Drawrins

First 3: Improvisational Martial Artist, Gene!



Last 2: Josef, Demon Form v2


Oh yeah, and don't steal these characters or I'll steal your soul. Is that the proper legal terminology?

This'll Be A Short One

Sir Pooty plans a grand adventure to the magical land of France. He will be chronicling these wonderful events not here, as might be expected, but at another home of his.
http://taylorenfrance.blogspot.com/
That blog has been created solely for the purpose of talking about French trip related items, and therefore separated from my personal ramblings. Also, I believe that that blog will update with somewhat regularity, unlike Sir Pooty, Stick Figureology, or really anything else I do. Well, it'll update regularly starting February 1st, when I leave. Until then, posts will be intermittent and arbitrary in nature.

The Dark Blight

Title: It's a pun. On The Dark Knight. So it's funny.
Prompt: A parody of AP style exam testing was supposed to go here.
Body: By milk?
Apology: Seriously now, this is getting out of control.

I saw that movie again, The Dark Knight. I saw it with a person that I will now describe under the aliases 'Man.' Before seeing this movie, a conversation was held between several people, both Man and I were involved in this discussion. This conversation held the first sign that I will not enjoy watching this movie (again) with Man. When explaining the options available, Man had to clarify (twice) that "The Dark Knight" was in fact "that Batman movie." Now, I admit that not everyone will have the comic book knowledge to assume that I move entitled "The Dark Knight" is about Batman. His transgression would have been forgivable had only the title of the movie been available. Even if had somehow missed the countless previews played on the TV he constantly watches, the posters adorning the mall, and various other locales, I think the mere fact that we had been talking about the same movie (that Batman movie) for a half an hour ahead of time should have sufficed. It became, then, so clear why superhero movies cursed with the ever-original (blatant sarcasm) paradigm of "Character Name In Title." People might get confused.
An interesting note, the both times I saw this movie, I heard the ominous whisper of collective realization that Harvey Dent was in fact Two Face (spoiler warning, by the way, if you hadn't caught on somewhere between now and when the character appeared over 60 years ago). The first time, I heard it at the part when oil was spilling on his face (spoiler: oil spills on his face), however the second time yielded a much more belated group epiphany: when he was thrashing around and half his face was in flames, in a perfect line down the middle of his face (spoiler: then the oil burns). For an average moviegoer, both are generally acceptable times to gasp and whisper knowingly to your neighbor "He's Two-Face," calling on your limited Batman knowledge that's only existent because of those generally awful movies that were spawned some years ago.
However, I suppose Man is not the average moviegoer, or so I had hoped. He was on top of things with the whole "Harvey Dent is Two-Face" deal, he figured it out around the time Gordon called the half-fried Dent "Two-Face." I wasn't sure how to react to that, but I was on generally good behavior considering my original plan was to give away (loudly) everything that was going to happen, countering any retort with "Been around for over sixty years!"
Now, again, I'll so generously attempt to give Man the benefit of the doubt on this issue, considering a little event I witnessed during Fantastic Four (the time Victor von I'm FREAKING EVIL, MY NAME IS DOOM killed someone, Girl (no relation to Man) turned and said, "Ohhh! He's the bad guy!" She's was so proud of her discovery). So I'm being generous, right? I'm not be "that guy" in the theatre, ruining it for everyone. I'm not chastising anyone for learning basic Batman knowledge for the first time. But I have lines. They can be crossed.
Man says (once in the movie, then after the movie for clarification): "So that guy? Driving the truck? In the mask? (he's referring to Commissioner Gordon, by the way) He's part of the mafia, right?" True, the initial appearance of that oddly silent masked driver did pose some "hmm..."s, the fact that Man tried to convince all of us that this driver was in fact a goon, one of the "baddies" if you will, tried to convince us with so much conviction, so much self-assurance boggles the mind.
Here's an interesting conversation I heard between a father (30s?) and his son (like 8 or something?). This dialog was in reference to the Joker, and, though not verbatim, it's the best I can remember.
Son: Dad, why is he laughing?
Dad: Because he's crazy.
Son: Oh...Why is he crazy?
Dad: Because he's the Joker, and...
The conversation trailed off here, they began talking to quietly to properly interrupt my movie. Something I would've liked to say to father, "Don't stress it." Honestly, the birds and the bees talk, explaining the grandma didn't actually go to Peru, and that she wouldn't be returning, those would be much easier to discussion to have with Junior than Why is the Joker crazy? An issue I thought was very tactfully avoided in the movie. Maybe for the best.
A tangent, if I may, how is it that essentially the most notorious of any superhero's rogues gallery has essentially no backstory. How do you pull that one off?
I'm almost done, don't worry.
I feel guilty that while seeing the movie, I thought primarily "It really is a tragedy that Heath Ledger is dead." Why would I feel guilty such a thoughtful mourning? Because that means he can't reprise his role as the Joker in the inevitable follow-up movie. This can only mean one of two things: remove the character from the following movie, glossing over why nobody cares about him anymore (much like Scarecrow from Begins), thus ruining the movie; or recast an assuredly inferior actor, thus ruining the movie. Or maybe we'll all be surprised by surprise option three whatever it'll be (I'm hoping that it'll be a sudden and unexplained return from Ledger, much like Gordon's little trick in the movie (spoiler: no, they don't actually kill off that very important and long-running character. This isn't X-Men 3 or anything)).
Final Thoughts: One or two more things to say that I don't want to bother integrating into something like a paragraph. Heath Ledger was a phenomenal Joker. People have been comparing him to Jack Nicholson. Fortunately the consensus is that Ledger was superior, because as far as I'm concerned, Jack Nicholson never played the Joker. Jack Nicholson played Jack Nicholson. Wearing make-up. Sometimes.
And lastly, I really, really liked that movie. It was so cool. After it was over, regardless of the already epic length that it was, I wanted more. During the movie, I was ready for more. Whatever you may have inferred from the above rant, I very much enjoyed this movie. I'm going to stop using words and just sit and think about it for a moment. I implore you to do the same.
.......
The end.

Fortunatarum

Excuses: Well, I haven't had internet in 3 months, just got it back 2 weeks ago, and I haven't really felt like writing anything in awhile. It's a little embarrassing the event that finally prompted me to return to the keyboard and begin writing yet again. Ah, note too, please, that Stick Figureology has returned to its weekdaily postings. Just had to put that out there.
This has been quite the festival weekend for me. Thursday's activities involved a baseball game that nobody was interested in and a preceding fireworks show which simply looked way too close to the ground.
The 4th of July saw me walking the Tacoma waterfront at a festival known as the freedom fair. Complete with shody trinkets, over-greased food, and a few obligatory bad cover bands, this wasn't that unique. Earlier in the day, planes so loud you couldn't hear yourself think would fly inconveniently close to the Earth's surface and ultimately annoyed most, considering most weren't really looking up to see the "show." I am a cynical person, however I'm also lazy, therefore I will let you imagine the jokes I could make about the cookie-cutter scenesters, swill-sloshing beer gardeners, the overly desperate vendors, and all other variety of characters that are seen at festivals of this sort.
Today's deal was an event known as Tall Ships. Now I don't know what it is about the name, maybe it's idiot proof simplicity or psuedo mysterious vagueness, but something about just screams out to be made fun of one way or another. Anyways, the only two ships that were impressively tall were one honest to goodness pirate looking ship (but lost major cool points when the decision was made to fly an AT&T flag from the rigging) and a coast guard ship. The rest were just prettied up sail boats.
Namesake: In this werehouse, I mean "maritime museum," there was this section of cartography. Some of the maps were cool looking, the ancient style ones. One particular one of the Greek isles had a word along the bottom which I thought sounded cool: Fortunatarum. I looked it up and I guess it's a genus of ants or something.
Oh yes, that event that served as the primary contributor to the motivating force behind these words. When walking along the pirate infested fairgrounds of the Tall Ships festival, I had something akin to a religious experience. Glancing at various vendors and stalls, I had to do a double take at one point because I simply did not believe what I had seen. Two simple, elegant easy to read bold black sans serif words printed onto a bright yellow banner caused this double take, this disbelief. When I checked a second time, those two words were in fact still there, still next to each other, making a claim so bold I had to involve myself in further investigation. I thought, there is no way they intended this sign to be read as a singular entity, clearing it is two separate thoughts sharing one banner, but no, my seemingly ridiculous hopes were in fact the truth. They meant it when they said "Donut Sundae."
It's a dish, a simple clear plastic dish at the bottom of which sits 5 freshly fried mini donuts. Then three (3) scoops of vanilla ice creams (I said scoops, that means this is no soft serve, these people weren't playing around). The ice cream was drizzled with strawberries in strawberry syrup, followed by a solid layer of whipped cream and just when you thought you've been presented with a relic in a plastic bowl, the nice fair food lady who seems more like a messiah to you now, places yet another (the 6th) freshly fried mini donut right on top of the whip cream swirl.
Of this, I will say no more, for mortal words do nothing to describe manna, the food of the angels.

Strandbeest

I have no idea what that word means but it's Dutch. Theo Jansen is also Dutch. He makes machines that run solely on windpower and mimic animal movement. HE builds giant "kinetic sculptures" in hopes to one day release them into the wild so they can wander endlessly, free.
I think this is truly the most pure combination of mathematics, science and art. It's truly incredible I think.
This is the site: http://www.strandbeest.com/#
Watch the videos, or look them up on YouTube. They're bewildering.

The History Of The World

Otherwise known as World History, is this cool story some friends and I wrote. It's completely up-to-date on Stick Figureology. Find it here. You should read it, it was fun to write. Unfortunately it's dead. I'm working on some voodoo magic to resurrect it however.
I had something else to say, but it seems to have escaped me. I have to work on a comic now.

Observations

Subtitle: Things I Want To Say Before I Go To Sleep And Forget Them
Note: I think I've already forgotten one of the things.
First: Society's attraction to the word/concept of the Dashboard. I was listening to "Dashboard" by Modest Mouse when this occurred to me. Blogger.com utilizes the "Dashboard" concept that can be found also in the program WordPress (what I use for Stick Figureology) and new(ish) Macs. Also, Dashboard Confessional. Why has such a mundane surface of automobile interior gotten so much glamorization? Only if you have a fancy new car with nifty built-in navigation and et cetera, et cetera, do you reap benefits even similar to the capacity the computized dashboard supplies. As for the Modest Mouse song, I suppose it fits the theme of the CD. But note, folks, that "Dashboard" was the first single off that album. I don't really listen to Dashboard Confessional, so I don't know about them. Okay, glad that's off my chest.
Second: I'm having increasing difficulty thinking of titles for comics. Current significance: negligible.
Third: Man, I don't even know anymore. I'm done.
Edit: Aha! I remembered, my "Dashboard" claims I have one more post than I actually have, and it's been saying that after the last couple of posts. Just thought it was weird.