Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, February 28, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
You have no way of knowing when I strike, Collin.
In your sleep, maybe.
Don't try to deny it. You will die. Maybe in two months...
...or two seconds.
Gotcha!
MARVIN: I'll get you for this.
Go ahead and try.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, February 21, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Collin: ...
Well?
I said I'm ready.
What?
Oh, sorry about that. Last week and all. I was too busy watching the epicly epic Avatar.
In 3-D!
So, uh... Nothing personal. Just, uh, got a bit of, uh, writer's block for that day. But I'll get you!
Oh, yesss... I'll get you. You know, eventually. Just not today, 'cos, well... Okay, bye.
Marvin: Hmm...

Two Years Ago Today

   It's the two-year-stravaganza! In memory of that, let's check it out, the eighth track from Comrade Helicopter's third album, Birds Cracking Foxy. Two Years Ago Today:

Two years ago today
She pulled me aside, she told me to love you
Three years ago today
I knew you back then, but what could I do?
Four years ago today
It’s been going on so long, I can’t believe I haven’t been caught.
One year ago today
One year together just seemed like so long, and

In my dreams I have to run away from here
But my limousine's too long to turn around, I fear.
No, no, no, no
You know
I’d never really ever even run away
’Cause that limo’s getting longer by the mile.
(LOLZ, JK.)
But every time I see that girl I smile.
In fact, it was
Two years ago today.

Two years ago today
She pulled me aside, she told me to love you
Three years ago today
I knew you back then, but what could I do?
Four years ago today
It’s been going on so long, I can’t believe I haven’t been caught.
One year ago today
One year together just seemed like so long, and

Last night I dreamt that you loved me
You snuck up behind me to hug me
I turned around and we began to kiss so tenderly.
You just had to turn away
Said you were tired of me
Wiping my hands on your shirt.

Two years ago today
She pulled me aside, she told me to love you
Three years ago today
I knew you back then, but what could I do?
Four years ago today
It’s been going on so long, I can’t believe I haven’t been caught.
One year ago today
One year together just seemed like so long, and

Two years ago today
We weren’t sure we could have platonic love.

Three years ago today
I was even more lonely then than I am now.

Four years ago today
Man, I can’t believe what happened in your pool.

One year ago today
One year together just seemed like so long to
Rock on.

Two Year Stravaganza

   It's our (annual? well, by definition...) annual blog post year-stravaganza tomorrow, so once again vote now for the best-of worst-of. Go ahead, do it. You can if you want. I'm not stopping you. Just, uh, write it down in the comments section of today's post with maybe a link to that post or at least a specific enough description, or, to make it easier, in the respective comments sections themselves, of whatever posts you think you like the best. I'll be sure to ignore your opinions to the best of my abilities, of course, but please, I'd like your opinions... on my opinions. And we can all cry together.

   (Opinions sounds like onions. That's the joke.) Let that sink in. It gets really funny after about five seconds.

BEYOND THE EVENING STAR

I’m blue

By the light of the moon

By the light of the setting sun

I’m a sailor

Who’s sailed so far from home

But where do I belong?

I’m a sailor

Sailing on a sea of stars

Sailed beyond all the stars

I’ve ever known.

I’m a sailor

Sailing on a sea of stars

But where do I belong?

Where do I belong, where do I belong?

Where do any of us belong?

We

All belong here

Planet Earth, the Earth.
We

All belong here

Planet Earth, the Earth.

And the sky used to be above me

But now it’s below me, around me, the sky surrounds me

Planet Earth, the Earth

What Time is It?

   No, not Adventure Time. It's Valentimes! Not to say it can't be both.

   <3. Mathematical!

 

Pretension (is a good (?) thing!)

   Dear imaginary people in my head who say I'm just writing this stuff down in order to impress the heck out of other people:

   Of course. If you had something to say that would make yourself look worse than those around you, you wouldn't say it. Societal interactions are built almost entirely on one-up-man-ship, and it would be foolish of me to-- man, this is making me sound like a jerk, or worse.

   I'm here to share. Otherwise I would have written these only to myself. Or not written them at all. But writing something down gets it out of your head and clears up space for more stuff. It's one of those, we are all cyborgs, things. I am outsourcing my meat brain and using this writing as brain so I don't have to remember it. Cognitively, that's how that works. Cyborg.

   You have to stand by your work, though paradoxically part of that is owning up to your mistakes. No, not paradoxically. It makes the things you are proud of doing actually mean something.

Imagery in Itself

   Images are evocative, yes, but they are evocative of nothing but themselves, and evocative of nothing but evocation itself. Meaning, uh, it's not the image itself that's evocative. The image is just an image, and it evokes nothing but itself. The evocation itself of evocation itself allows us to be put in the mood for evocation, and that in itself is the evocative part.

   And there's no way of disproving that, because there's no way of understanding the meaning of what the heck I just said. (Outside of itself, I mean. (Ha ha. circular logic, just kidding.)) What I mean was, there's no way to prove me wrong because that point wasn't very well stated so it's impossible to know what my point even was. Just, uh, go look at something that's evocative of something. You'll see what I mean then. Such illustrations of illustrations can only be illustrated using illustrations. It establishes a mood, and that mood is the thing that is itself evocative.

   I suppose it is possible of putting these images into words, but, like I said, the words can only evoke the original image. Kind of a creepy Plato thing going on there. Mood is intangible, I guess. That's the problem-- well, not the problem, that's the very essence of it. It is what it is itself, and that's the only way of describing that, which is also a perfect illustration of my point. It is itself itself itself.

   I know what you're saying. "But Eric," you're saying, "You just proved yourself wrong by proving yourself right by using something of an intangible nature to saying that its very intangibility is the perfect illustration of how it's impossible to illustrate anything with things of an intangible nature." And now you're taking a deep breath, because that was quite a mouthful there. Good job on both being able to figure that out and also to say that.

   Uh, yeah, shoot. That's a good point. The entire thing is intuitionist; it can be proven through a long series of small logical steps, but we grasp it intuitively, like ethics or mathematics. I guess what I mean in all this is, art for art's sake. That's it. Art for art's sake. If you look back over it, you'll see that's what almost every sentence has been saying: Images are evocative of nothing but themselves, and evocative of nothing but evocation itself. Art for art's sake. It's not the image itself that's evocative. Art for art's sake. The image is just an image, and it evokes nothing but itself. Art for art's sake. The evocation itself of evocation itself allows us to be put in the mood for evocation, and that in itself is the evocative part. Art for art's sake. And so on.

   I hope you don't think that was pretentious in any way. All that deep thinking or whatever. Really, I was just treating it as kind of a lark. Shoot, wait, no. I mean, I worked very hard on that, and you'd better be impressed by it!

Com Truise!

   Okay, so I looked it up, and http://truise.com/ is not, in fact, a real website. Yet. At press time. If that even means anything on the internet. When I posted this, it wasn't.

   Here's what I think, though: that domain name has the possibility of being the most cleverly named Tom Cruise fan site on the internet.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, February 7, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: So, anyway, back to...
that of which...
I was speaking.
*phew*
My hypothesis is that the attack will come from slapstick.
This strip's humor has come from slapstick more and more recently.
The pies, the anvils, the dangling goblin...
It fits the milieu.
uhh...
Are you sure you don't want to go...
Collin: No, I'm ready for whatever can be thrown at me. Bring it.
OOOOON! 

NOTES:
   Sorry about the legibility of this one. Or lack thereof. It's a Sunday comic and Sunday means color, but in a black and white world the only opportunity for that comes through tinging emotions with actual tinges. All I had to work with for the color in this one were markers, so you can see how that turned out. At least I always publish a transcript alongside for exactly this reason (and so that the dialog can be searched through, à la OhNoRobot, while this is still down.)

Hulk in Hollywood

   More Hulk TV Show Trivia goodness, and sure why not let's make it in celebration of SHIELD. I'd imagine Hulk's not going to show up, as he's stinking expensive to put on screen even briefly, and to be quite honest I'm writing this from a time when the show's still a vague announced concept, so whatever. I just have more Hulk stuff to share with you.

   In the TV show, his name's David Banner instead of Bruce. What went wrong? Bruce isn't even Hulk's real first name. It's his middle. The character was introduced as Bruce Banner, but Stan Lee screwed up and wrote him as "Bob Banner" for a time. Still alliterative. Stan Lee was working on a lot of comics at the time, which is one of the reasons he's a legend but it also ensured that mistakes would be made. Rather than retconning these mistakes (or at least this mistake,) making it so that they never existed, The Man just came out and said that Bruce's full name is Robert Bruce Banner. Problem solved.

   Since Bruce is just Banner's middle name anyway, the show went on and called him by his first name- David? Yes. Remember the thing earlier about his name being alliterative? If you don't, just go back up to the previous paragraph. It's right there. You back? Okay, so the show's developer and executive producer, Kenneth Johnson, thought that the alliterative name was "comic book-y," as he was trying to ground Hulk more in reality. He changed Banner's first name from Bob to David, after his son David, but kept the middle name Bruce in nod to the comics. So there you have it.

Hollywood in Hulk

   Remember back in the '90s, when Hulk Hogan turned heel (bad guy wrestler) and reinvented himself as "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan? Well, neither do I. But I've read about it (it didn't last for very long.) But it turns out that there was a very, very good reason for that. Hulk Hogan debuted in 1979, back when the Hulk TV series was still on. Ah, so you can see where this is going. Well, very good.

   At that time, Hogan had to LICENSE (yes, in all caps like that) LICENSE his name from Marvel (his real name's neither really Hulk, nor Hogan) or at least his wrestling agency did. It was Ed McMahon (Sr.)'s idea, and it was he and the World Wrestling Federation to whom the name was LICENSED. This probably must have made it a bit of a hassle whenever he switched agencies (he had switched from WWF to AWA then back to WWF and then to WCW by the time he re-branded himself with all that new World order stuff in '96,) but I'm no expert in how wrestling agencies buy rights so I wouldn't know.

   I guess, to get out of that, so he wouldn't have to keep on paying LICENSING fees, he turned heel, called himself Hollywood Hulk Hogan, and shortened it to Hollywood Hogan. What a complicated and nefarious scheme. It didn't work, but, uh, there you go.

   (postscript: in 2005, he just bought the rights to the name "Hulk Hogan." If he could've done that all along, makes you wonder why he didn't.)

Another Poetry Tip, I Guess

   Learning forms of poetry is important, even if you don’t want to write sonnet after sonnet for the rest of your life. Knowing and being skilled in rigid forms of poetry makes your free verse much more powerful, because if you've practiced with words like that you know how they flow, and so your free verse actually sounds good.

The Best Ideas

   I blog a lot about serial killers, don't I? It's just I think serial killers would improve literally every (domain? title? product?) just by their addition. And just that. Like I said, I am not one.

   It also gives a point to have the proceedings of the plot in the first place, makes it interesting enough to be worthy to bear telling. If you had a crappy childhood, that's boo hoo for you, but if you had a crappy childhood and are also killing people because of it, well, that's intrinsically interesting.

   Here's a short list of some of the best ideas of all time:

1. It's like Magnolia, but with serial killers
2. It's like Rashoman, but with serial killers
3. It's like Da Vinci Code, but with serial killers
4. It's like Abyss, but with serial killers

   See, see how easy this is?

That Poor Dog

   The story is told of the hunt for Glasgow's notorious serial killer "Bible John" (so called because his last known victim was last seen in a taxi with a man who called himself John who said his family was very religious growing up and that he could recite Bible passages off the top of his head):

   A witness claiming to have seen him once remarked in questioning that the killer's hair matched almost perfectly the color of that of a passing dog's. The police chased the poor creature down and cut off a snip of its fur to give to the police sketch artist.

   Somehow this story seems significant to me, as if I've heard it before or something.

Epic Fails of History

Charles R. Drew, the man who pioneered many blood storage techniques that allowed blood banks to be able to hold blood for longer periods, an African American. They started segregating the blood supply into black blood and white blood...

   He did not himself bleed to death because they denied him blood because he was black, though. So that's good.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 31, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: So, anyway, back to what I was speaking of OOOF
Announcer: OH SNAP IT'S THE DANGLING PARTICIPLE GOBLIN!
!!!!!!!!!

Identity

   Or is it something else that truly scares me? Like I said, it's not my past self, but the idea of my past self, that I could have my strings pulled and not notice it. I'm better than I was, but how much of it is yet uninternalized?

   I broke very easily as a child. They must have instilled in me some coping mechanism or defense mechanism to counteract it, because I must have learned to outgrow it somehow (most of it anyway.) Maybe it's still there. My childhood is this force that's pressing against my back, nuzzling me and then swallowing me up. I've had positive and negative manifestations, suppressing the negative and refining the positive ones. Hopefully. The autism itself is the cause of both of these, but not the actions themselves- I choose how I manifest it.

   Sublimation is considered a psychologically mature form of defense mechanism, because it involves rejecting negative behavior. It involves the nourishing and nurturing of the underlying negative ideals you are trying to repress, though, only directing them to a different outlet. The demon grows alongside the angel.

   And that is why I am a serial killer.

   Haha, just kidding. (the dehydrated samples of human skin in the scrapbook under the bed are JUST RESEARCH, mother.)

   But the strengths and the weaknesses do come from the same source. It's not like my life is being defined by this, since I forget about it half the time as it is. I see myself as myself, to a degree of identity that I can only guess others can't even imagine. And it is this degree of identity which causes my own lack of identity. Like I said, the reason I return to the same things over and over is because they're awesome.

   (And I realize the problem behind that, but that is how most of us operate, so I'm gonna fly with it.)

It's Really Time You Reexamine Your Place in Society, Boy

   Saying that with a Sean Connery accent would be best. Itsh taime ya reexhamin your plaish in shochiety, boyh. Yeah, like that.

   But I just realized what a loser I am, statistically. Well, not a loser, but how easy it would be to dismiss me. All my demographics, the things I'm into, have traditionally been the path of the unpopular. Too many outcasts. I am a freaking autistic Mormon hipster furry brony manchild. Being the ultimate outsider does have this edge to it, like so-uncool-it's-cool, and of course coolness exists outside of that, but that still doesn't explain how others put up with me when the stereotype is that not much good can come from any of these things individually much less combined.

   It's an elective thing, I suppose. You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm not actively telling you this; I'm not saying these things out loud. It's a written medium, and it's your choice to read or not. With listening, you can ignore it and you can tune it out, but you can still hear it. It requires a bit more effort on your part to read something, though. So I don't have to explain myself to you if you don't want that.

   That's why you're here, isn't it? To see me, well, not, justify myself, to you, exactly. The hear what I have to say and see what I have to show. To look and see and find out just exactly what it means to be like me. Oh, man, I just quoted Comrade Helicopter at you.

   All my life, I guess, I've been in the minority. Or the equivalent, I guess. Being Caucasian male has no real political push anymore, except for subconscious things like being perceived as more trustworthy. We don't have to pay as much for houses, for example, because real estate agents, as human beings, have this implicit bias towards trusting us more.

   I guess, on one hand, I don't need to tell you, but on one hand (and maybe it's the same hand, who knows) I do. Or is it you who needs to be told by me? The only reason I bring it up here is this entire thing is about me spilling my guts and psychoanalyzing myself (I do that so you don't have to do it for me, I guess) and as embarrassing as it is to admit my membership of these groups I suppose it's an essential part of my psychology. Asperger's can be used as an excuse for anything from mild awkwardness to downright rudeness, or even use it as a bragging point, how it makes them more special than the other people in the room. But you really can't change things like that much, as cliché as it to bring it up. Or, no, uh... What, is it passé? Both, I guess.

   But you can't let it stop you, just because you're not entirely unique. You still need something to springboard off of. Is it so popular now it's no longer cool? Or are you ashamed for the others? The things I like I like because they're awesome things.

   So here I am.

Thinking, in Pictures and Words

   I remember thinking entirely in pictures when I was young, but then training myself to think verbally by using pictures of those creepy busy  preposition ants from School House Rock (seriously, ants shouldn't wear shoes. That’s why I also think the song "Ants Go Marching" is creepy. Nor should teddy bears, one of the many reasons I think Teddy Bear Picnic is creepy.) The ants would march by with pictures of the words, you know, signs with the words I was thinking written on them.

   I would not be who I am today without the film Jurassic Park. And, I guess, the book. The scene when Laura Dern and Richard Attenborough are sitting together in the cafeteria, eating ice cream before it melts because the power is off, and Mr. Attenborough's character explains remembering Petticoat Lane and the flea circus, and wanting to make something that was actually real this time. That’s just excellent scriptwriting. Give that guy an Oscar, give him a Knighthood. The dialogue inspired me to have conversations of my own like that. It inspired me to my own form of eloquence, wanting to think in words instead of pictures.

   Anyway, Ian Malcom, Jeff Goldblum's character. Chaos theory. That dude was awesome. Sitting in the car, talking to himself, after everyone else jumped out of the car to see the Trike (Jurassic Park slang for a triceratops.) “See, here I'm now sitting by myself, uh, er, talking to myself. That's, that’s chaos theory.” Which inspired me to talk to myself. A common trait of autism is vocalization of thoughts, but I guess in me that's where it came from.

   Yeah, that's right. Jeff um uh Goldblum. For me, that was the pinnacle of eloquence. Ian Malcolm, chaos this and that.