:NG. Talk about potential nerdgasm.

Would it violate my Lenten experiment if I watched it on hulu.com?

Fun site

Pop culture and music explained in graph form
http://graphjam.com/

I love graphs.

Battlestar Galactica

The first of episode of the final season of Battlestar Galactica premiers tonight on the Sci-Fi Channel at 9:00 pm Central Time.

To my friends and family, I love you but do not think about calling me after 8:55 pm tonight unless you are dying.

When Battlestar ends Sci-Fi better have something just as good to replace it. No not another Ghost Hunters, please. Battlestar and Enterprise reruns are the only things that really justify Sci-Fi's existence.

I anticipate major geekgasm tonight.

In case you have not seen this yet:

They say dogs can smell fear...

...which leads me to believe a lot of people must have fear coming out of their butts. Quote from Mark at the Shoebox Blog. It made me laugh out loud.

Counselor Troi is either on Riker's right off panel or getting a box of Junior Mints from concessions. [Warning: Major ST:NG geekery on display] They visited this movie theater during the third season as evidenced by the uniforms, Dr. Crusher's hair style, and Worf's ridges and hairstyle. They also carried the Type One phasers into the theater. I wonder how the vibrate setting works on a phaser? Does the phaser vibrate or the person receiving the blast? Picard uses his captain's prerogative to use both arm rests. Data cannot feel irritation but Geordi seems a bit annoyed.

Slither a UU, perhaps?

Garfield minus Garfield is a funny blog featuring Garfield comic strips with Garfield and his dialogue removed. The removal of Garfield sometimes makes a funnier strip or a sadder one. For this particular strip Garfield's thought balloons should remain.

Mary Worth and Me recaps the simple actions and small words that led to this couple getting together. Summary: Mary Worth is a home wrecker. Mary Worth is a Dark Lord of the Sith and has chosen Toby as her apprentice.

Nice to see the pool make a brief appearance at the pool party. The toy bunny has more life and soul in it than the people and it scares me.

Zippy, you are in none of those strips. Your surroundings are too well drawn.

Giant rat found in 'lost world'

I hope the scientists call it a "Rous" - Rodent of Unusual Size

Comics and stereotypes

These are two great comic strips that deserve to be in more papers and other venues that will result in financial rewards for the artists. I especially love the battery low detail in Watch Your Head (the second strip). I'm glad that printed newspapers are not the sole source of comics. Thanks to the web (the Houston Chronicle and the Seattle P-I websites do a great job of using the web to expand the selection of comics available to the reading public without having to shrink things to include all the comics in the print edition.) I can enjoy some great comics. Of course this leads to some frustration because with all the great material to choose from why are some comics still in print?

Both of these comics feature of group of people that live in America. A group often pigeon-holed into a single stereotype. Both of these comics show that this group has a lot more diversity than the mainstream media would have people believe.

Candorville, the first comic, features the classical nerd stereotype of bad teeth, thick glasses, timidity and poor fashion sense. The only thing missing from this stereotype is the pasty skin. Lamont, the main character in Candorville (who does not appear in this particular strip), more accurately represents nerdiness in the real world. While a science fiction fan (particularly ST:NG - he wears a communicator on his t-shirt), Lamont holds down a job, has had sex, is generally well-groomed and well-informed about things outside of science fiction. Lamont is also not timid about expressing himself in a lot of areas.

Cory of "Watch Your Head" typifies the college age nerd. Embraces his nerdiness but remains aware of and somewhat frustrated by the hurdles that he faces as a nerd. He refuses to let those hurdles force him to turn into something he is not just to fit in. Very inspiring.

Both comics show that nerds have many interests and can function well within society without compromising themselves. Both comics also show that nerdiness is a lot more mainstream and common than people believe.

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aperfectworld.org is still down. According to their website Ipower is having phone issues (their lines are giving busy signals in error). I must not be the only one experiencing an outage. I'm glad I don't make a living off this. I make some money but not a living. This is giving me a chance to create a larger backlog of cartoons. If it is not resolved by tomorrow, I will make a phone call, e-mail, chat or whatever has not crashed at Ipower.

I've been using this company since 2003 and this is the longest time my site has had an outage and also the first time that I've found support a bit frustrating.

Updates, finally

I used an alternate method for updating my website.
Vera, you call those jazz hands! My arthritic mother can do more enthusiastic jazz hands.

Mary's unseen thought balloon in panel one: And why did you choose to perform Tai Chi right now?

Vera does a Kung Fu bow in the second panel after she knocked Mary down. How else could Vera end up in the position she has in the second panel? Damn, you Giella for refusing to draw the exciting Kung Fu action.

Drew should consider writing Vera a check for a large amount of money. It worked for Von.

The final cartoon from the contest. No winners, I thought of this myself. The Pak'Ma'Ra' is a species from Babylon 5 that dined on carrion. If you laughed without the explanation then you are a geek. This cartoon is in the archives. For the past three days I continued to update the site even though I could not upload the changes. Optimistic or insane? I don't know.

Lesson learned: don't solicit gags from blog readers, especially when your blog as about 8 readers. The solicitation does free my mind for thinking of gags on my own.