It's official, I just ended Chainmail Bikini. The sad fact is, drawing a webcomic is a ton of work, and my heart really wasn't in it. I love the characters we created, and the fans have been incredible, but it's just too much time and stress to spend on something I'm not wholly committed on.

Bleargh.

Emails are not text messages. If you send me a work email that says "can i get logo in black if not i can do that logo just let me know thank u" then I will immediately place you in the mental category of "fucking moron."

Now, chances are if you're the person who just sent me that email, that you are in fact a fucking moron. But you should probably try to hide that fact, and use full words and sentences when doing official business correspondence with your fucking work email address, you fucking moron.

That is all.
Me

I'm not sure why you're so cranky and argumentative today, but dude, chill.

Thanks,
Me

I've been Rickrolled today more times than I can count. I think next year, someone should just do a massive prank where every link anyone clicks anywhere on the internet redirects to the Never Gonna Give You Up video.

guttermuffin is super sick, probably food poisoning or something. It sucks. If she's still throwing up in the morning, I'm calling the doctor whether she wants to or not.

Okay that is crazy. And kind of awesome, and kind of frightening.

It took all of my self will and reserve not to post yesterday, but in protest I took the day off from LJ. I also took Thursday off, as well as last weekend, Monday, most of the prior week, the entire 6th through the 10th, Tuesday the 4th, and the first two days of March. In protest.

I've also been protesting LJ for half to 2/3 of the days of every month for the last 7 years or so! Ha! Take that!

Now, this LJ might just turn into the All Obama All The Time Channel, but dude check out this pic:



How can you not love that?

From here:

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_political/245074.html

(Also, check out young John McCain, who was in fact a complete stud.)

ETA: I posted this after I'd watched the first couple of minutes, and figured it was worth sharing. Now that I've seen the whole thing, let me just say this:

Holy living fuck.

I'll admit up front that I've become a huge Obama fan. I was worried this last week or so, with the Rev. Wright controversy. Partly because I was concerned that this would sway minds in Pennsylvania and the other dozen remaining states enough to make the democratic primary even closer, and lead to even more drama and damage and chaos in Denver. I was also partly worried because what I'd read was tarnishing my own opinion of Obama. Now, I don't think the man shits rainbows and has magical superman jesus lightning bolt powers, but I do really believe he means what he says. The last couple of weeks made me worry a bit about that. But this speech, this speech completely turned that around.

Today really reminded me why I'm such a raving Obama fanboy. Most of all, I was just struck by how smart he seems. Not in a John Kerry "I'm smarter than you idiots, you should listen to me" sort of way, but just how much thought and understanding he had of an incredibly complex issue, and how well he put forth his message and tied it into his overall theme for the campaign.

So yeah, I don't think he'll wave some magical Obama wand and suddenly there will be rainbows and cake, but I really hope Obama wins the nomination and then the election in November.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/13/alqaeda.saddam/index.html

Also, the Pentagon has released a study revealing water is wet and the sky is fucking blue.

If you've seen the last couple of posts over on guttermuffin, you know we adopted a puppy yesterday, and we're going to have to give him up because of allergies. He's adorable and sweet and intelligent and fearless and playful, and I've named him Taco. But we absolutely can't keep him. Here's the Craigslist posting:

http://stlouis.craigslist.org/pet/603124251.html

If you know anyone within driving distance of St. Louis that would be interested, please pass this on. I'd absolutley love it if one of my friends would adopt the little guy, then we could visit and he could play with Grover.

I love it. But then, I love me some NIN. For those of you who missed the last post, it's 36 instrumental tracks, each with their own handy bit of artwork, each titled simply with numbers.

It's basically an entire album of the cool little instrumental bits that would previously bump between songs. It sounds a lot like The Fragile, with no words and far more experimentation. There is some definite Akira Yamaoka vibe on some tracks, and a certain Phillip Glass influence on others. I wish this would have come out a year or two sooner, it really would have been perfect background music for our Orpheus game.

I'm not sure how often this album will get played though, there are no words to sing along to, and it's not really built for rocking out in your car. You could I suppose just leave it on as background music throughout the day, but that might lead to paranoia, depression, and and anxiety. I do think with any luck in 20 years you'll be able to hand this to your teenage cousin or whatever and they'll stay up late at night with headphones on or playing it endlessly like I did with Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2.

I have to say, I'm loving this new prolific Trent. It must be a side effect of new Healthy Living Trent.

Trent Reznor says, "Dear gamers, you should have some cool gamer background music. Here you go!"

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts vol 1-4

36 track instrumental double album, available as a physical CD in April, or a direct download for $5(!) right now. You can also download the first 9 tracks for free and listen to a sampler on the site. The bad news is, the server is getting hit like crazy. I guess they didn't expect the raging fanbase to flood the site once Trent announced "Hey guys, we've been working on a secret instrumental double album, here you go."

This, I just want to state, is a fucking awesome idea. The last couple of albums (Year Zero especially) have really shown Trent's production and composing skills improve while his vocals and lyrics either lagged behind in may cases. So now you get rocking and creepy instrumentals, with no "I push tha button and uh!" or "wa with ah teeeth ah!"

I'm listening to it right now, and it really is perfect gamer background music. WoD fans especially are pretty well set now. Sadly, our Orpheus game wraps up in a few weeks.

The promotions and website for NBC's new "interwebs tv show turned real tv show" Quarterlife kind of make me want to punch everyone involved.

"From the producers of Thirtysomething and My So Called Life." No shit.

Seriously, they couldn't get the licensing deal to just call this "Facebook: The Series"?

Edit: Yes, I'm completely aware of the irony in bitching about some shitty twentysomething faux indie hipster show while going on an Interpol bender.

Big productive day today. With any luck, good news will be around the corner.

More stuff later.

Fans love shameless fan service, more news at 11.

Actually, I'm a big fan of today's comic. I drew panel 2 months ago, and giggled like an idiot and now we finally shared Steve with the rest of you. While the look for Casey, Chuck, Josh, and Marcus are all kind of loosely based on various archtypes/stereotypes, and Ivy is kind of an amalgram of a half dozen girls I dated/gamed with, Steve is pretty much an exact translation of the stoners I gamed with in high school.

Also:

So I'd say it's an extreme compliment that Questionable Content has sucked me in to it's characters and stories so well that when I read today's strip, I did the sort of wide eyed, mouth agape freak out normally reserved for Lost or Rock of Love.

Bravo!

A note to those of you who don't read QC, today's strip won't seem all that impressive.  I'd suggest starting a few hundred strips back and working your way up.  Somewhere like say #861 or so.

Barack Obama is the projected winner in all 3 contests today, meaning he has had a clean sweep of every primary or caucus since Super Tuesday. For the first time since Iowa, this puts him ahead of Clinton in Delegates. (He's up by almost 100 elected Delegates, and has finally overcome her lead of Super Delegates.)

The Clinton camp is putting all of their attention on Texas and Ohio on March 4th, because Obama is expected to win Wisconsin and Hawaii on the 19th. If you look back at my prediction post from last week, you'll note Obama has done even better than I predicted. Clinton's strategy might work, but it really looks like Giuliani's Florida plan.

For the first time, it really looks like Obama will pull away with the nomination. The primaries aren't over by a long shot, but things are looking better for the Obama camp every day, and worse for the Clinton campaign.

I'm excited. Not just about the distinct possibility of Barrack Obama as presidential candidate, but by the distinct possibility of Barack Obama as President.

Why, you ask? Well, it's not just that he gives great speeches and comes across as very intelligent, although that's certainly part of it. Despite my cynicism and lack of trust in the system, I really do believe Obama when he says he can heal the damage done by the Bush administration and make this country a better place again. I'm sure everything won't be rainbows and cake the day he steps into office, or even the day he leaves office; but more than any President or presidential candidate in my lifetime, I really believe that Barack Obama has the desire and ability to make this country a better place.

Part of me is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the viciousness of the Republican campaign this fall, for scandal and voter fraud and crushing defeat. I'm a little afraid asshole racist idiots and some psychotic racist assassin from Mississippi shooting the President. What can I say? After 8 years of Bush my cynicism and lack of trust in the system hasn't entirely gone away. But I'm not going to let fear and worry scare me off of the hope that things can be better.

Anyway, if you're curious about the man and what his positions are, you really can't go wrong with the Blueprint For Change pdf on his website. Yes, Presidential candidates make promises and don't end up doing most of them, look how both Bush and Clinton made the Environment a top priority of their administrations. But if Obama does half the things he says he wants to, hell 1/4 of the things he wants to, I'll be pretty damned happy.

Anyway, I'm excited.

Continuing my trend of constantly being two or three years behind on movies, we watched Hard Candy last night. I liked parts of it, but I think there was a much better movie trying to get out. Ellen Page's character never really seemed like a person, just this avenging stereotype of vengeance that got to speak for the writer about how evil pedophiles are. Also, considering what the plot was, it had a surprising lack of conflict or tension. One character gains the upper hand early on, and everything pretty much plays out the way they want it for the rest of the film.

Anyway, not terrible, but not particularly good either.

In other news, I've been unnaturally obsessed with the Juno soundtrack lately.

Can't stop this train!





*At least Washington, Louisiana, and Nebraska.