Lampy's Adventures in Political Correctness

 

 

   That poor lamp can't do anything right. He deserves it, though, is the thing. He got what was coming to him.

   I just love the idea of a lamp being told that lamps can't have a sexual orientation.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, September 6, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT: 

Collin: In 

(Meanwhile, in an alternate universe in which "the Shubdubs" is the coolest name for a band ever...)
Collin: fact, the "boy" in the name El Niño refers to baby Jesus, as the phenomenon was first reported around Christmastime by Peruvian fisherman in the late 1800s.
La Niña, El Niño's counterpart,  (associated with colder-than-normal sea surface levels rather than warmer-than-normal ones) was discovered and named as recently as 1985.
ENSO, (El Niño-Southern Ocillation [sic]), while called simply "El Niño" in popular usage, actually refers to not only the El Niño-La Niña cycle, but also the cycle of Southern Ocillation, [sic] an ocillation [sic] in air pressure between the tropical Eastern & the Western Pacific Ocean waters.
Low atmospheric pressure tends to occur over warm and high pressure occurs over cold water, in part because deep convection over the warm water acts to transport air.
Also, the Shubdubs is the coolest band name ever.

Crab Ponies

   I am so sorry. Just, in keeping up with all the bizarre minutiae on the internet, I'd be remiss if I did not report this.

   It's like the absolute overcute big-headed stylization of Generation 3.5, taken far beyond its logical conclusion and transplanted into Generation 4. Crab Ponies. So far I've only seen Apple Jack and Twilight Sparkle crab ponies, but I think that's enough, right? The following video has been described as a succinct summation of the internet: 

   And crab Twilight marching, in .GIF format (because .GIFs rule):

inkbunny.net

   As far as I can tell, the phenomenon has nothing whatever to do with this, headcrab ponies:

blackrathmar.deviantart.com

   I hope you're happy, internet. I hope you're happy.

The Countdown

   In honor of the Ender's Game film coming out November 1 of this year, I've decided to do a series of posts leading up to the big event, once every Friday for all the Shadow books and the Ender Quartet, breaking down what a big-screen adaptation could look like. All the books in the series (okay, not like the Earth Unaware stuff, and I've yet to read Shadows in Flight, and if they were to adapt Ender in Exile I'm pretty sure it'd be as a television series (ooh, how cool would that be?) and plus I've got no place to fit those into the schema so I'm not going to bother.)

   Using my hip insider's knowledge of the film industry (and by that I mean that one time I interned at that indie movie) I'm going to offer up speculations about what would be good, bad, or ugly to translate to screen. Counting down from the Shadow books, starting next week, all the way to Ender's Game which I'm timing to coincide with the film's release.

   I just hope they don't change the release date on me. Man, would I look foolish then.

George Clooney!

   George Clooney. Awesome, right? Handsome, charming, good actor. Except... Except his name is George Clooney. Think about that for a second. It just occurred to me. First of all, his name is George. George. We tend to overlook a celebrity's name, as some celebrities fit their names perfectly (there ain't nobody Meryl Streep-ier than Meryl Streep) but we've just sort of lived with George Clooney long enough to think that his name fits him, when really it doesn't. We're accustomed to associate a celebrity's name with that celebrity. Bill Murray. Clooney! That's not a name! Cloooooney. But, when combined with George, there's some magic there that makes him this sexy white tiger.

   Brad Pitt! There's a sexy exiting name for a sexy exiting celebrity. Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise. Yes. Matt Damon, okay. Matt, definitely, Damon, sure.You know who doesn't fit this? Hugh Grant. I guess I just sort of see him as being this Cary Grant sort of figure, but then I actually see him on screen and I think oh. He's so young. Shouldn't he be in his 80s or something? Hugh Grant is a terrible name for a celebrity. Hyoo. Grrrant.

   Does this only work with males? I couldn't tell you the difference between Penelope Cruz and Penelope Lopez (there is a Penelope Lopez, correctly? Yes? Alright.) Well, there's the aforementioned Ms. Streep, as well as the whole "complete the sentence" thing with Megan Fox. (Complete the sentence: Megan...)

   (See, you said "is a fox," didn't you?) So there's that. And men get to star in thrillers while females are stuck with interchangeable romcoms. But for females, for the most part their names aren't part of their identity. More of a handy label more than anything, that allows us to know which one we're talking about. "Oh! She was in that one with Johnny Depp that no one went to go see, and she was Fox in Wanted, and she was married to that d-bag a few years back. Yeah. Major hottie." See? The only reason I knew of the existence of Penelope Cruz is because she's somehow not related to Tom Cruise and they were in a relationship previously.

Colsen

   Agent Phil Colsen was set up heavily in Iron Man 2 in a part that didn't contribute to the story much at all but paid off in Avengers. Watch Avengers, then in Iron Man 2 it makes us glad to see more of him in retrospect. Since he died. And also, hey look it's the guy from that TV show! So, in conjunction with those, his part in Iron Man 2 is pretty major. But, in the film itself? Not much. His part didn't advance the plot forward. Very much, if at all- there's certainly not anything he does that couldn't have been done by a character we didn't have to take the pains to introduce. He was just more baggage in a (however long this movie was; I'm too lazy to look it up) movie. But, it foreshadowed. So all in all it was well done.

   Compare that to Jean Gray, who didn't have to sacrifice herself at the end of X2. She could have stayed inside the plane. But she didn't. If you look closely, though, there's a glow there. It foreshadowed her transformation into Phoenix. This was thrown out the window for X-Men 3.

   Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, twin mutants who are also Avengers, can appear as Avengers as long as they're not explicitly mentioned as mutants (X-Men films being a Fox property.) I'm not sure why I'm bringing this up now, but I spent hours of research just to get that kernel of fact, so I'm using it, darn it! I guess to connect the two franchises?

   At least they've got the rights to the other Avengers.

Einstein's Riddle

   Albert Einstein is said to have given a riddle. He who solves it, it is said, proves an IQ in the top two percent, and is thus fit to join Mensa. Well, okay, entirely anecdotal Einstein. Let's say we've got five houses, all in a row. I guess there are people living in those houses. This much is known of them.

1. The British person lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green homeowner drinks coffee.
6. The man who smokes Pall Mall keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Bluemaster drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

Question: Who owns the fish?

   All right. We can immediately rule out the cat owner, since fish in a home with cats in it would not last long. Nor dogs, for that matter. They'd probably just knock that fishbowl over. We know that it's neither of the bird owner nor the horse owner, so the fish owner must be the one remaining. Answer: the fish owner is the one who does not own birds, cats, dogs, or a horse. Elementary.

   Gee, what a stupid question. Mensa can suck it.

Déjà Vu (Film)

   Déjà Vu is a really really good movie, you guys. Forget all of the other time travel movies. None of those others have got a car chase IN TIME, meaning he's chasing a car in the past so he can track it while he's still in the present!

   There's kind of a problem with the timelines, though. The time travel science can't seem to make up its mind. (And most of the criticism levied against the film was in its portrayal of post-Katrina New Orleans...!)

   The explanation: multiple trips through time, by multiple Dougs. There's a really neat diagram on Wikipedia that explains all of this, but it's kind of too big to fit here, so I'll just link it. Link. I hope you get that. It may or may not be in danger of coming down, since it may or may not be original research on the part of... hold on... User:Wildonrio. Citation needed, and all that. But, hey, it's a good theory, and I'm saying so now, all of that is how I think it went down, so you can cite this!

   But Eric, you may say to yourself, wouldn't that be a paradox, Wikipedia citing you citing Wikipedia which itself cites you? To which I say: yes it would. But there sure aren't any paradoxes in Déjà Vu.

“…A DIFFERENT AIR, A KIND OF COUNTRY LOVE-SONG THAT HE MUST HAVE LEARNED IN HIS YOUTH BEFORE HE HAD BEGUN TO FOLLOW THE SEA.”

And I would climb up o’er the mountains

And I would die a violent death

If I could fly up above these city walls

I’d love you with my final breath

But I understand

That there are people out there

Please try and understand

That there are people out there

Trying to stay alive.

Trying to find some love,

Sweet love.

And all we can do to survive

Is try and stay alive,

Try to find some love.

And all we can do to survive

Is try and stay alive

Try to find some love.

Oh-oh.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, August 30, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: So, I just finished the Battlestar Galactica entire series DVD box set.
At the end, it turns out that the entire series took place 150,000 years ago, and the whole show was about the story of humanity's ancestors rather than their descendants. 
Collin: But wait!
At the end of the original Battlestar Galactica, they arrive on Earth in 1980!
They just so happen to arrive on Oct. 31 of that year, so all of their Weird Space Stuff is thought of as props for Holloween [sic] by the people of Earth!
They then proceed to go on all sorts of wacky adventures with famed radio DJ, "Wolfman" Jack!
...Something is definately [sic] lost in translation.

Scheduling

   729 posts, still a lot of posts. How much should I second-guess myself on this? I don't know whether the scheduling is a distraction and not what really matters, or a lesson in work ethic. Whether it's more important to get all 729 posts up, or ensure that out of the fewer than that I do manage to get up only the best of product gets passed.

   But now I don't think I'm going to be able to do it all. Most of the posts I thought were worthy and ready of putting up turned out not to be. This is the crunch. I guess my true priority is quality over quantity.

   And besides, it doesn't have to be me to schedule all of them...

Crowdsourcing Profundity

   A "deep" experience tends to be seen as that only if the audience of it is the same experience level as the teller. If the audience to the telling of the experience is more mature, it is seen as silly or obvious, less mature and it is seen as needlessly pretentious. Thus, the best path to seeming profound is to find out the experience level of most of the masses.

   Crowdsourcing profunditity? How cynical. Also, what most people would consider to be deep wouldn't even be four feet. I'm not sure how well that would work.

   But, it's an idea.

At the Dull Edge of the Cutting Edge

   Apologists to the avant-garde may say that those disillusioned are just jealous, which jealously leads them to apathy about staying with the trends. But to this I say: fools! Do you not realize that if the trends are so hard to keep up with in the first place, it only means that it's impossible for them to affect any real social change?

   (I do realize that perhaps no one is arguing this, and that that may be a total strawman attack. But at least I've prevented anyone from making that argument in the future.)

   There is no avant garde. There'd need to be a center to have that, and the art scene would have to be more or less supported by society at large. Art cannot carry itself if there isn't mutual respect there. But there is none. Except in places far removed from wherever the "avant-garde" say they are right now.

Red, Yellow, Green, & Blue Pirates

   I like using my dreams. For ideas. Well, what other use would there be?

   I suppose there's: if we did not dream, what incentive would we have for going unconscious every night? But, anyway.

   I had a dream where there was a pirate ship, and, well, you know how pirate ships are. Historically, I mean. They elected their captains democratically. And so it was like that, only based around colors. When I woke up, I dropped the pirate stuff, but the idea of seeing political parties represented by colors interesting. So I made a system of democratically-elected socialist parties which distribute out goods in the color of their parties as branding of sorts. It is this background that  is the political system of the planet... Well, I don't know the planet's name.

   But it's the governmental system of a planet in Artefact, is what I'm getting at.

Redbox, Deleted Scenes

   Some scenes I cut, for your enjoyment. Deleted scenes. Okay, maybe not. Maybe not so much as deleted scenes but a deleted tack.

   Originally I did have what you see in the final version, but then I realized that having Okimba and the main character lodged up together in the same room might be interpreted as kind of pedophilic, so I drew these to introduce Okimba later, until I realized it wasn't working out with him being introduced so late in the story. Also, these scenes aren't the way it happened in my dream, so, there's that.

Goose Mons

   Having a conversation with Danny, a cousin on my mother's side. The correct plural of "mongoose." I held mongooses, he held mongeese. Turns out both mongooses and mongeese are correct, and we were both right.

   His argument was that the plural of goose is geese. Pretty solid there, since the syllable "goose" isn't likely to show up from more than one language. But I knew for a fact that it was gooses, so I needed an argument.

   So it's like goose, but it's a Digimon. You don't say, Garurumoon, to mean more than one Garurumon. You say Garurumons. Likewise, mongooses, which are apparently Digimon, get the same pluralization treatment.

   (They digivolve into Wile E. Coyote, in case you were wondering.)

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The Redbox

   I've already introduced you to Redbox, when I first did it. A 24 hour comic conceived in a dream and then executed as a comic within 24 hours, because the alternative was to execute the idea as some kind of movie or something, and quite frankly that wouldn't be worth it. Especially considering how topical and time-sensitive the plot was. It's one of those things that could only have been made when it was. Timeliness and all that.

   But maybe that's revealing too much. There is a twist ending, and I don't think I told you that last time. At least I hope the ending comes as a twist. Who knows, maybe I telegraphed it.

Dark Side of the Horse

   I'm not sure what this is, but I'm very, very impressed by it.

   It's the comic Dark Side of the Horse, by Samson! Which is definitely something. And as lame as the jokes can kind of get...

   ...IDK, there's just something about the presentation of the jokes that gets to me. This Samson (guy?) is a master of pacing and layouts, always using just the right style to invoke just the right mood.

   Dark Side of the Horse sometimes getting bizarrely self-aware. Wait. Did I say "sometimes?" I meant always. It's always bizarrely self-aware. And the aforementioned presentation really elevates it from common post-modern fair to make it something truly memorable. It's clean looks and snarky cynicism (and yes, I am using the correct it's there; bear with me), and absolutely bizarre pointless humor (see, I told you- it is clean looks, snarky cynicism, and bizarre pointless humor.) Think Garfield Minus Garfield, I guess, plus ponies (well, actually...)

   Okay, so it's better than Garfield minus Garfield plus Ponies.

http://www.gocomics.com/darksideofthehorse

Rawhide Vindaloo Bonus: Notes

Click to enlarge.

   Thought I'd share this. This page as you can see, is a bunch of notes and sketches I did when planning out what Rawhide was going to be. I had a few more pages like this, but most are too cut up, because of the cut-and-paste method I used for Rawhide, in which I cut out some of the drawings I liked from the notes, and pasted them into the comic. This page of notes and sketches is pretty intact, though, so it can bear sharing. This page is also ideal to share because it's a good overview of the entire comic: it's got plot points scribbled down, character ideas, sketches for ideas too poor to use (the sketches for the ideas, not the ideas themselves.)

   And, of course, a larger view of Peckinwood's sheriff badge. FOR SURE.

...The Moon Will Wayne

   It's a week since the one year anniversary of one of the worst theater-related Batman massacres of all time, arguably the worst dealing strictly outside of the realms of fiction. Yes, okay, the worst. The time the Joker gassed the entire studio audience at David Letterman, does that count? Was that a theater? I'd count it.

   So the death of Bruce's parents doesn't even make it to the top, even in that very specific category. What a world. Oh, me.

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