Holiday Mood Swings

   We go directly from a time of thanks to a time of want, pushing into the Christmas Season immediately after the end of Thanksgiving. (And increasingly, before the end of Thanksgiving, but meh, it's not the 1940s anymore; if President Roosevelt were to come up nowadays and change the date of Thanksgiving up a week to encourage Christmas Creep --and ostensibly help get us out of the Depression-- I don't think anyone would mind anymore.) As it stands, though, with or without that there's still this violent whiplash between the sole purpose (at least in public perception) of the holidays, from one to the other so immediately like that.

   Thanks to Danny for pointing that out.

   And then... well, I guess I should transition here, so- as the Christmas season actually approaches, let's say that the spirit does set in, then. From the initial shock of low prices and great retail deals, to moving on throughout the month- the initial attitude can hopefully go away (not that it's a bad attitude to have or anything, you'll see if you bear with me,) that goes away and the reason for the season can take effect- giving! love! friendship!

   Which brings me to my point, by serving to make the next transition all the more difficult.

   We've spoken of a whiplash between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but really what always has gotten me is the whiplash from Christmas to New Years. From, giving and thinking of others, to, "resolutions" and thinking of yourself. Self improvement of course, reflection and all that, but it still has the capability to dissolve anything that came before it. And, of course, New Year's Resolutions fail so often anyway that it's so much a punchline that it's not even a punchline. Like, making puns off of "to get to the other side" and just assuming your audience knows what you're talking about, you can just take it for granted...

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, November 29, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: Oh man! Has anyone seen my-
Collin: LOOKEE WHAT I FOUND!
Marvin: Oh dear.
Collin: A copy of the Beatles' Yesterday and Today featuring the original "Butcher Block" cover autographed by all four Beatles!
FINDER'S KEEPERS!
oh yeah
oh yeah
wooh yeeeaah
huh un huh
Marvin: [says scribbles]
Collin: oh baby...
(LOSERS WEEPERS!)

Change Slash Consequence

   A lot of girls compliment each other on how pretty they look, but when I appreciate how another man looks, people find it weird. I  think that, then, is a very feminine aspect of me. I've always sort of admired fashion and treated it as a serious art, so it may spring from that, but I am also still able to appreciate beauty as separate from that, like design: architecture, typesetting, etc.

   But another thing is how girls can compliment each other on how pretty they look, so I can also appreciate handsomeness, in humans, and also especially in animals. If I did not possess this trait, I suppose I wouldn't get as much of a kick out of cats and foxes. The ability to appreciate the "masculine" (an anthropomorphization, of course!) as well as the feminine. There's always been sort of a raw, sexuality, there: a masculine instance of a feminine thing.

   Cats are regarded as feminine inherently, and thus a tomcat we see as being an icon as a libertine. Foxes too. Domestic canines are regarded as being more masculine, and we see how it is that to insinuate someone as being a bitch is a dire insult, which somehow follows. Horses are emblems of great power, because among other things they embody both hypermasculine and hyperfeminine aspects: taut muscular body, long flowing mane, all that, all of those things that are symbols of virility of both sexes.

   Cailin pointed out to me once that when two girls get together and act "sexy," in public and everything still "straight" and not actually doing anything, just pouting and hugging and everything, acting sexy, it's considered sexy. But the very same actions performed by males that way, if two dudes were snuggling together like that, it's considered "homoerotic." Something fails, there, somewhere...

Buridan's Ass 2/2 (English 4/5)

   Which book to choose in the library. It’s not like eating at one restaurant one day and the other one the other day, you know. Books are not meals. You can go without reading and you won't starve (not that I would recommend that,) and you can do nothing but read and you won't gorge yourself (and I would recommend that even less.) I only have a certain amount of time before I have to return the books, and books have to be consumed slowly if they’re full of heady ideas worth thinking about. It takes me weeks to get through a few pages of C.S. Lewis’s nonfiction, for instance; his ideas and logic about theology take a lot of digesting time.

   With choosing between fiction, it’s easy. Do I feel like a science fiction or a thriller (or, you know, a science fiction thriller?) Is there some kind of vast political conspiracy in it? Are there kittens? But with nonfiction, there’s such a wide variety of subjects, from history to arts to sciences, with all the imaginables contained within and between: social and political histories, recent and ancient; architecture and sculpture and painting and graphic design; biology and geology and forensics.

   Hence my dilemma. If I could figure out some way of figuring it out and offering (...?) it, it wouldn't be too bad.

Buridan's Ass 1/2 (English 3/5)

   I have an irrational need not to make anyone or anything feel “jealous.” I suppose it boils down to how I would feel if anyone treated me worse than anyone else, but it goes deeper than that. I don’t make any preferences in the restaurants or shops I visit, because I know how I would feel if my place went out of business from lack of customer support. But this is a rational thing; capitalism dictates those who get more customers don’t fail, and since I don’t want anyone to fail, being the empath I am, I visit everyone equally.

   But it’s not always rational like that, like I said. I carefully avoid mentioning foxes in case cats get jealous. I carefully sidestep when I am making lists of kinds of wild dogs, or things that are ruddy orange, or furry animals with bushy tails. My enjoyment of animals is hampered somewhat because I try to enjoy both animals equally.

   This kind of interferes in my life, sort of. I mean, whenever I’m in a library, looking at all of the different choices of fascinating reading materials, I kind of feel like I don’t know what to read. There’s so many options, and I don’t want  to pick one book over the other. But it'd be better to read at all than not to read, even if you can't read it all. That one guy, with the name, with the donkey between two stacks of hay. Balaam, that's it. Balaam's Ass (or, hmm, I think that might be something else...) You just can't starve to death.

Writing Styles and Twist Endings (English 2/5)

   More stuff adapted from my College English assignments... This started out as an exercise about the "style" of how you write (college English class, of course they'd be all about "style") but soon turned its tangent on Ender's Game...:

   I guess you write in the style of what you read, the same way a songwriter might write in the style of what he listens to, which is why very few country boys grow up to be rap stars.

   So. Whenever I’m writing something science-fiction-y that is based off of real things, I write like Michael Crichton, combining facts with tense situations. That kind of thing.

   But I would say that my biggest author inspiration would be Orson Scott Card. Huge fan of his. I read Ender's Game at age, I don’t know, six, or something. The same age as the protagonist when he got his start; sounds right. It fit; it's not like children don't talk or think or act like they do in real life. Except not so much swearing. Although I suppose conditions in military barrack will do make you do that.

   ...I don’t think the twist near the end threw me off at all. I don’t think I knew it before I read the book, how it was going to end. I don’t think. My brother had already read it, and it was my mom’s old copy, really beaten up first paperback edition. So maybe they talked about it. I don’t think so. I think I just knew right from the start. Maybe something tipped me off, I don’t know, but I remember that the only thing that blew my mind is how Ender didn't know... I think I knew it all along, I think that I thought that the audience was supposed to know. But, listening to other people talk about  it, I doubt they were suppose to know. I don’t know, I guess I thought that the ‘twist ending’ was written on the back cover that it was that way all along. It just didn't take me by surprise. I guess I knew that, or maybe my literal brain took it that way.

   It also never occurred to me that how Snape's love for Harry's mother was supposed to come as a twist.

   ...Is this bragging? How could it be? The opposite reaction to this would be very much the same, you feeling sorry for me that really juicy twists don't come as a surprise. I ask neither for pity nor for adulation; I'm just... saying.

Writing Times (English 1/5)

   For my English class once (I think this was Freshman year of college), I wrote a whole bunch about the conditions under which I like to write, which was the assignment, the conditions under which you like to write. I wrote this big, half or full page thing, which really- such exercises really help you step back and analyse your own stereotypical pathways, break down your own motivations for doing things, and methods-- it helps you not only not become tunnel visioned, but to discover what drives you and how to fuel that. And it was fascinating.

   There was a power blink, though, and the whole original page was never saved. So I can't give you what was originally written there... But basically what I said in that original paper was this: I just write as if I’m thinking onto paper, so any conditions that would be suitable for thinking are suitable for writing. Except in bed, and same such stuff, or course. Bedtimes is real good times for thinking, but you have to remember what you thought if you want to write on it the next morn.

    But, all of that’s me talking in the present, and that wasn't in the original for-college-English writing. I do have a snippet of what I wrote later, punctuation and paragraphing standardized (of course I redid the paper; it was an assignment- I couldn't just say, oh, the power went out, there's no paper for you.) First I explained the thinking-writing thing, and also why I couldn't offer the full version, and then I went into it:

   So I don’t write under conditions that grab your attention, such as watching television or listening to music. (I remember I rambled quite a bit about this.)
   If I am writing about an event, I see that event in my mind, like a movie, and I translate these images into words, as if I'm writing a movie novelization. If I am writing about, say, logic, or something, I think the debate in my mind, just writing down whatever comes. Thinking onto paper, with my brain always generating the content a few steps in front of what I’m writing at the moment.
   I’m never at a loss of what to say, because, really, who ever stops thinking (meditation aside)? And now I’m at a loss for what to say, because I've just summarized what I wrote about writing conditions. Boom?

   Fun stuff. And... deeply personal, but all art creation is at one level or another. Communication and all that. This is neat; I think I'll give you more from my English assignments.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, November 22, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:

Marvin: Collin!
Where the heck were you in last week's strip?
Collin: I'm on strike!
Marvin: [speaks scribbles]...
What for?
Collin: I'mma supportin' the writers' strike!
Marvin: ...
Collin that ended two years ago.
Collin: oh.
Are we even union?
Marvin: If only writers', Collin. If only writers'. 

NOTES:
   I get bizarrely political here. Sorry 'bout that. It's true, though, that the writer's guild was pretty much treated like crap in Hollywood before the strike, and even now they're not quite as respected as they should be. (Maybe it was because the strike forced awesome shows like Bryan Fuller's Pushing Daises off the air. (But then again, it also did some good stuff, like forcing season seven of 24 to be shot all at the same time, ensuring supertight pacing and just a thrillride of a day.)) But, there. I'm off my soapbox now.

Catching Fire

   Will Catching Fire be good? How does that look? Like a worthy sequel to Hunger Games?

   And was Hunger Games that good in the first place? All of its success could be chalked up to a reasonably strong source material and the fan base behind that. I'm not knocking it. It certainly didn't make any surprising decisions, though. Oh, sure, they deviated from the book, they showed outside of the first-person present-tense head of Katniss Everdeen. It's not like anyone else wouldn't have done that.

   The first film was done with incredible competence, which is not a trait so rare in Hollywood these days, but not so common either. But, anyone competent would have done the exact same thing. I've talked about how ideally substance should lead to style, which is what happened here. It's actually quite a clever path, a line of causation that links one decision to another. T-Bone Burnett did music on the film because the book was so violent, yes?

   Let's trace the logic of that: it's a violent novel about teens killing each other; in order to preserve a rating low enough for the film's intended audience to go see it (but keep the violence high enough to preserve the core of the story that it's so easy to become dehumanized in so violent a scenario) there'd need to be some form of disguising to violence, to keep the brutality there but not be forced to show the unpleasant side effects. This meant shaky camera work: suggestive of violence and frenetic action, giving a visceral experience like the audience is actually a participant in it, while also giving the excuse for quick cuts so nothing extremely gory stays on-screen for too long. Handheld camera work suggests a documentary style, a documentary of a rural society living in the shadow of futuristic governmental oppressors suggests folk music.

   So it was well-made. As a standalone film, without a book behind it, it's better, though, since none of it's surprising with the book. (Which is generally how these things should go, so, maybe never mind.)

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, November 15, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: Shoot, um...
...
Hey, umm...
Collin!
...
Wanna know what's cool?
(imitating Collin) Why, I certainly do!
Marvin: Affadavits! Them things is radcore!
...
One of these days I'm gonna kill that boy.

Best of Pirate Cat, part VII: Non-deviantART Examples

   You don't see many "Pirate Cat" hits outside of deviantART for whatever reason. I really can't guess the reason. It's actually kind of baffling. But there's these:

I love Tail Concerto! I'm not sure why I didn't include Monjya here in the exhaustive cat pirate list earlier; quite possible because I don't think (s)he's a real pirate.

catpirate by Nicholas Liaw

   This figurine.

   And finally, Eric Scales over at Disney has got a whole category in his sketch blog dedicated to pirate cats. They're really good; check 'em out: http://ericscalessketchbook.blogspot.com/search/label/pirate%20cats

deviantART Review: Best of Pirate Cat, part VI

   Aside from those apparent one-offs of pirate cats on deviantART, there are a few users who have a who series of cats commingled with piracy going on. Here as the ones I could find.

   First off, there was deviantART user FireflyStudios character Captain McSnowpaws, but it's hard to tell exactly what that was since Firefly took down his deviantART after realizing that having a public exhibit made art no longer fun. Makes sense. Nevertheless, the character was at least somewhat popular, considering there was a contest to add some wenches to his crew. Or, maybe not that popular, as the contest was cancelled due to lack of interest. You can read the full contest details, as well as more information on the world of Captain McSnowpaws, here.

   I've managed to scrounge down one of the two characters that did get submitted in time (or at least I think that's what this is,) so may I introduce you to aluinn's Damala Sevilen:

http://aluinn.deviantart.com/art/Damala-Sevilen-82563969

   Big Cat Designs has an entire thing going on called "Pawrates" (heh, heh) "of the Catibbean" (heh, heh, heh,) and though not all of those drawings are in the category, you can at least see some of that and get a sample here.

   Another one: Natalie Ewert, user: Natamon on deviantART, has an entire little thing going on where she takes people's photographs of cats I guess? and converts them into some really gorgeous pirate cat paintings. Admittedly this practice seems kind of arbitrary or random at first, but it's a spin-off series from her "Bejeweled" series, which is the same thing with cats dressed in beads. See? That makes slightly more sense. 

   So, yeah. You know how I'm doing this research for Cap'n Patches? Well, it turns out deviantART user Anime-Tenshi22 also has a pirate cat character named Patches. And he's a captain. His name isn't Cap'n Patches, or even as far as I can tell Captain Patches, but it's Patches nonetheless. Well then. There was a short little story (if you can call it that) for children written in Creative Writing class about him. You can see that and all of the drawings in that set by clicking the links in this link here: http://anime-tenshi22.deviantart.com/art/Patches-Kitty-cat-Pirate-129659702?q=gallery%3Aanime-tenshi22%2F632951&qo=109

deviantART Review: Best of Pirate Cat, part V

   Arrrgh- no pun intended- but Arrrgh I don't know anymore. Okay, here, let's just go through the rest of these quickly.

   He's a Pirate - Kitty Pirate

by =yuki-the-vampire

   Argh Cat Pirate

by ~Teagle

   Catbeard the Pirate

by *TsaoShin

   ahoy there, meow

by ~littlemotorcar

deviantART Review: Best of Pirate Cat, part IV

   Files not named Pirate Cat. This one's name is LissyBear's "Pirate Cat Pumpkin," which, you can see, is not named "Pirate Cat" due to the addition of the word "Pumpkin" at the end of it. It shouldn't count, because it's not a drawing, but I just love it because it's just so cute and creative and lazy all at the same time.

   Holy crap. Actually, the more I look at it, the more I think I might have actually drawn that. That exact pirate cat. That's in my handwriting, and handwriting is supposed to be, you know, unique. That is exatcly what I would do and exactly exactly exactly how I would do it. I think I might have drawn that I think I might have drawn that.

deviantART Review: Best of Pirate Cat, part III

   Ones with the name of "Pirate Cat," but not necessarily with that capitalization. Like this one from PandoraBox178, called "Pirate cat." See that lowercase "cat?"

Or the capitalization in this one, in all lowercase, from Marcelo-Ilustra?

Or this tattoo design, also in all lowercase, from Cocktailshaker?

   This one... This one is just "piratecat," one word. Does that count? It's uncapitalized.

*

   Even if it does count, this one, also by garuru, definitely does not, as its name is simply, "pirates."

*

   But, you know, they're by the same artist. I wanted to lump them together. Alright. It also serves quite handily as a segue. Next time, pictures whose names aren't "Pirate Cat." Like this one by miro42, called Pirate Cats. 

   Oh, shoot. That one would have worked really well in last time's line drawing installment. Oh, well. Too bad there's more than one of them. According to the image description, the theme at Sketchbomb SF that month was "pirate cats," (yeesh,) pirate cats, more than one, so...

deviantART Review: Best of Pirate Cat, part II

   Best of Pirate Cat, part two. More deviantART images named "Pirate Cat." Prepare to start seeing things in black and white! Which means, some line drawings, coming at you now.

From johndevilman:

From Equussapiens:

From aliwababe:

   Tigers count, right? Well, erm, in this case it'd be tigresses, but... no? They don't? Well, I'm out of drawings, then. Or at least ones with the file name "Pirate Cat," out of all of my top pirate cat drawing selections. Maybe?

   No, no. That one's file name is "pirate cat." All lowercase, see? We're looking for files named "Pirate Cat." I've still got plenty of those.

deviantART Review: best of Pirate Cat, part I

   Garrr why did I spend all afternoon looking at pictures of pirate cats? Oh man. Oh man oh man. Oh, yeah. Cap'n Patches. Well, I guess that wasn't a total bust. A search for the criteria "pirate cat" left me with literally thousands of hits, most of which seemed to be on deviantART. So, I searched for pirate cat there. Since I've seen literally every pirate cat-related image deviantART has to offer, I've decided to put only the really good ones up here. The best of the best, if you will. There's still a blooming lot of them, so I'll have to break this up into segments, but, here goes.

   As I've learned, a lot can be meant by "pirate cat," most of which meaning a pirate who is also a cat or a cat who is also a pirate. Pirate cats, you know. I would like to open up with what I think pretty much captures the spirit of being a pirate cat:

   Fittingly named "Pirate Cat," it's lockheart9's character Pirate Cat (click the link here for another Pirate Cat drawing of Pirate Cat. Opens in new window.)

   And, look, it's Wilpah's fanart of lockheart9's Pirate Cat, also named Pirate Cat:

   In fact, let's only do images with the filename "Pirate Cat" today. Here's one from Fukari:

   One from hammywammy:

Aand one from taylorsmith03:

   I think that's enough for the day. Well, except for one. But, since the copyright notice on this particular one says I am "not allowed to use this work in any way, shape, or form," I'll just link to it instead of posting it up here. Hahaha. http://ravenguardian13.deviantart.com/art/Pirate-Cat-274250121

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, November 8, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Offstage Voice: I know, right?
Marvin: Totally.
And then I said to him ---!
Collin: ♪♪♪
Marvin: Collin! Quit your whistling! I'm talking to someone!
Collin: ♪♪
Marvin: Seriously, man! I can't hear my own thoughts!
Collin: ♪♪♪
Marvin: Whistling away like a dwarf!
Collin: ♪♪♪
Marvin: If this were a Disney film, it would not be Snow White.
Collin: ♪♪
Offstage Voice: Which one would it be, then?
Marvin: Oh, you know...
Collin: ♪♪
Marvin: The one with the plot... and the characters. And it would be really dark 'cause one of them dies.
Collin: ♪♪♪
Offstage Voice: Yeah, that's real specific.
Collin: ♪
Marvin: BAMBI!
Shut up and help me think of this Disney film!
Collin: ♪♪♪ 

NOTES:
   Ah, Bambi. Here we see one of those brilliant little clever ideas that I've got no idea where I got the idea. Those voices from the Kool-Aid one: Bambi, along with Flower and Thumper.

Pirate Cats

   After finding no "Sea Dogs" as it has been described, I set off in search for pirate cats instead. I thought I would find fewer hits than my searches for pirate dogs. I had forgotten that this was the internet. If there are two things the internet loves, it's cats and piracy. If there are three things the internet loves... but we won't go there. (Actually, given the subject matter, there was a surprising lack of that.) Aside from the name of a defunct SF radio station (now (apparently) called Mutiny Radio,) "Pirate Cat" could refer to

• Growltiger (natch,)
• Captain Amelia from Treasure Planet (double natch... though, wait, wasn't she not a pirate?)
• J-Lo's character in Ice Age (much better,)
• YouTube's punishing of copyright offenders (they use... well, a pirate cat, apparently,)
• Captain Spangles, the cross-eyed pirate cat,
• Captain Stumpy the Pirate Cat by Jeremy Bliven,
• Captain Jeb, Pirate Cat by Meg Ellen Grandfield and Meg G. DeMakas,
• The Adventures of Peter the Pirate Cat: Light and Shadow by Michiel Van Rompaey and Nanoeshka Vervoort,
• more memes than you can shake a stick at,
• more t-shirt designs than you can shake a stick at,
• just enough tumblrs and deviantarts for you to be able to shake a stick at,
• SPANC (Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls... yeah.)
• some dog-crushing, hot-air balloon-riding villains in an episode of American Dad,
• The Black Cat Pirates, a pirate crew of pirates who pirate from pirate anime/manga One Piece,
• that character from Last Unicorn I had totally forgotten about,
• Pirate Cat Adventure, a Japanese point-and-click adventure game,
• the flash game Pirate Cat with Broken Leg,
• an iPhone game,
• an entirely unrelated Windows Phone game,
• and Captain Claw, a classic platform game for PC about a pirate cat captain who searches the seven seas for all pieces of the fabled Amulet of Nine Lives, which has been rumored to grant near immortality, which is... which is just... which is kinda... well, frig. 

   Well, umm... Let's see here... Anthropomorphic dogs and cats... piracy... yep, yep... Cocker Spaniards, ha! I wish I had thought of that... Granted nine lives...

   Okay, so it looks like they've also got tigers and bears, (and it looks like the final boss Omar is a lion...) And Red Tail is a bull and Aquatis is a giant frog... thing. So, that's different; not just cats and dogs but all kinds of critters. And I think the concept of the Amulet of Nine Lives is different enough from the Pieces of Eight. That's good.

   And aside from that there were a whooole bunch of drawings of pirate cats, mostly on deviantART (surprisingly not as hot a topic for furry fen-exclusive image boards as you'd think.) Anyway, I seriously think that I looked at all of them. All the pirate cat drawings, on the whole of the internet. Okay, maybe not all pirate cat drawings on the internet. But, maybe even 90%+. And I spent all that time looking at them, so darn it if I'm not going to share some of my favorites. It's coming up.

Pirate Dogs

   Pirates and dogs just fit so well together, it's incredible that it's not already, you know, a thing. Well, a more popular thing. There's those things that I've showed you, but... It should have been a cartoon show or something already. Why hasn't it been?

   I suppose that some of the dog-pirate connections are a bit risqué (wenchy type lady dog stuff) or just generally none too appropriate for a Saturday morning toon show aimed at children (leashes = hang man's noose.) But, pirates already are called "dogs." Both are symbolized by bones. Dogs bury their crap, pirates bury their crap (and cats literally bury their crap.) Both have a noted aversion to ninja. Et cetera, et cetera.

   It should be one of those natural things that just happens. But it hasn't yet. Not like Pirate cats, which makes less sense. Pirate cats and dogs is good, but there's a lot of... just cats on their own.

Sea Dogs?

   I didn't think Cap'n Patches and the Pieces of Eight was all that original when I came up with it. I could have sworn there was a comic book with very much the same conceit out there, called Sea Dogs. But the only time in which one of those seems to have existed is entirely anachronistic from when I remember it. Maybe I've got the name wrong? I've got a pretty good memory of what the cover looked like, at least, and I distinctly remember a review of it in Family Fun magazine. So, there's that. I tried looking up Sea Dogs, Salty Dogs, Pirate Dogs, and Scurvy Dogs, but nothing fit. I did find a lot of other stuff, though, look, see.

   THINGS I FOUND THAT AREN'T EVEN VAGUELY RELATED: There was an adorably stereotypical tumblr page (whose about me reads, I quote, "about me's are too mainstream lol"), a political blog about dogs who hate Mitt Romney (like, actual, real-life, non-anthropomorphized dogs who do this), Ginny the Pirate Dog (a brave little cancer patient chocolate Labrador who has only one eye after the other one was taken out), news articles about those police dogs who can smell the cheaper materials of pirated DVDs, and that Halloween costume of the dog dressed up as the two pirates with its torso as the treasure chest between them. A whole bunch of those. An obscene amount. Really there's no logical reason for that many. That one image takes up almost the whole first page of image results. (Darn you, DIGGers, or whatever you're called. Darn you.) Oh, and a minor leagues baseball team.

   THINGS I FOUND THAT ARE SORT OF RELATED: The closest thing existing to Cap'n Patches and the Pieces of Eight that I found was Jolly Rover, an award-winning and fairly well-received point-and-click adventure game about... well, you can probably guess. Runner-up: David Riley's novella The Pirate Dogs, which is about a world of pirates where dogs happen to have the ability to speak, but, unrelated other than that.

   THINGS I FOUND THAT SCARE ME: Also there was the eerily-similarly-named-to-Cap'n Patches and the Pieces of Eight independent film Pirate Scurvy Dog's Pieces of Eight, which is about a pirate whose name is literally Pirate Scurvy Dog who tells eight stories, about... piracy, I guess. has received zero reviews, so the only clue to its quality we have is the fake quotes on the cover. They looked up Blackbeard's real name for those (Edward Teach), so, it can't be all that bad? Then again, the video is also self-described as "hilarius," which is either a typing error, a genuine oversight, or pirate-speak for "it'll give you all the venereal diseases it was possible to contract as a 16th Century swashbuckler just by watching it, yarr." I myself am leaning toward the latter, because it makes you feel dirty just looking at the DVD cover. Originally I was going to feature a picture of that here, but it made me feel bad even putting it up. (The picture is here, if you dare click on the link- it's safe for work, but I don't think it's safe for the soul, and it will like I said make you feel dirty just looking at it:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61%2BdI8mGeuL._SX500_.jpg)

   The point is, no matter how deep I dig, I can't find that Sea Dogs comic as it is. Which is a shame, because it looked (looks?) pretty good. Maybe I should try the same thing with pirate cats...

Remember, Remember (To Remember, Because I Forgot Last Year)

   I should have done this last year, but I was too occupied posting about November. But this is also very Novembery, so I don't see why I forgot this. For it (as you would know being a webizen) is November 5, Guy Fawkes Day. I had in High School once made a little Guy Fawkes effigy to burn, but I decided it was just too adorable to do such a thing to and saved it. And now it's survived for me to scan it and upload it as a PNG!

Q: How is a Bird Like a Dragon?

   A: It just is, man.

YEEEAAAHHH!

   This is probably the only time I've successfully managed to draw a bird- well, not the only time, as you've seen, but, yeah, beaks are tough. Mine came out looking... draconian.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, November 1, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Collin: munch munch munch
munch munch munch
munch munch munch
chomp
munch munch munch
munch munch munch
These are really good English muffins.
chomp
munch munch munch
munch munch munch
munch munch munch
I mean it. I gotta switch brands.
munch munch munch
munch munch munch 

NOTES:
   English muffins? I think Alicia would get this one. Or really anybody in the family, I just wrote it for her? There were, just, some English muffins at the family reunion, is all, and they happened to be good, is all. It's pointless, and that's the point. It's funny. But, um, something actually interesting about this strip. I had to go in and digitally erase something that was written across the entire comic, I LOVE YOU MAN or something like that (It was I ROCK, now that I look at it again) that was written over the comic by one of my fans. Dude just wrote it across the comic, right there (across vertically, not horizontally, thank goodness.) I don't think I had drawn any of it yet, but I had drawn the panels. It took a lot of work to get panels that even, you know.

The Other Thing

   Okay, in case you were wondering what the short haunted house story thing was, I've scrounged it down for you:

   There wasn't anything strange about the house, per se. A two-story Victorian-style summer home, painted in a tacky pink with yellow trimmings. Nothing unusual about that. No, nothing at all. It was the area around the house that was so odd. It was as if the entire world around the house was… warped. Twisted around the house. The lake over which the house looked from the back porch seemed to dimple around that area, an almost imperceptible drop in the level of the water which one could only fully appreciate lying down on the cobble beach looking out towards the lake with one eye closed. The trees twisted like snakes around it, and the sunflowers, usually following the sun, here seemed to actually turn slightly toward the house.
   Scientists have observed a phenomenon by which the light of a star that is behind another object, such as a planet, can still be seen, even though the planet is blocking that star. This is because the gravity of the planet is enough to actually warp light around it, the way light is warped through a glass of water. This house was like that. It had… gravity. 

   ...And that's it. Yeah, that's as far as I got before settling on the other thing.

ENDER'S GAME

   Well, I'm put in a bit of a unique position here, where I don't know any of the information about the movie that wasn't known a full year before it came out. How are the trailers? Awesome?  The closest thing I've got to movie posters is book covers. Man I am so jealous of you future guys who get to check out the website and everything. My poster is this book cover, which looks to be designed by the same guys who did the cover for Eoin Colfer's HG2G book And Another Thing, but I can't confirm that. It comes with a tagline and everything.

"At Battle School, Fighting is Compulsory." I know that's kind of corny, but only if you read it in an American accent; keep in mind this is an English edition of the book. Read it now. Yeah. I know, right?

   Anyway! You probably want to know what I think. Well, here you go:

THE GOOD:

1. The twist ending. The final battle.
2. The very concept of the Battle Room seems custom-designed for cinema.

THE BAD:

1. The actual size of the Battle Room. In some points in the book, it works better as a vast space, and in some places, it works better as a dim enclosed area. You could get away with vagaries in a written medium, in a visual medium not so much.
2. Let's face it: kid-on-kid violence.
3. And nudity.

THE UGLY:

1. To Locke and Demosthenes or not to Locke and Demosthenes? This is very important stuff in the Shadow saga, which we're assuming for the sake of this exercise that they're making. It can't seem like it's coming out of nowhere. I think that what will/should happen is the subject is brought up when Graff is talking to Ender and reintroducing him to his sister, saying that his siblings have been very busy back on earth and that a certain political pundit would very much like to meet him...
2. The epilogue after that, for obvious reasons.