text:
Sharing a house with my niece, I have seen more than my share of popular media that I would otherwise have pledged to avoid, and it has helped, forced me to discern the truly awful (Finding Dory) from the bearably mediocre (Brave) and occasionally something that isn't even bad. I can take the 2016 [disney] Jungle Book better than 2017 [disney] Beauty and the Beast since Jungo isn't trying to closely imitate the earlier disney cartoon while selectively changing things to be more twitter-morality acceptable, while meanwhile totally failing to be as good in the scenes that are completely analogous. It isn't, like Maleficent, depending on you having seen the old (disney) movie so it can tell you how WRONG that movie is. But 1991 Beauty and the Beast is a different sort of thing from 1967 Jungle Book since it came out within the lifetime of most of the jerk hipsters who NEED a replacement version that is less interesting and more "social justice"y. Maleficent had its own amount of that, but foremost its goal was to emphasize how perfect its star/producer is. 1991 Beauty and the Beast is considered obnoxious fandom required viewing more so than Jungle Book OR Sleeping Beauty, but Jungle Book least of all since that doesn't have a princess in it who needs to be retroactively transformed into a more substantial and empowered character. I hadn't even seen 1967 Jungle book all the way through until literally last week because i never wanted to. Which is not to say its remake lacks elements that exist only to get the attention of annoying people, like putting a cowbell focally in the Christopher Walken character's treasure heap. but it isn't shoehorning in every song or lame imitations of the old version's dance sequences. The two songs it does carry over are briefer, and the first is relevant to distinguish that the bear character is more fun-loving than anyone else in the jungle, who never even taught Mowgli what a song IS. The second song is a sinister/surreal counterpart to the first song, sung by an enormous megalomaniacal gorilla who is only trying to seem fun. Almost the opposite of the original character. Which actually was an original character, having no counterpart in the actual Jungle Book books. Yes, the B&B remake did something similar with Gaston, changing fun to sinister, but in that case it comes across more like they aren't ALLOWED to make the guy likeable even for a moment because internet than a creative decision. And since the film is a scene by scene recreation of the old (disney) version, that change really stands out to me.
Gaston's divergence from the previous film, with regard to how he initially treats Maurice, is not significant enough to disprove my assertion that the film sets out to impersonate and swap places with the other, since otherwise it does, before and after that point. 2016 jungle book differs from the cartoon at the start, middle and end. 2017 Beauty and the Beast does so sporadically and strategically.
2016 jungle book is not a scene by scene recreation. It is not trying to re-appeal to the same people as the old one. The 1967 edition is silly. It is a cartoon. It KNOWS it is a cartoon. The newer film recognizes the change in medium and tells a different story with many of the same elements, and without trying to put itself over and diss the old one. And I am not of the opinion that the cartoon is perfect, either; Mugly just ends up near Man Village without ever resolving to go there, so he doesn't need to grow as a character. He never shows an interest in technology so it is less clear why anybody is worried he will get addicted to fire. There are prolonged interludes with the elephants and vultures that do not accomplish anything except remind Shere Khan that everyone else in the jungle is an idiot. Apparently Walt Disney was obsessed with celebrity voiceovers, if not as obsessed with building the entire movie and marketing campaign around that as the current company is, and wanted the Beatles to voice the vultures and thought the novelty of that would be enough to justify giving them what feels like 15 minutes of screen time just saying "so what do you lads wanna do?" "don't start THAT again!" But John Lennon knew specifically that he didn't wanna do that and I suppose the others weren't even asked but the scene wasn't cut or redone, either. But I don't dwell on this all day and all night because it is a dumb cartoon. It isn't like Moana with the stop and go "you can do this! no you can't do this! yes you can! no you can't! now let's have a montage where you prove you can do this! now let's have another mopey interlude where you think you can't" which also I am supposed to see as socially progressive since the female protagonist is more competent than the male one and neither is caucasian (and I acknowledge that cartoon Mowgli is literally Christopher Robin with a different haircut despite being in India). The obnoxious David Bowie tribute can't be deleted without leaving a hole in continuity whereas if necessary you could skip 1967jb's vulture section.
and so
When I read about 2019 lion king, months ago by now, I had never so profoundly wanted a film to flop. It seemed like it wanted to combine the worst traits of Maleficent and Beauty and the Beast Remake, What with loads of inappropriate celebrity non-actors in major roles, especially Beyonkay Knowles, who is about the only person I can think of who would be presented as less fallible than Angelina Jolie, and the source film being in recent memory and precious to dumb fandoms which will hype and buy into it whatever it does. Jungle Book 2016 is cited as inspiration but only on the technological side, even though the cartoon is more visually engaging.
Instead of two songs that nobody trendy cares about, we get four incredibly annoying songs from the earlier film that are supposed to already long since be seared into your memory, with the one bearable song about the one bearable character left out. As of february apparently it is back in, but then THAT means you're literally recreating the old movie. Then you get a talentless ass like Billy Eichner, whose lame to fame is going outside and yelling embarrassing things at people while filming them and periodically reminding you he is gay like you couldn't tell. And he's not taking over the minor Bobcat Goldthwaite role, he's being Timon, who sings a lot and is impossible to not see. I never liked Timon, but I learned to appreciate Nathan Lane in theater roles unrelated to the Lion King. Because he is actually an actor, even if I don't think he is funny. Billy Eichner is nothing if he isn't funny except loud (which is annoying) and gay (which is irrelevant). The hog is voiced by Seth Rogen, who I also don't want to hear singing, or at this point even talking. I would say I don't want to hear him breathing but that seems like i want him to die, when I merely want him to not exist.
John Oliver, why is he there? Why cast him as Zazu, the worst character? Just to make sure there isn't one person left that I enjoyed in my late-night-comedy-liking years and haven't yet developed a grudge against? I got past Andy Richter being a voice in both Father of the Pride AND Madagascar but my understanding is that, at least in the latter role, he was actually doing a voice, not simply talking like Andy Richter so you hear him and think "oh that's tv's Andy Richter" because he probably actually auditioned for the role rather than receiving it in an award show gift basket. Can someone I don't hate in a role that I do make the role more bearable? Not at my position in life, no. They might as well have had Billy Eichner do that one also.
Keegan Michael Key, another person I used to find interesting, has a role, but one of the hyenas which as I indicated I don't remember noticing much from the cartoon. And I should be glad it is an ex-Mad TV person rather than an idiot from Saturday Night Live for a change. Considering that the film's whole concept, recreate something that already exists and change a few aspects while mugging for applause each time a character I am supposed to already be familiar with appears for the first time is more or less what Saturday Night Live does now. But Phil Lamarr is also from Mad TV and has considerably more voice acting experience. Experience is irrelevant; Key was only cast because he is in stupid ads and Barack Obama likes him.
The top-billed actor is Donald Glover whose name looked mildly familiar to me, but what from I could not place. But apparently he is best known for an audio production called "This is America." Something I heard last year, thought "this is terrible" and then forgot about and eventually learned had won six billion awards. That seems about right. That has really been Lion King's legacy in my life. That which I find unremarkable at best becomes essential to the lives of others and shoved at me and heralded as the best there is perpetually. THIS is America. We make annoying movies set in other countries filled with lame comedy, irritating songs and fake contemporary morality and then tell ourselves it is the greatest accomplishment in the history of humanity even while constantly criticizing "america," whose frivolous brainwashable marketing-addicted and disseminating consumers and above-the-law corporations this would be impossible without. ESPECIALLY if it is done in rap form. Because rap is new and speaks truth to power despite being older than me and totally appropriated by commercialism. The Media is controlled by white people who are afraid of looking racist if they claim to not like rap and conveniently enough the performance art presented as blackest is not terribly difficult. Anybody who looks the part can be trained to rap. Even if they have a weak voice and can't talk very fast, hey hooray we trained the public to pretend they think digitally augmented barely-human vocals sound good! Convincing the public they like rap leaves you the most options. I don't recall that the item in question contains digitally augmented vocals or that the new lion king contains rap, but Glover wasn't hired for being an actor suited to the part, that is the point. I would be surprised if a single person in the cast was. Image is everything. Especially when the people are invisible. Anyway the magic of the Lion King is that it is bad enough on its own non-merit to not need rap to make itself worse.
The race-bait matter may be contemporary; it wants to compensate for the majority of television's and cinema's existence when no black people were allowed, except in demeaning roles, so I can accept that, for a few more years, possibly. I won't pretend I like rap or the Lion King, though, because I don't, and I shouldn't have to.
1994 Lion King was a big line in the sand
I was not keen on lions already; I didn't understand what made them "king" of "the jungle." They don't live in jungles and tigers are bigger than them!
And I really really hated the film! I remember hearing that the middle kid from Home Improvement was the voice of Simba, and not knowing why I should care or why he was a big deal. But I was SUPPOSED to know, and I didn't go searching for the information. I thought talking feral animals were stupid and boring in general. I thought it was dumb that the prey had to KNEEL, on ONE KNEE, before these creatures that were going to kill them, and that I was supposed to think that was the right way of things. I hated simba bragging about being king and all these much bigger animals had to do what he said even though he wasn't actually king yet, and compensate for his ignorance amidst that; when he says "everybody look left" they actually have to go RIGHT to match bratty dumb Simba's viewpoint. I thought aging from child to adult in two seconds was extremely stupid. Especially in 1994, I had been in special education a year or two years and considered that all this garbage screwing up my life, probably for good, that I had no say in, in the DISNEY story this period of life is so easy and without consequence that you can skip it and be exactly where everyone else told you you would end up. I didn't think it was funny that Pumbo and Timmy ate bugs. I ate a worm and got in big trouble, but oh ha ha when disney characters do it, it's FUNNY! And they really don't taste like chicken. They taste like dirt. Why does this wimpy scavenger know what chicken IS much less what a dead one tastes like, and why would Simba be expected to also know? I swear to you with complete sincerity those are the things I was thinking about. I literally didn't remember anything that happened after the Hakuna Potata segment because I was so fixated on not wanting to be in the theater. I wanted to go home and play Donkey Kong on the Super Game Boy, so it isn't like my standards were particularly high (though I'd still rather play that again than any Donkey Kong game released since then). In fact it was a long time before I realized that "caaaaan you feel the LOVE" song I used to get bothered by when buying pringles and 32 ounce Snapple at a local store was from a movie I had already seen. But it was four years before I had home internet access and yet longer before fan-wankdom controlled all discourse, so I was able to avoid alienating every single person who loved this thing, and I had emulators to keep me occupied even when video games tried to turn on me the same way that cartoons did, including a particularly shoddy and ubiquitous one based on The Lion King. Now Lion King wants to come back and really challenge my devotion to despising it. Well you know what, I've been alienating everyone I know by complaining about their false gods for half my life now so it is much, much too late to do any more damage. This isn't something that is made to be remembered. Just to get press, get money, get awards and get lost. If it wants to supplant the old one, it may be my guest, put my apathy to the test. At least Josh Gad isn't in it.
sometimes it is a relief to no longer care.
page 34 of part 3 of that dumb old comic strip.
I probably wrote more text about this page than any other and feel like showing less of it than ever!
this script is so old, elpse initially said "get up, ramus." Ramus is a character from the video game Lunar Silver Star Story Complete Absolute Total, who is unprepared for the life of a video game hero and gets knocked down a lot. lope was also initially quoting ramus's "blarrrrgh." I played Lunar Silver Star, in 2006, and last mentioned it, specifically with regard to Ramus, in 2007. I don't remember if I wrote this part of the script then but I was certainly un-old enough to think I could put an obscure exchange like that in here and have anyone know what it meant, even though I didn't actually post a screenshot of Ramus saying "blarg" anywhere because I didn't think it was an interesting-enough line for that, so it most certainly was not interesting enough to allude to out of context nearly 12 years after the game was already a 7 year old remake of a game from 1992 which wasn't even particularly innovative THEN. Also the one time a voice actor says his name it is pronounced "ray-mis" and I always say "ram-us." I made myself obsessed with Lunar because I knew, at that time, other people who had been obsessed with it when they were children and I thought they would link to my website if I liked the same stuff they did. If they read my comic strips in 2006 they certainly don't now! Probably.
Oddly enough one of them specifically denigrated the game Breath of Fire in favor of Lunar and I said nothing in its defense even though I legitimately liked Breath of Fire and still like it better and I don't know that I have mentioned it even one time in the half-my-life of having this website. I don't even have any screenshots from it since I last played it before I made this website or meticulously documented everything I did.
Literally the last time I played it, my computer had an MS-DOS based infrastructure. Three to four times as much time has passed since I last played it than had passed between the last time I played it on real hardware and the first time I played it in an emulator, which I thought at the time was a long time!
I may even have stolen pog's name from it! Although I only remember being surprised to see the name in the game years after stealing it if I stole it, not actually doing so. All this is not to say I resent Lunar –I was able to make a forced infatuation be sincere back in 2006– or that Breath of Fire isn't made of problems that only a childhoodded fixation can disregard (and I may resent BOF instead for making me steal POG from it), but of all the things I make, the bimshwellian comicoid least of all I ordinarily wonder who I am trying to please with it and why, but today I did!
Also lope being felled occurred, initially, during the altercation with the robots, but when I got to that point I decided the robots should just get beaten up without doing anything. Inexplicably I liked the dialog enough that i contrived a way for lope to fall down in the same spot at a later point, and now that is a permanent part of the "story." i only removed the ramus line literally on february 22 2019. Or rather made a copy of the dialog bauble and moved it to another layer and turned it unvisible in case I wanted to bring it back (and look, I just did). I had drawn it in knowing it didn't belong there but not feeling like dealing with it. Thankfully I still think it is funny that lope is pitiful and a substitute line easily suggested itself, so this is only a major problem with regard to me knowing i cannot be trusted and that i will probably be 60 years old before i get through the entire script as it is now.
Of course, as I indicated, much of what goes on is NOT in the script. i get to a point and i change it, sometimes significantly; initially nemitz was intended to capture pog out of view, but when i got to this point I thought it would be funny if elpse's goop fell on nemitz, so then elpse had to run off and capture pog itself, and that gave me an opportunity to acknowledge the dope still exists and also exhibit pog's unusual attitude toward captivity.
But I do not want to drop anything I think of for any reason and so try to think of in-character ways for them to behave illogically to accommodate script pieces that are no longer relevant. In this case, lope thinking that the goop-covered nemitz is a ghost (and at the same time avoid saying "I'm soooo dead"). From a long term stand point, do I really believe that lope really believes that ghosts are real or that itself was well and truly dead? I did not think about it that deeply. But I knew "wow I am sooooo dead" is obviously not how lope talks by the time I got here, even when I still thought elpse might call lope "ramus." I wrote that so long ago I did not have a solid grasp of how lope talked or just how foolish it was and in what ways. But NOW I wonder: does lope live in constant fear of death and undead spirits? What occurred to make it be preoccupied with that? I know, or think I know, that nobody is going to DIE in this comic strip, and have worried about my ability to introduce matters of consequence as a result, but I did not want to face the issue on the big punchable nose either, since it is too permanent an occurrence to add on a whim unless you are making something stupid like Dilbert that isn't supposed to be consistent or not contradict itself. A hypothetical future version of me with a clearer mind may think a character death is necessary or even devise an alternative that is not strictly "death" as it applies to real people but without relying on conventional cartoon judeo-christian afterlife tropes that have no business applying to dumb old lope who I won't even let have a christmas tree, or even some of the other innumerable copout ways American comic books have, often on whims, undone once-significant or equally whimly deaths. And that version of me would then also have to determine if there are supernatural forces which have interest in or authority over death and life. The present me is not qualified and so should avoid topics which lead to that one!
additionally lope's new comment about ghosts agitates pog, who now has no reason to be this bored by the dialog. Fortunately pog has a looser concept of reality than lope so I do not need to wonder about why it is afraid of ghosts.
Pog's boredom complaint came about because consistently in this section of the comic strip i have worried that i had more dialog than interesting visuals could be made to accompany. But again and again, and indeed again, had to strain to cram in all the visuals i came up with. However, now a script revision that I added due to the boringness of the script was made irrelevant by a future revision. That is so convoluted, crowded and broken I am surprised now that I didn't keep it in!
Beyond all that, this page is one that is very hard to get working without layout swapping or dialog bauble stem crossing because there are so many characters stuffed into it. Ordinarily you can switch around where characters are to facilitate better dialog flow by zooming in, zooming out, or going to the next page, but I don't like doing those things! i had in fact gone to a bit of trouble to switch the layout already; initially the viewpoint matched the previous pages, with the dialog positioned to suit that, and then I realized that would mean drawing the back of this parking lot 12 more times and I didn't want to. I didn't want to draw this side either but it at least is plainly a different page.
I should just put the word "trivia" at the top of a page every time I am conflicted about the overall relevance of its contents.
This sign advertising the republican primary is actually still up, but even the actual election sign only offers "cut taxes" as any indication of what this person will do and I suspect the sign's keeper didn't notice the difference. Although "cut taxes" is loads more information than these signs typically give.
Stefanowski is running against Ned flippin-dippin Lamont, who I complained about in 2006 as also having nothing new to say or contribute. As with the 2014 election, I do not think it matters which one of them gets in. Ned of course won the democrat gubernatorial primary on the strength of not winning the previous Connecticut election he was in for a lower office.
My brother Een produced a song parody that I don't totally understand. It depicts Ned Lamont in a ludicrous fashion, but treats Stefanowski in a sincere and serious fashion even though he is just as much a red/blue stereotype as his opponent. And then does it to the tune of a song by someone whose prime fans are cartoonishly devoted to the opposition party. But Ian came and jump started "my" car when I was stuck in the miserable Walmart parking lot yesterday because I hate driving a car and every aspect of it exists to spite me, so I know Ian is a decent person. Would Bob Stefanowski help me get away from Walmart?
As usual, the only candidate who actually proposes anything is the one who isn't supposed to be allowed to win, Oz Griebel, and wasn't supposed to even be allowed to debate but slipped into one on a technicality when people running the venue were under the impression he was a great and powerful wizard.
Which is not to say I believe in Griebel, but of the three he offers something that can potentially be believed in. I don't believe in anyone anymore who I cannot directly interact with.
I had wanted Trump to win the nomination in 2016 and gut the party because I underestimated republicans' ability to be party members first and humans second. I also underestimated the democrats' ability to pander and regress themselves to try and compete with that. People that get retweeted at me simultaneously say "you're part of the problem" if you don't vote for what you believe in and also that you're "throwing your vote away" if you don't vote for the sad compromise that they order you to take. I might as WELL vote for a wizard. Half these people are corrupt imbeciles, and the rest are running for office.
Ned Lamont has an unusual bonus this time in that some group has paid for and distributed sarcastic campaign signs announcing that he is "for taxes and tolls" even though only Griebel is openly in favor of tolls. They are obviously fake signs because the real Ned signs don't say he is for anything. We only know that he is the white guy with a three letter name who is NOT going to cut taxes, and with the people I know, that might just be enough. Even though they don't actually pay all the taxes because they get their wages in cash off the record.
I do not have a picture of these signs because I only see them when driving.
I hate driving. But I also hate having so many pictures that I cannot finish what I am writing because I want to insert them all. But I hate even more describing something that would work better if I had a picture of it. You know what I like? Lo mein. I believe in noodles.
I actually don't mind paying for road improvements because I hate driving and would like to feel slightly less like I am going to suffer imminently every time I do it. My issue with tolls is that paying them is terrifying because it requires getting in a specific lane and having a specific amount of money and probably having somebody behind you angry at you for something beyond anybody's control. Or you have to pay a fee to get a special automatic toll-paying brick from the government, even though the point is to help THEM get money from you more easily. I would rather mail Ned a dollar every week, and I hate mailing almost as much as I hate driving. I will vote for the candidate that will institute a statewide pneumatic tube system so I do not have to drive again.
Although the previous winner, Dan Malloy, declined to seek re-election because he was so tired of people complaining about the non-job he was doing, that gives me no hope that the next job-haver will do a better non-job.
(Ian ALSO has a song about Dan Malloy, and I like this one better because Ian sings it himself and it isn't to the tune of something I can tell he doesn't care about, but you wouldn't know it without excavating it from facebook because the unaltered music from the original song that Ian sang over got it blocked on Youtube which I discovered just now. And then the video shills for some local radio dorks whom I doubt have his best interests in mind)
Grimbedly poketer, nobody complains more than people who win and get what they what.
Something that is "really popular" obviously is liked by more people than hate it. These scumbags get to smear their essence on everything while pretending to be victims.
This guy is set for life and was putting out the narrative "anyone who doesn't like this thing that I made is a hater" in ADVANCE of it being available, –literally assuming it WOULD get popular because it was already crowdfunded for more money then I will smell in six lifetimes– and people that I KNOW are repeating this years later like that is to his credit, IN ADVANCE of whatever other thing he made more recently, even though the first thing ended up just about the most loved and inescapable heap of happy hype plopaganda relative to the amount of effort involved that may have ever existed and everyone involved has a mutually beneficial situation.
You know what happens if someone who actually is hated complains about being hated? Nothing, because people actually hate that person!
This forklogan who is only ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THIS HAPPENED is exponentially more loved than I have ever experienced! And doesn't even watch the page, judging from its own screenshot, only leeches off it.
I don't have a choice to not know or to form an independent opinion on the pertinent matter, which i have personally dumbed "Dintydoone" so I can pretend it is a combination of my favorite inexplicably named supermarket products that also thrive without me ever buying them. I only know it is there because I try to force myself to deal with things that I would rather not be aware of, to give an amount of consideration to the people who come to me, because I worry that avoiding what my instincts tell me are bad news makes me look like an unkind person, and my inability to function when put in that position has made me LESS kind. I don't have a choice to simply not be interested, even though if I mention what I like I get gloated at like "ho ho I've never even SEEN that" like it's an accomplishment that they haven't, if I get acknowledged at all, which I probably won't be. Maybe, MAYBE we are BOTH have a right to like different things. I don't understand how this is a foreign concept. Of course our political system is preposterous: THESE are the people the candidates have to reach.
And I can't just not use twitter because the websites that make sense were thoroughly devalued when every person who already gets what they want vacated those sites in favor of ones like this where nobody EXCEPT them can do so.
Do i overreact? Yes absolutely! This is a consequence of a life spent as a square peg trying to get through a round hole when I am actually a tea kettle, and now the culture is dictated entirely by square pegs which includes the hole which is also now square. My only hope is to avoid it entirely. I don't mind people having their fun and their own personal false gods. They can be furries and bronies and John Balbonies but it is imperative that they be people foremost, and accept that no frivolous expenditure of time can have unanimous approval. Whatever the case I won't beat myself up anymore for not liking enough stuff that I have no foundation on which to like, and hopefully I won't make [as many] spiteful drawings on the topic, either.
At least the Hamilton guy, who came into and ruined a piece of my life equal in size around the same time has humility about his fame and considers that it is something of a fluke, even if his creative work comes from the perspective of the abrasively unhumble. He knows, on some level, that is garbage and only for show. I don't know if he tries to communicate that to his fans, but he definitely wasn't on 60 minutes 4 times warning people that there is something wrong with them if they don't like his annoying songs. I bet he would jump start my car even if he read this first, although he might jump ON the car and sing a few lines from Man of LaMancha as punishment for my besmirching attitude.
I heard a [different] song, again, without wishing to, whose primary lyric was "i wish that i could be like the cool kids. like the cool kids." no rhyme, just that over and over again. While this seems in conflict with "i'm a nerd and i'm cool" and thus a distinct personality type, both speak of a feeling of subjugation. "I'm not cool, I'm not good enough" & "I AM cool, other people who think they are cool actually aren't." People in the first group aspire to be the people in the second group. Both see themselves as nerds that society does not approve of, and both are disingenuous. If your song is on the radio and I hear it at the laundromat, you ARE the cool kids. And then if you say you are a nerd, then I have said this before.
Oh chads. Having a prefabricated message from nobody that mysteriously speaks in the first person and that is sent to every single actual person regardless of merit or attempt at it has thoroughly appeased my desire to be appreciated, and so I go out and vote for my favorite factor of purple now.
which is convenient since I literally cannot determine a thing about either of these people beyond that one is a lawyer and the other filed for bankruptcy in 2010. I have to think if somebody WANTS to be the dintdooned registrar of voters they would have a reason for it, or at the very least some piece of personal information they would want me to know before I knew they filed for bankruptcy.
the first version of this lame comic strip had chocolate, and a better explanation from the dog, since apparently nobody actually knows WHY grapes are poisonous to them. However, I thought my experience being annoyed and demoralized would seem fairly unimportant compared to the slave-like conditions in which chocolate beans are harvested by children in West Africa. Really, that is the reason I changed it! Not that I think anybody likely to see this would know or care that i was trivializing slavery, or that either way I am doing anything to improve that. But once that is in my mind, the whole thing seems meaningless. The primary thing in my life that is at all fulfilling is overeating, which frequently depends on my not thinking about how the exploitation of the world and its people is brazenly utilized by multinational corporations who operate in plain sight. And truthfully I can forget it pretty easily, but I made the connection when drawing the comic so it is fixed in place for me.
I keep seeing this at Stop & Shop and that is all I can think of. They aren't just sweeping modern day inescapable servitude under the rug, they're building a luxury hotel on top of the rug and pretending this is somehow pro-humanity and patriotic. Mars' lawyers probably said "you can't say made IN america but you can say made FOR america" and gosh that makes it seem like a selfless GIFT! And it IS patriotic in the sense that it puts casual thoughtless luxury of Americans ahead of basic humanity of anyone else. As they always have, but plainly crossing the line that even they have pledged never to cross. You might think one company could eliminate dubiously acquired beans from their supply chain and shame the others for not doing it, but if that actually happened they would all of course have to stop using slave beans, and none of them would benefit financially or publicly because they would also then be forced to acknowledge that they all have slavery in their past and present. What they presently do is put as many different companies and groups between bean harvesting and product selling as possible so it is very difficult to prove anything when somebody DOES speak up. When they do get called out on it, they make non-legally binding "pledge"s to stop using those beans approximately later, and by the time later comes they expect everybody with the power to influence their sales to have forgotten. Consider how long it took to get Bill Cosby in court, and he committed non-lethal crimes in this country against people who have access to means of expression.
It is not EASY to stop institutionalized, undocumented slavery, but obviously people making profits know it has been going ON for a very long time, and would never have made even the present vague show of trying to stop it had it not been publicized. They are morally comfortable with forced, unpaid child labor being step 1 in their product.
And it isn't like chocolate is getting cheaper; the price goes up despite no sign that money is actually being invested in eliminating corruption. The people who gather the beans aren't even allowed to EAT chocolate! They can't even get ONE m&m while there isn't a store in this country where there aren't bags and bags and bags of the tiny little bastids. Because they are made for America! And I think trucker hats have finally supplanted cowboy hats as the worst hats. At least cowboy hats can look funny in the right context and provide adequate sun protection. Trucker hat just means "i am proud to pay extra to look ugly." That's the driving force between computer generated merchandising characters in general. They always look hideous and the fact that they are effective lets you, the company, know that the people buying your product have no ability or desire to scrutinize any aspect of it, much much less the incongruity between the frightfully specific list of ingredients legally required on the label and everybody involved claiming to not know where the actual chocolate comes from! We don't know where it comes from but gosh it sure keeps coming at consistent, ever increasing levels and we own it. It must be magic! Magic for America!
At my one art show in 2017, I wanted to put out a bowl of wrapped candy for people to take (and they did), and somehow ended up at wal mart hastily trying to determine, on my terrible telephone computer, which major chocolate company used the "least" amount of slave labor. The simple fact is that if it is at walmart, it abuses enough people that it doesn't matter that another company is more abusive. Even the dumb phone which I have also called terrible is an absurd convenience that we as society have been groomed to think is fundamental to our being, and contains components from rarely identified, exploited African sources. My device's manufacturer, Motorola, is not implicated in that, but IS named as a company that benefits from dubious prison labor. And the computer I am typing this on now, who knows what is in it? I sure do not!
Anyway I bought kit-kats. You know, I didn't get to eat any of this chocolate.
In other news, to start me back on the path to not thinking about where mass-produced cheap chocolate comes from, the dog is based off Scruffy, who used to live in my (and several other persons') old house.
Seen here visiting my present house, before it was my house, and therefore much classier. Scruffy could in fact stand up and photographs exist proving that, but I sure could not find one.
(please do not read this if you have not seen the film but intend to. There may also be other reasons to not read this!)
I saw black panther der film (based on the presumably well known comic book character) not terribly long ago. I thought it was a functional film though not totally cohesive and nothing about it surprised me. Probably better than Thor 2 but not as good as Thor 3. Goy was *I* wrong!
And during a brief exposure to nbc olympic coverage that I recalled afterward, a hypey promotion identified it as "A GAME CHANGER!" among other exclamatory phrases in big gold text that supposedly were said by real people whose job it is to say things like that. Trying to find that advertisement on the internet to get a picture of it is not a good use of my time. The important thing is that without me paying any particular attention it is clear that somebody wants, NEEDS me to believe that my life was changed by this dumb movie.
Black Panther is a 'game changer' because it shows that Marvel films can be just as dull, fragmented and focused on the non-hero identities as DC films, I suppose. Panther appears to have the approximately same skill set as Batman and indeed spends as much of the movie out of costume and occasionally out of the movie that he seems like a secondary character. He has a big fight toward the end but it isn't the main fight and you can't see what he is doing since he is fighting somebody else with almost the same black costume, in the dark, with a train blocking your view half the time. And it seems like this fight stops and restarts in much the same manner several times just to drag it out to match the length of the other fight they aren't in. I only remembered after I left the theater that there was another costumed action sequence in South Korea earlier in the film because that seemed like it was in a different movie and I had to remind myself I had seen it the same evening.
He is not a "radical superhero." The man he fights, Killmonger, is more radical than he is (so obviously that guy has to die). His sister Shuri is more radical than he is. ooh ooh she calls the white american cia agent "colonizer!" and then tells him all Wakanda's state secrets despite him already having been shown as complicit in a scheme to buy them from the person who murdered Wakanda's own king and her father, with diamonds stolen from other African countries and later asks him to shoot down planes piloted by her own black Wakanda countrymen because the US government underwrites all our big budget action movies but puts in insults like "colonizer" so we think they don't.
Panthy may be the only person in the film who isn't radical. He willingly gives up his power twice so other people can fight him for claim to it. The only thing he does that is radical is declare his own country's traditions ludicrous and refuse to go along with them, at least after he loses his royal title legally via those traditions. Hopefully the radicality of telling ghosts they are wrong includes no longer willingly giving up his power in the future. Or declaring that only one person in the whole nation is allowed to have the magic plant the power comes from, as from the look of things they could give it to everybody. Or at least they could until Killmonger burned it all without even saving a stash for himself and then the one plant that was saved was instead of being replanted, fed to Panther even though he already screwed up.
The most intriguing characters, to me, were the ape-worshipers in the ice fortress, and they were in the movie even less than the title figure!
But once the media narrative is out there that this movie has some sort of profound message that the world Needs Right Now it keeps rolling down a hill like a cartoon snowball becoming ever larger in defiance of basic snow physics and few people seem to acknowledge it as a fictional contrivance.
Why should I be so bothered by this? I have felt for ages like almost all our acclaimed media is declared "acclaimed" on invalid terms, loudly and constantly so that common people believe it. What is different now is the forced idea that we are living in the most enlightened and progressive time of all times. Why is it important for people to believe that? Is that supposed to make us want to buy more garbage? More and more garbage than ever before? Peoples' lives have so little meaning now that they need noiser and boastier false statements of meaning. Which also isn't new but at some point you can't get any louder. Lying to yourself that an unholy corporate behemoth made a movie which temporarily solved social inequality doesn't do any more to get fake nazis to stop appropriating your ugly cartoon frogs than selling trashy merchandise asserting your right to punch them does, but it does make it easier for that behemoth to keep washing your brain in the same brine while it continues to eat smaller behemoths that by any other measure would be quite large.
And that is another matter: Black Panther and all his friends are born into affluence. The only person who isn't is the guy he kills. "Killmonger" becomes king and has differing ideas about Wakanda's needless secrecy, secrecy which had condemned him to a life of poverty, but he is implausibly irrational and unforgiving so that he is entirely unsympathetic. Panther only acknowledges the secrecy is ineffectual after his enemy does, and then his enemy still has to die. That yet allows the film have a message of "the wealthy should help others in the end," except "the wealthy" in this case are from a fictional country that controls magic from space. And then white American CIA man is in attendance applauding because it isn't HIS country that has to change. In fact WAKANDA's money is going to come to AMERICA to help poor kids. Which is FINE if you accept that the film is a FANTASY whose intent is to amuse viewers. The dilapidated apartment complex in Oakland California that Wakanda people buy up to renovate wasn't even filmed in Oakland! It was shot in ATLANTA Georgia. Oakland got no money from this movie!
The "Sweet Auburn" neighborhood where that WAS filmed does indeed has a history of suffering under segregation, but by the same token that Oakland didn't get any money, Auburn didn't get any recognition. And that is FINE in a fancy bit of stagecraft based on a comic book because it ISN'T REAL anyway!
Disney putting one gay character in each of their movies or at least making cynically planned leaks implying that they might doesn't do a thing for actual social justice. I saw that Beauty + Beast remake also and Lefou "being" gay is about the least relevant dumb thing about it and that isn't directly indicated anywhere, either.
That whole story was an exaggeration to get press and fan-wank points without them actually having to commit to any real change, and they get to have news stories saying both things, possibly at the same time. I expect that the writers remembered when JK Rollingsworth announced that Dumbledory was gay and got press for that (hence MY knowing about it) even though she was already done writing the Helly Pothuh books and never actually put that in any of them. And so the more recent Beast's movie's only goals were to make money by riding a wave of "retro" media regurgitation, to ret-con its previous movie to be mostly the same except where it conflicted with contemporary entertainment mores, and most fundamentally to establish a cartoon from 1991 as "the original" version of a story from centuries ago. And if you think this 2017 movie is a waste of time that is at best is a sad pageant imitation of a "masterpiece" then Disney still wins! People go buy fresh copies of that and themed merchandise to take pictures of themselves being owned by.
Certainly a MAIN character in a major budgeted mainstream mush being ACTUALLY gay without that being a joke or shoved into people's business like "oooh isn't this RADICAL?" would help to normalize it, and make people fuss over it less when it happens again. Although until it DOES happen I don't give anyone credit for talking about it MAYBE happening in the future, and that still wouldn't make the movie it happens in automatically bearable.
The fact of the madder is that almost everybody I have contact with is hopelessly depressed. The only ones who think they aren't are hopelesslier addicted to stupid cartoons and video games, memey hogwash and hypey rubbish in support of those things because if they allowed themselves to think, they would realize how depressed they are.
To reiterate, I think the Black Panther's film is fine, and it did what it did without relying on characters from other Marvel movies, which I don't think has happened in this series since Iron Man in 2008. Although much of the VALUE of the series IS its ability cross things over, but it gets out of hand, and can be frustrating when a character whose movie you haven't seen is suddenly THERE and meant to be recognized but you can't because too many of them wear dark body suits without helmets. The people who created Black Panther are not necessarily complicit in the campaign to have the latest mildly above average bit of distraction material be declared society's ambrosia, but I doubt they are questioning their inclusion in it either. I am thankful to have new non-internet proof that this campaign exists, because the last few years it has mostly manifested in things I had NOT experienced, because I was near television a lot and saw the hype first and thereby became too biased to assess them honestly. Being biased does not mean you are wrong. But it does mean you need to work harder to be certain you are not wrong. I was unilaterally biased against Disney for over 10 years and so I stopped complaining about it [as much] for a while, thinking I looked foolish and might possibly be unfair. But I have seen Frozen AND Tangled since my niece Violet was baptized in the princess indoctrination glitter cloud by forces beyond my control. And I can say with as much honesty as I trust myself to have that I think Tangled is probably a better film than Frozen, but if watching Frozen with Violish one more time would magically purge Tangled from existence, i would do it. And if watching both Beauties and both Beasts back to back would purge both those other two then gosh gad why not apart from that not actually being likely to work, because at least 1991 BnB has whimsy and 2017's tepid re-enactment momentarily permits people to remember that whimsy was once allowed.
Seeing the way people talk about Black Panther after I saw it reminds me of what I also see people retroactively saying about Zelda Skyward Sword compared to the 5 outta 5 release hype. I don't need to get into this matter deeply but I lost interest in the Zelda series after being utterly disinterested in and frustrated by Ocarina of Time, but my sister liked that one a lot so I tried to imagine I just did not have the right mindset and dexterity for it. But I saw her take to the follow up games with utter sincerity and willingness to enjoy them, and for the first time we could BOTH see all the bland tedious poorly designed gate-keeping hassles that I already considered the series synonymous with, albeit without the hideous n64 graphics or endless repetition of dopey 3-note jingles.
of course the posters outside the cinema would have me believe that peter flippin dippin bippin rabbit is a radical superhero. Yes compared to THAT Black Panther is highly significant. It isn't enough to give the smug homogenite treatment to every remotely popular culture figure from my life time, evidently. They have to mess with my great grandparents' too now. This just looks like the sequel to "Hop."
No Peter rabbit is not an off-brand bugs bunny who chomps carrots while winking at the camera and then stuns Mr. McGregor with a big smooch before clobbering him with his own rake. Peter Rabbit steals RADISHES for his own personal benefit and runs away because he is TERRIFIED since his father rabbit did the same thing and got caught and baked into a pie. He isn't a "rebel" out to cause trouble. He is just foolish. Beatrix Potter's characters are entertaining because they are foolish, not because they are "cool." What is even the point? There will only be name recognition among people who would find this ghastly.
Also: I know what "hop" is and yet recall that it exists because a person known as Bunsen robisioned me to draw their rabbit character one time and some unaffiliated degenerate saw it, copied it and uploaded it to this gross cartoon pornography site and identified it as homage art to "hop (movie)" even though the dork from Hop isn't half classy enough to half-dress this well.
more about indiscreet of mana. Or I suppose anything about it because it appears that the image links were broken the whole time!
I do not like "fan-art" as a genre. I do not like what it has done to people, and to the economy of artistic recognition. People find out they get disproportionately more encouragement just copying stuff that is already popular than thinking for themselves, and then forget how to think, or never learn to do it at all.
This was even before tumblr and my first attempts at conventions; at the few art events I attended, there would always be some dork who only drew disney characters and I didn't understand why that was fair, nor how that was particularly interesting to the "artists."
I made a considerable list of copyrighted characters that I COULD draw if I ever felt the need to copy someone else which would be more interesting to me, since nobody else ever draws them. It would not make me a more creative person, but it would provide some dissent in the fanart miasma. Much of my life has concerned itself with dissenting in areas where I cannot possibly make a real difference. It is silly, but it is an important silliness to me.
I even "know" the main artist/designer of Gobliins and Woodruff + the Schnibble, Pierre Gilhodes, perhaps my most significant living artistic influence, in facebook, but I don't speak French and have never attempted to communicate with the person, and drawing his old dumb characters would be the perfect way to get his attention if I am going to be drawing other people's old dumb characters anyway. So how did I come to make a scene from a property I have seen countless derivations of?
I had started this on April 6 2017, apparently the same day my father was hospitalized, when I was also, already, sicker than I recall ever having been, which I suppose could account for my unusual change in subject matter, and I put it away when, in a clearer state of mind, I wasn't really sure why I was drawing it. But more recently I was looking for some drawing I could finish to place on the internet in a desperate grasp at attention, while my ongoing project on-goes without my having anything coherent to show for it. I saw this and forgot why I had STOPPED drawing it, suddenly taken by the idea of getting easy approval via one of the rare things I like that is still popular. Forgetting that the people who make it still popular are not actually as numerous or influential as they seem, and that I still need to get over the barrier of my having drawn it.
Yet inexplicably the final appears sparse and incomplete to me, and only now do I see the intense perspective flaws. This is why most of my drawings have flat perspectives and flagrantly unrealistic backgrounds. It is harder to see when those have gone horribly wrong and easier to fix when I do notice! I spent a number of hours trying to fix this after the stuff that was important was already set in place and somewhat unremarkable.
Additionally, I didn't realize that the chubbier child, Elliott with two Ts, was supposed to have an overbite until I had already committed to most of that, and it never looked quite right again after the point where I "fixed" that.
As I sought the non-existent source artwork, I inadvertently learned of a 3d Secret of Mana "remake" and I have to say that is completely and wholly unnecessary, especially after Sword of Mana, the remake of SOM's predecessor Final Fantasy Adventure, and perhaps my single most complained-about video game, though not necessarily in public. I wish the Square people would remake something that didn't quite work, like
Sword of Mana Secret of Evermore, or localize something that was never released in the US at all, like Romancing Saga or even Seiken Densetsu 3. Or better yet remake every mana game AFTER secret of mana, because as best as I can tell, none of them worked. Or betterer yet stop messing with old games and make a new game that uses a similar interface and graphical style, and acknowledge it is a ripoff but that the 1990s aesthetics have validity, and that without the data storage and processing limits of the 16-bit systems you can do better things with the style than were previously possible.
I kept this part out of the first post because once I mentioned sword of mana I realized I had eh over 1100 screenshots with mostly annoyed comments on them, and wondered what and how much I should say about it here now to sum up my gripes, but didn't have the desire to deal with that at the last update.
But I don't want to deal with it now, either, since Sword of Mana fills me with a passionate, disdaining ennui.
and fixating on specifics endlessly means I miss the point and spend ages getting nothing of importance done!
The animation I posted previously got way out of hand. As did my text description of how that happened. Neither of those should surprise you! However, it became somewhat inflammatory and it seemed unfair to have accompany a piece that I was paid for and was not hideous.
my usual method of illustrating is somewhat sculptural. I add material, subtract it and smush it around, until the shape looks correct, and only then fill in small visual details. Some things may be a bit off until the very end, but the important matter is that the ideas and gestures and all are clear early on, so that the buyer can trust me (or I can finishe me) to finish the piece. At the example stages of this animation, I operated in a similar fashion, which was not good!
I prioritized making sure the sequence was legible, and not that all details were accurate or that shapes were consistent, saving that for later. But in animation, every object needs (at least to me) to flow into the other. Having the flow function before the details are correct is minimally meaningful, because every instance of any detail may need to be altered, and that may change how it moves. For example, if one aspect, such as the wings, is the wrong size or shape, that would require much correction, and may even need new frames. But if another aspect, such as the ears, were already correct, adding in new frames may mess with their flow! AND getting too strict with the flow in some places may disrupt areas where it had previously been casual (and already approved of by the instigator, Goldquiver, mind you), such as the leaf-arms. When I added the spots toward the end (and Goldquiver had already not cared that I hadn't included them), their movements were very smooth from frame to frame, and suddenly the casual leaves were unacceptable to me! But moving the leaves meant messing with the area where I had lain the spots. AND I had already drawn the shading on top of it, so the shading had to move
Oh yes, the shading type is new. For each individual frame, another layer is above it with translucent shadows. In the past animation I always shaded directly on the base drawing. I thought this would be faster! However, I had already, for clarity, used two different shades of green to differentiate the sides of the leaves, so some point there are competing shadow methods!!! oh! And it still does not look as natural or tight as adding it directly, since I tend to refine the edges while shading, and I would use all included colors in order of their values. In aseprite, the software I used for most of this, adjustment layers function independent of the set color palette. Which looks more "realistic," since the shadows fall consistently, but cartoons are not supposed to be realistic, and pixel art looks more competent and orderly when the colors are limited and used to maximum efficiency. The dark brown that covers the light brown is not IN the color palette, so I cannot use it in a full orderly value sequence!
At this stage from 5 days before I declared it "done," and probably a week before I was actually done with it, I had already started to color it, even though the details were not all in. Unfortunately I often cannot see if something is wrong or correct until after I have begun coloring it. A pruhfeshinul animator might tell you that after the first version of the sequence you need to make a fully realized sketch version, and ONLY after that do you go BACK to the first frame again and put definitive lines on that. I never do that! I always think it will take too long!
Or they might tell you something else entirely; I only knew one person who worked in animation, and could not find steady employment or just hated it and didn't actually draw all that meticulously since MOST cartoons are ugly these days since they are all designed by people who can't draw at all and I think that person works at a pet supply store and likes it better. As much as I complain about them, I still find illustrated animal folk easier to deal with in my own home than real ones.
I had, for this animation, been testing an unusually-designed bit of software called Tvpaint. Its animation mode is great but everything else is weird, like arbitrarily so. It is designed, or rather "developped" by French people and more importantly, probably in Linux. Linux software is unintuitive since the programmers think they are "avante-garde," which is French for annoying on purpose. TVPain's selection tool is separate from the well-disguised selection movement tool, making movement a sub-function of "transform" rather than transform AND move sub-functions of selection, even though you can't transform without selecting first, and you cannot select with the transformer!
Hey! I am saying BAD things about you! I am NOT complimenting you! Vous ette un homme ridicule! (Oui vrai)
And Tvp has "Erase" as a toggled mode on drawing tools instead of a dedicated tool which covers more ground than drawing tools, which I have only seen prior in Krita, which is also for Linux. Imagine if you used a pencil and the eraser was also sharpened to a point. You would have to trace your wrong lines exactly to remove them. I have used Krita, since somebody once gave me a Linux computer with Gimp installed on it, and Gimp is worse than that, unless you want to draw stuff that looks like velvet. Krita is good for drawing but laughs in your face if you want to correct a mistake.
Also I am still using computers from that person and I like those computers but I find linux to be very silly.
TVPaint additionally has its view-adjustment mode require you to press ALT instead of SPACE, contrary to everything else ever made, including Krita and Gimp, and it cannot be changed to space. I can assign something else to space but there is no point because I am just going to do it by accident when trying to move the view because I forgot I have to press alt. But TVPaint's animation mode is good, though it is not designed for making GIFs, so I had to export it to Aseprite for coloring. Aseprite is not good for detail correction, since it has no tablet pressure sensitivity! And the wings were full of details! Oh oh oh!
But every challenge is an educational experience. Requests like I have had in the past should be easier by comparison, since I know yet more mistakes to avoid. Or perhaps people will continue to ask me for more complicated things, which would also be good, since completing them means I have become more capable. And if nobody asks for anything that is also good since I have loads of other things to do! I shall have the last laugh whatever the case!
I actually like TVPaint better than a program highly recommended among the people I sort of know but don't talk to me that I don't talk to called "Toon Boom," and I like TVP better first of all since it doesn't have "boom" in its name, which is a sound effect that should never be used as a word except to describe the sound-effect unless you are a scumbag.
Krippendorf, if I had actually BOUGHT the thing I would be furious (except you can't buy it because it is subscription only).
Anyway, overall I think it went well!
Although another program called "Opentoonz" with a Z is totally free and has a similarly incomprehensible interface, and that also makes me angry. It makes me almost as angry as a slinky with one coil section that is off for no knowable reason and that can never be corrected.
So i have to do this to it and make it a total loss to stop from spending hours absentmindedly fiddling with it and making no progress. Software with no physical component that I can download for free legally repeatedly gives me no such luxury!
This is a major matter I have been occupied with the past half year. Major in the sense that it eats much time, not that it is important.
These depict a creature named techno made up by a person most recently called beepysopod.
Although I have offered to make drawings for money for years for, this is the first one I have received consistent interest in from other people. And that is because while there are many, many amateur artists on the internet who are more technically skilled and/or more visible than I am, or just plain not as angry as I am about the wrong things, most of said persons are terrible at pixel-level artwork. A few people are better, but not enough of them are to totally crowd me out like usual. Or being better leads them to other opportunities so that they are no longer available for small time work.
The prevailing mentality is that it is just a regular drawing done at low resolution, or with a 1-pixel wide outline. And again most buyers cannot tell. And most people in general do not care about pixel art in 201
A FEW people do interpret this as useful and unique, however, such as the owner of the rightside figure, Fallenfolf, and here we are. I of course have known I am "good" at this for many years; there was a time when there was no way to draw on a computer EXCEPT zoomed in, using a mouse. But back when there was real NEED for this skill, in 1996, I did not know anybody. And I still don't know anybody, so here we are again. Although now I have the scrap of legitimacy that makes people willing to pay me scraps of money to make them, although generally the people who buy from me do not know anybody either, which keeps me available for scrappy art work and the game from breaking. Can you imagine if I did something meaningful with my life? It would be a disaster. My entire personality draws from my life being a joke. Anything I do right is inspired by doing things wrong. If it were possible for me to predict what would go right, I would only do right things, and therefore do them even worse.
Anywhy, what changed was the introduction of the Telegraph messenger service. You might have heard of it, that is the one Islamic State militants use to coordinate their attacks since the story is that Telegram does not track its users. Which also means paranoid furries love it. One of telegram's major features is "stickers," 512×512 pixel images any user can shove at any other user. Many people will draw these in exchange for money. Usually poorly-drawn and scaled down heads making idiotic exclamations are preferred. The beeply isopod person happened to ask me for some, but without specifying that they be poorly drawn or disembodied heads, and I took it upon myself to draw them at the actual display size, since, you know, I COULD, and I offered that person five examples, all of which I was asked to complete. Ever the shrewd business-thing, I did all five for free, then three more for free even as I found myself increasing the detail level, uncertain at what point it was no longer experimental and that I could guarantee a consistent level of quality. After this point a single person asked to pay me for one, and I set the rate at $20, because that was about as much as I could imagine somebody paying me.
AND I promoted it with this specific image, because it was the best of the group, even though it was also the most difficult and time-consuming one of the group and under no circumstances would I feel adequately compensated to draw a prop more complex than the character I was requested to draw for less money than I could get a good pizza with in this miserable overpriced town.
Yes that ought to solve all my problems. But it did not because as I sold more, I kept increasing the complexity level, which people didn't even know they were getting, and didn't necessarily want, either, because it did not necessarily work!
At this point I only look greedy, which is fine because I need to scrap the "one price for whatever you want" system and put a cheap rate on the cheap drawing and a higher rate on a better-produced item. But I cannot easily do that because
I only allotted that much space for pixel junk on this garish chart, a chart which was already agony to cram as much junk into as there is. Because I thought people would ignore the garish chart if it was not orderly and its sections evenly distributed. Every picture is a distinct element, and text is on different layers, so that I could change the examples and what my name was based on what website I posted this on because I do in fact have dumber names than bimshwel that I do not want to have used interchangeably with it, since the other mes make even worse things. Then I had to remember to swap all those details around again when I adjusted the price on the one thing people bought. Which I eventually forgot to do, which is why this one says "grebij" on it.
And I only have the stupid chart at all to makes things easier! Because if I write out what I am charging in text form, with multiple examples for each category and descriptions of what each category involves, people don't read it and just ask me directly, and then I cannot remember what I wrote and risk giving even wimpier prices.
If somebody refers directly to the chart, I know they have already seen and accepted my prices and at least are not going to try and pay me less than that.
Except for one person who did but if you are reading this then it wasn't you!
I often do not realize what a sad state I am in until long after issuing a price estimate. Because I cannot well start working on something, then give a proper estimate, and risk having the other party say "ehhhh no dice." Or worse, try to pay me in dice!
Observe that these are considerably more tightly-drawn than the first five, and more effort was taken to prevent and remove glaring edge artifacts. It SEEMS like I have done something properly while planning to, which should disprove my earlier theory. Since I made the first group without thinking, they came out rather simply and everybody was pleased. But these I obsessed over, without only minor practical improvement. Although I did not knowingly change my method; I merely paid more attention to it.
These ones, for a Scoots-Buragi, who saw the previous group and wanted a similar meltitude, were a bit loose again, but with all the stripes in there I thought it was justified. The ends still taper to 1×1 pixel points occasionally. Thankfully this did not, as some animated work last year did, endear me toward people who thought that I must surely have the same erotic fixation on masculine figures melting as they did, but I continued to have buyers anyway. So I seem to be coming out ahead, for once.
In fact they may have endeared me toward a dear, Kait Foxdear. That is dear in the precious sense, hence an A, even though the creature has deer components. The world is quite complex. This drawing is tightly rendered anew, and I kept the colors under control. Except for there being some bright green pixels stuck to the edges that I literally did not notice and remove until I went to write this website entry. wh-wh-whoopth.
For one HellBaby-From-Hell, this one came out almost TOO easily, so that I felt like I must have done something wrong, and so I got the details even tighter.
Which then totally spoiled me for these two, the first for Trufours and the second for Relaxingdragon (obviously, Relaxingdragon requested the raccoon person), whose subject matters were considerably more complex than the Hell-Baby's. Finding a reasonable point at which to stop was impossible for me. Everything was drawn at 1 pixel and I put no limit on color density, although the latter party requested that I limit the hues, and consequently I thought it prudent to fill in the transparent sector with other grey tones. But then that destroyed its ability to be used as transparent imagery! Also, [depressing digression]. However, ultimately only two people really need to like any of them, right? Me and the recipient. But I also need other people to keep wanting them. Theoretically these are the best ones I did, but they are NOT because I beat the energy out of them.
This one, ostensibly a gift for somebody named Doomdweller from another called Syrenti, I was amidst while wondering why the last two were less good, and finished while realizing why they were less good, rather too late to do it differently!
This gives an idea of the tedious process. However, I made this video BEFORE I realized I had slipped into an undesirable way of doing things; I only thought to record it because I thought I was finally doing something properly! Alas, I can only be right by accident and I lack the resources to record my entire life. A pity, I would love to see a 3 minute video of me not messing up so I could determine what that looks like and try to be more like it.
I think everybody would like to see that.
Yes obviously Trump has been hard to take, despite my best efforts to give him the benefit of any doubts. For the sake of my ability to coexist in society, I thought that was important. Coexisting has always been a challenge to me. In part due to Trump-like attitudes from all the people who control everything.
Ironically I have felt disliked by ostensibly compassionate people for my attempts to maintain my sanity amidst this. And in recognition of my relative courtesy toward Mr. Trump, he has, without altering his facial expression, consistently crunched up my courtesy and tossed it back in my face unless he can find a worse place to toss it . He really doesn't want the support of anyone who will question him in any way. In a sense proving right the people who maligned him all along. But in all honesty I think even if he made an effort to appear to care a bit, the people who shunned me for not shunning him would still do so. Which I say to excuse me, not him. As I have stated previously, I still do not believe Trump can or aspires to deport legal citizens, much less send them to gas chambers. He is not a "nazi." Perhaps he condones them so long as they stay out of his way, but he is not a white supremacist. He is a Trump supremacist.
Which doesn't even necessarily mean he will be worse than any president we have ever had; he just has no intention of being unpleasant discreetly as Clinton would have done. Trump won't let us feel good about how bad he is. It can be a scary feeling. Which could potentially be good. But it probably won't be. We could improve ourselves with the awareness that we need to improve, but we will probably just complain about it. We haven't been trained to do anything else.
But he is the president we deserve. Possibly always deserved. He is totally marketing focused. He does whatever is necessary to meet a goal, so to speak, and feels no shame for it, no matter how unpleasant it is.
Maybe by this point, by fixating over what happened to me a few months ago, I am just paranoid and not helping anybody who offered benefits of doubt to me, but I would hardly say my relationships were splendid before this happened. My new rule for 2017 is that I don't draw free art, or work three times as hard on wholly undercompensated art as I would on free art of stupid rubbish for scumbags who can't or won't help me unless they are me, and I won't indulge their bad company for months and months because I think they can connect me to people because they are only going to connect me to other scumbags if they even decide to connect me at all which they are strikingly likely to not bother with. Which is somewhat beside the point; there are about 30 more paragraphs to this but they need to be edited, and every time I try to write an excuse for cutting it off I get a new paragraph. Please trust that I need to have the paragraphs above this one out of my business prior to Trump being inaugurated more urgently than I need to put them into context. Sleeping would help me!
I am glad people are protesting, but I hope they have actual goals and are not merely, in the manner of "Occupy Wallstreet," seeing it as a socially acceptable thing to do. You can get thousands of people to "march," but at your core you are just moving from one piece of ground to another, and it consequently would not make a difference if you got millions to march beyond that you coordinate marches well.
At the art show I attended back in October, one of the large exhibits, by somebod[ies] who got in free and was PAID to be there, was called Total Jump Live and it was a series of video screens and self-aggrandizing slogans meant to coordinate and show everybody in the world jumping at the same time. Because naturally everybody in the world has access to live streaming video at all times and is capable of jumping. As somebody who was on the premises when it happened, I sure didn't know WHEN it happened, and whatever massive problem it solved by happening was not one I was prior or thereafter aware of. I was however aware that there was a special rehearsal for the jump and that an APP was available to help me practice! Of note is that if you browse the internet on a non-telephone there is no way to download the APP nor for the, I had thought basic information about how to jump to be delivered to you in another format.
Well then by gorby we'd sure have accomplished nothing more than that! Which is still perhaps more than I have accomplished, but I don't believe that I would be satisfied with aspiring to that. The proposal wishes that all able-bodied people jump and land at the same time. Which means you have temporary frivolous unity at the expense of diversity. For just a brief stupid jump does it matter if I put aside my personal jumping manner for a moment? It does if the stupid brief jump thinks it is terribly important. I will not do it: I will not jump in somebody else's manner so that they can pretend they have a consensus of jump-manner and feel proud of themselves for bringing it about. Because from my experience all this gains me is an expectation that I keep right on doing it. But I will not obstruct, either. Unity without expression has no value.
Why am I so obsessed with proving other people wrong who do not really have different goals than I do? Because they are proud of themselves, greater in number, back each other up and treat me poorly. I think it might come down to that, and maybe it always has. I cannot devote energy to being afraid of the president-elect since I am too preoccupied with being afraid that I have no soul. If I ever sort that out perhaps I will get back to you.
Oh but you want to know my thoughts about the united american election, right? Statistically speaking, you probably do not!
I was writing something item by item as it happened but then afterward it turned into a different story.
People love to blame Ralph Nader for W.Bush's election, some of them more so than they blame Bush for being awful or Gore for not being better.
So instead of doing anything to alter how the system works, we shamed people who refused to go along with it. And by gorby we did it once, we can do it again.
You can grow up to be anything in America! But don't you dare try and vote outside these two colored boxes.
I must acknowledge that without the insincerity and corporate synergy Hillary Clinton would be more appealing to ME, but would never have gotten this far.
I relate to Hillary Clinton because nobody relates to her except when she is totally fake. She changed everything about her public demeanor to help Bill Clinton's political career, including changing her own name. It was a political liability for a husband to have a wife who kept her original name. Although perhaps that fakeness has become natural to Hillary by now.
When all the celebrities of society, especially the terrible musicians, whose influence leaves me unable to relate to a majority of the apparent population, become synonymous with a political candidate, it is hard for me to be enthusiastic. Even if that seems fickle to you, that these things are unrelated, I say they are related. The point is that I am meant to feel like I am one with these people, and these are all people that keep me alone in groups. You preach diversity but are of one mind where culture is concerned, and I objectively dislike the most highly promoted items. beyonk, ga-ga, adel, bruce stringbean, new bon jovi, I cannot listen to this. I cannot get in on this message of "love" from people who ignore or diminish me when I love something else.
I noted around 7pm that somebody had accidentally switched ABC's live election feed with an episode of MTV Total Request Live from 1998. I didn't want Trump to win, but I enjoyed seeing chummy smirky news people suddenly more reserved and analytical once it appeared less inevitable that their pre-coronated Clinton was going to win. I loved seeing their stupid, stupid years of speculation turn to mush on live television. I relished seeing THEM lose. I relished seeing this alliance of overconfident scumbags uncertain they would get their way. I wasn't getting my way whatever the case, and I am not convinced their way is best. And I say that as somebody who has felt held down and alienated by republicans my whole life. The obsession with religion, the demand that I feel a certain way for certain things, the dismissal of some forms of expression as invalid. Now both parties represent that to me. So I just want whichever one is more insufferable at present to lose, but without really wanting either to win I did not feel like I had a stake in this. But I did not vote for Trump. It wouldn't have made a difference if I had but I would never have.
Stephen colbert announced that his election night show would be LIVE on the showtime channel. Not saying anything resembling an apology for viewers who don't have access to Showtime. Because we who don't buy and don't buy INTO everything are not considered real people. Just like the Throneger Games and the Soprano show, programs that require a year's HBO subscription to get less than one new episode per month, it is presumed that if you aren't in the club to whom that is reasonable, you don't matter.
The night before that, Colbert had a lengthy musical piece equating a lack of desire to vote [for Clinton, who was not named during the piece] as a lack of desire to vote at all. And of course Hamilton came out at the end to win the day with rap because hip hop always wins because nobody is allowed to not be totally into it. But thankfully it was the replacement Hamilton that is less irritating despite copying the first one's weird anachronistic facial hair.
I can't believe ten years ago I felt like I knew this guy. Although ten years ago I thought I knew zartan and ukuhawa and bridgeportcat and it was three more years before I thought I knew science fox and you can wager none of them are talking to me ever again (although to be fair they aren't likely talking to each other either). Am I just getting worse? (although if you are reading this please talk to me I will call you whatever name you want those are just the ones I used to call you if I mentioned you and you can call me or roneldo or john jacob jingleheimer skrimpf if you want to). Sometimes I feel like I cannot know myself and anybody else at the same time. On the internet, anyhow
As far as I have come in 15 years, I am back at how I felt: It isn't all about New York, and it isn't all about Los Angeles, even if that is where all the tv comes from.
There is the old part of me that thinks "oh no, democrats are losing!" but the newer part of me that didn't see conditions improve when democrats won is uncertain how it feels.
"What this says about our country is horrifying," a manner of statement I have seen a bunch. What it says is that no attempt is made by democrats to appeal to people who aren't already on their side. And republicans don't have to because their fanbase has always been more enthusiastic about voting, with better access to doing it. And they are accustomed to voting for cartoon characters. I said almost a year ago that I hoped Trump would be nominated so the party would eat itself alive not keep him out. I underestimated their ability to get behind The Party WHATEVER the cost. Even when loads of them say they won't, they do.
It IS depressing seeing all these people despondent on twitter and thereabouts, even though prior to then I never shared in their joy. I suppose I just don't relate to that. I know how sadness feels. I don't know how it feels to be moved to tears over this, but I cry over things that they would never understand.
Trump of course was accused by Theodore Cruz during the campaign of having "New York Values." And he DOES. He lost that state but he won the states who don't realize that putting yourself first and never admitting fault are the quintessential New York Values.
Looking back to that first picture from New York City, that sums it up. "Look, all these people in NEW YORK CITY are happy, why aren't you? There must be something wrong with you!"
I cannot support that. BUT it was not my thinking that did this. It turns out when there are two enormous groups furious at each other, they hate you even more if you refuse to unconditionally agree with either. The "with us 100% or you're the enemy" attitude is very w-bushy. What is funny is that people who have a problem don't actually disagree with me, they just think I disagree with them because I am not on board their socially-mandated mourning barge, even though I never have been. I wasn't on September 11 2001, I sure as shingles am not now with regard to a man that has not actually killed somebody, however many he has groped or bankrupted. I survived two bushes and half a Reagan, can we really say this is worse before it has even happened? There are thugs in this country, and there are thugs in France and there are thugs in Russia. There are thugs in the world. There was a thuggish racist movement in this country before Trump got involved. They probably voted for Trump. And they probably voted for Mitt flippinmitten Romney because paranoid people who think the segregated water fountain period were the good old days because they had reduced awareness of world hardship at that time compared to now have gone with republicans my entire lifetime. Trump is himself thuggish but he did not create the thugs. Why do I care about this? Because this is not something that instantly came into being, and you were not going to instantly stop it. There is loads of outrage over failure to use a solution that was not actually there.
Of course it was Trump-attituded policies that likely brought about 9/11, but then make that case, please, I want to say to people. We ought to not assume everybody has the same context as we do when it comes to things like this. Try and have some empathy even when speaking of people that you presume have none. You cannot call millions of people morons and expect them to get along with you. Unless you are Trump. I think all that "haters gonna hate" swagger which the youth supposedly espouse fits Donald to a T[rump]. He wouldn't be a billionaire without shoving his name and face everywhere with no regard for anyone else's feelings. He seems to me more careless than hateful. Now that he is being briefed on things he seems to be, as I expected, increasingly aware that none of his ludicrous promises are feasible, or maybe he knew all along. So those unhappy about the election can at least see how it feels when the other side gets let down by the silly stuff they believed. Guantanamo Bay Prison is still open for business, but we aren't going to start banning all Muslim immigration either! Hip hap hoorosh. The candidate got the party in power, and the party takes over with precisely what it would have done whoever was there. We might as well vote in Dennis Rodman; he at least has been to North Korea. I don't think President Obama has even been there.
Be sad or afraid if you are, but please do not make it a contest to be saddest or afraidest, especially at the urging of a retweet chain.
The question i need to ask: was it my job to vote for Hillary Clinton or Clinton's job to make me want to vote for her? If I had, I would have hated myself. If I had voted as I did, for Jill Stein of the green party, but claimed I voted for Clinton to join the party on facebook, I would have hated myself. If I had actually voted for Clinton, and if everyone else who voted as I did ALSO voted for Clinton, she still would not have won, because there was not a single state that Clinton lost where the number of votes the green party got was greater than the amount Clinton lost by. Gary Johnson the Libertarian, however, took a considerably larger bite of the total, and every libertarian I ever knew –granted, just one person– was a republican otherwise.
And if you go back in time and prevent Bernie Sanders from being sabotaged and change nothing else, who knows what irrational unaccountable jiu-jutsu Trump club would have dumped on him? And then you would probably see hard corn Clinton backers going libertarian because Clinton was always the foregone conclusion and Sanders was too liberal and unrealistic.
You will believe being silently unwatched by 4 people on twitter who don't even consider you a valid enough human to disagree with and risk realizing you don't actually disagree with them the same day, while also receiving no input from anyone else can send somebody over the edge. I have had to repeatedly remind myself that I didn't vote for Trump because I find myself being mentally defensive of stuff that I think people are aiming at me because they think I did even though I plainly said I voted for Stein. It is bloody absurd. This is dumber than high school, and high school was extra dumb for me.
And I figured out who they were, too, nobody who should have had any problem with me. You might think it insane that I try to determine who they are, but that helps me ascertain why they did it, and if there was anything I could have done to prevent it, or if there would be any point to, if they would just overinterpret something else later. These people, they didn't even know me and they didn't care to try. Except one sort of did, and still dumped me without a single word, and that hurts. It isn't as bad as fearing for my life, but what is that life worth? This amounts to feeling: I don't matter, and nothing I try can make me matter. Please understand, I do not relate on a mass scale. I relate personally. And how many others have not taken the step to numerically shun me but have censored me, again without checking if I meant what they thought I did, with the mute command? And who else are they doing that to? That is just dirty. That does not aid discourse or clarity. I am a real person, not an episode of Blue Bloods.
With that said, if I have not opted to follow these accounts myself, do they really owe me any level of regard? Maybe not, but I end up thinking they do since it IS to me a big deal when I do opt in like that. It means I believe in this person and their content to a degree beyond what I would by default. It means I have a desire to be close to this person in this medium. And when I give up on it, I have a reason for that also. Even if it is a stupid reason. If somebody were to ask why I could say: because I don't like when you talk about the digestive enzyme fluid generated by people's mouths. I should go to bed.
Perhaps this is old news in the electronic communication realm but this is the first time I could articulate exactly why it hurts me personally. This is a real issue for me right this moment. Communication barriers are important. How often is this happening every single day over dumber slights than this? And I unwatch others for fickle reasons. Like stuff nobody could ever guess. But generally it has to be personal. Sometimes I resist doing it because I think it will come across as hurtful. Is this the mindset of a hateful person? I hate to th- oh well there we go.
Maybe if I spent more time styling my toothbrush and raising awareness of the end of the alphabet I would have less time to dwell on things like this!


text:
2016 Nissan Xterra Review, Mpg, Lifted Off Road
2016 Nissan Xterra is an intense the SUV that has been updated and enhanced. It is as solid as the prior form as well as accompanies various upgrades that make it an in number entertainer. The principle changes to the vehicle incorporate an all the more effective body and an enhanced and more grounded hub. The new changes additionally make this SUV look intense. There are hypotheses that Nissan will make their new Nissan Xterra a bit heavier than the before adaptation. Likewise, the organization is additionally pondering making the rooftop greater than some time recently.
|2016 Nissan Xterra Review, Mpg, Lifted Off Road
2016 Nissan Xterra Exterior and Interior Design
The searching for your long voyage on the high route or go 4x4 romping adventure in the sloping zone, 2016 Nissan Xterra will be as a matter of first importance decision because of its hard body and awesome execution. According to auto magazine, this model has been rebuilt to convey overwhelming weight to contend with of the Jeep Wrangler and the Toyoto FJ Cruiser and the Grand Cherokee. The up and coming model will be heavier and a dynamic way of life vehicle with an intense look. It will be accessible with 3 variations as X, S and PRO-4X. With more than 9 inches ground leeway and strong body Nissan planned 2016 Xterra uniquely for rough terrain venture. There is an opportunity to broaden the top of the auto for conveying your gear more. This obstinate auto has been planned with recognizable changes on the outside part. Heavier body weight, effective frame, solid pivot, auto headlamps, developed haze lights, 110 inches Alloy wheel base, enhanced wheel watches, littler grille and guards, BF Goodrich Rugged Trail tires are the unmistakable components of the auto. Nissan logo has put amidst grille part. 2016 form will snatch your consideration with an extensive variety of new exquisite hues. Contingent upon the business sector source, the forthcoming model won't have significant changes in the inside part. 5 inch shading showcase, Hands free Bluetooth with shaking sound framework, USB port, content informing office, satellite radio, versatile applications steady framework, predominant quality cowhide seat spread, Pandora connection upheld sound framework, back camera, outer temperature show, unbreakable upholstery, 6 airbags will give you an astounding state of mind. The roomy inside, to oblige additional long bits of hardware is an included point of interest in 2016 Nissan Xterra.
2016 Nissan Xterra Engine Specs
SUV will be 4. liter V6 generator. This engine is qualified to make 261 strength and 281 lb-ft of torque. It can be likely that new 2016 Nissan Xterra will get Cummins diesel electrical engine. New Xterra incorporates six-speed manual transmission or a few rate brilliant transmission. It can need to have 7.2-7.4 sec to improve from miles every hour to 62 miles for each hour. New Xterra will have six-speed manual transmission or five-rate computerized transmission. In light of the gab, this motor can be identified with the 6-velocity sending. Utilizing this exchanging, this motor can deliver the best admission of force use. Moreover, the format of diesel vitality motor is worried by the producer to work starting from 0 as much as 62 mph in only 7,7. 2016 Nissan Xterra dependant after the bits of gossip from a few supports, the gathering will be conceivable conveying the fresh out of the plastic new assembling at the close market the Electric engine Display in 2015. We must be individual to get much more insights concerning the genuine announcement from the association, despite the fact that in different other part, the auto fans sought to see this format in late spring time 2016. Nissan Xterra Gas Mileage
2016 Nissan Xterra Price, Release Date, Competitors
The new 2016 Nissan Xterra Off Road ought to be brought into the business sector either this year or in 2016. A few reports recommend that purchasers will get a chance to get a look of this auto at the Motor Display in 2015. Its fundamental rivals incorporate the Jeep Wrangler and Toyota FJ Cruiser and in addition Jeep Cherokee. The base model of the new Xterra ought to cost you in the middle of $24000 and $31000 . 2016 Nissan Xterra Review, Mpg, Lifted Off Road

subset: commoncrawl


text:
While it's not multitouch and its operating system may not be as advanced and powerful as the iPhone or Android OS, it looks like one to keep an eye on in the case it arrives to the US from Korea, where it will appear on March 9, next year.
iRiver Cell Phone- Pure Aluminum and Touchscreen7:20 PM Labels: Mobile gadgets, New gadgets with 2 comments »
While it's not multitouch and its operating system may not be as advanced and powerful as the iPhone or Android OS, it looks like one to keep an eye on in the case it arrives to the US from Korea, where it will appear on March 9, next year.
2 comments
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