dejadrew

My sister was rummaging in her trick or treat bag today. My sister is theoretically too old to trick or treat, but she is smaller than me and cuter than me and has little or no shame. At least where free candy is concerned. Darn her. Anyway, she was going through the last of her candy and stuff when she discovered that the "and stuff" included a fundy Christian comic mini pamphlet. You know, repent or go to Hell, you adorable little heathen.

Now that is a scary Halloween trick.

She was mostly amused. Little worried she might have been singled out for some reason. Her fellow treaters better have gotten 'em too, or that's blatant discrimination against goth zombie nurses and she'll totally sue.

I was amused too, but also annoyed. Not so much at the proselytizing, actually. I kinda feel bad for most of the local Mormons and such, doggedly trying to hand out free bibles by the train stations and smiling wearily and wishing me a nice day when I turn them down. You just want to give them a consoling pat and a mug of warm tea, you know? There, there, I'm sure you'll save someone from everlasting hellfire tomorrow!

What offends me isn't so much the religion. It's the damn BAD COMICS.

On my shelf is the complete Vertigo edition of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha. It's gorgeous and epic and funny and heartbreaking and humane and so damn bloody UNFAIR. Because Siddharta Gautama Buddha got Osamu Tezuka, Manga no Kami-sama, God of Manga, the father of sequential art in East Asia, doing comics based on his life and teachings. What did poor Jesus get? Jack. Freaking. Chick.

I don't consider myself a Christian, except culturally. You know, celebrates Christmas and Easter, but doesn't attend church and hasn't been baptized or saved. I'm basically agnostic in my beliefs. Well, with lingering touches of neo-paganism left over from an adolescent Wiccan period. But while I haven't taken Jesus as my personal saviour, I have a certain amount of affection and admiration for the guy. And he deserves better than crummy, stiff art, BAD plotting and storytelling, and cold, humourless, angry writing. The man punned, for God's sake. (I mean, literally, he punned for the sake of his God.) Jesus had a sense of humour, and he was a damn GOOD storyteller. He'd hate this ugly, angry, smug little book.

Well, no, I guess he'd love it even though it's ugly and angry and forgive whoever drew it because he's the Nazz and that is how he rolls but STILL.

So, here's a few comics in which Jesus appears which do not suck. Because it is possible, darn it.

Dean Rankine's HOLY COW! Christian Comics. The anti-Chick. Dean Rankine appears to be a smart and sane member of the faithful, and he can draw. His zany, cartoony art style reminds me a bit of the little illustrations in Klutz Press books. These little mini-comics are hilarious and thoughtful. Jesus appears in them as a grinning hippy figure in sandals and colourful t-shirts, which apparently some people have found sacreligious but I find ridiculously a propos. And the comics have delightfully clickable titles like "Jesus meets Oprah" and "Psalm 23 and the Vampire Death Squad."

Externality and The Book of Merl, by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey. Jesus makes appearances in these two fun flash-based hypercomics. The Book of Merl was Goodbrey's attempt at improvising his own holy book, in comic form, and a little stick figure Jesus makes a cameo. It's a nice little acknowlegement of the debt the creator feels he owes Christianity as to the shaping of his morals.

...In Externality, Jesus battles a NINJA.

Saint Young Men, by Nakamura Hikaru. Jesus and Buddha take some time off from Heaven and kick it on Earth for a while, sharing a cheap bachelor pad in Japan. It's like the Odd Couple! With saviours! I dearly love this one for so many reasons. Mostly because my particular sense of humour is always tickled by the juxtaposition of the fantastic and the mundane. But also because both Jesus of Nazareth and Siddharta Gautama Buddha went through so much crap on this Earth, and It's NICE to think of the two of them getting to come back and relax and be ordinary and go to Tokyo Disneyland.

The thing those comics all have in common, sadly, is that conservative Christian fundamentalists probably hate them. But I like 'em. And Jesus loves 'em. But then, Jesus loves everybody, so I'm told.

Giving alcohol to a minor.

Giving drugs to a minor.

Having sexual contact with a minor.

Having sexual contact with someone who is under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Having sexual contact with someone who repeatedly says "no."

If someone does any ONE of these things, it is a crime. Roman Polanski did all of them. ALL of them. So how the sweet everloving fuck can that not be "real rape?" How can anyone argue that? How could you even begin?

I've made a new journal for a project that's been itching me for a while.

madpoetist, the collected poetry of a time-traveling mad scientist.

There's only one entry up so far, and I'm not sure where this is headed. Could be terrible. Should be fun. We'll see, anyway.

If nothing else, the persona I've chosen can go back and rewrite anything I hate. Time traveler, hello!

Home sick from work, which sucks, but found something while surfing that made me feel a bit better.

I had already read some squeeing by delighted people who had found out that Vertical publishing licensed the manga Chii's Sweet Home. Which, yes, is awesome, and I'm glad too, because Chii's Sweet Home is The Most Adorable Thing Ever and who could hate that? But today was the day that I found out they were also licensing Twin Spica.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

I loved the anime! I love what few scans I've been able to find of the manga! Astronauts! Teenaged girls going to special astronaut school to learn to be astronauts! Imaginary friend who's actually the ghost of a dead astronaut! EEE!

I leave you with the anime's awesome opening sequence. Rock out, y'all.

I've been on a classic Trek kick lately, watching some old favourites and reveling in their Spock eyebrow-quirking McCoy cranky-pantsing Kirk space-babe-seducing goodness. And I was watching Journey to Babel, because Spock's parents ROCK, when I was struck by a profound contrast between fantasy and reality.

See, in that episode, Kirk gets stabbed in the gut when the bad dude brings a knife to a fistfight. And Spock donates like all his blood for his dad's life saving operation. And maybe an hour later, Kirk and Spock are both totally clamoring to get out of bed and get back to work.

Kirk: Honestly, I'm fine! It's just a scratch! Who really needs TWO kidneys? I've always thought that two was excessive anyway. And that other organ that just fell out, I don't know what it's called but I'm sure it's not important, just put it on ice and I'll deal with it later.

Spock: Indeed. As for myself, unlike humans I am fairly certain we Vulcans do not truly require blood. I can perform my duties perfectly adequately on the 250 millilitres remaining to me plus a pot of strong tea.

McCoy: God help me, if I have to SEDATE THE STUPID OUT OF YOU, I will.

Kirk and Spock were both being That Guy, you know? The one who never admits he's sick. The one who sneaks out of the hospital through the second story ward window using his own IV as a rope. That Guy is everywhere in fiction. Starfleet consists almost entirely of That Guy. I don't think any man in any anime I've watched has ever stayed in the hospital long enough to actually be released.

I have never actually met That Guy.

I don't deny he could exist, I've just never met one personally.

I have only met This Guy.



I was in fact raised by This Guy. In fact, the particular This Guy who raised me is sick right now, and moping around convinced he's dying. (My mother, by the way, finds the above sketch hysterical.)

Me: I just find it so interesting that nearly all the men in fiction are so stoic in the face of illness, and most of the men in real life are... not.

Dad: (moans something in the background about what he wants on his tombstone.)

Mom: Maybe the men writing Star Trek were using Kirk to fantasize about who they wish they could be.

Dad: (mumbles something vague about a tunnel and a warm white light.)

Me: Actually, this episode was written by D.C. Fontana, a woman.

Dad: (coughs and hacks wretchedly)

Mom: ...Well, maybe she was doing a bit of fantasizing, herself. Was she married?

Dad: (groans)

Having seen the new Star Trek movie, I now kinda want to have a torrid affair with every single male member of the cast before eventually settling down and marrying Doctor McCoy.

( Cut for SPOILERS and nerdery. )

Apparently, my writing does not suck! This is a source of intense relief. I was beginning to worry. Well, continuing to worry. And also starting to make jokes about changing my name and moving to Switzerland and never writing anything again. At least, I think I was joking. Maybe. But we'll never know whether or not I would have followed through on that joke/plan, because I have it on good authority and from multiple sources that my writing does not suck! HOORAY!

I wrote and directed a fifteen-minute comedy that I took to the regional One-Act Play Festival this past Saturday. From day one this play has been plagued with difficulties. Literally plagued. My lead actress caught some kind of Killer Martian Death Cold the week before opening night.

(The actress, AKA my kid sister, caught it from my Dad, who caught it from the receptionist at the doctor's office. I'm sure the irony will be hilarious someday, and I will make many jokes about the receptionist earning extra cash for drumming up repeat business, but I'm not... quite... there... yet.)

I spent the last few days frantically working through worst case scenarios.

"If Sis is too sick to go on, I take her place and perform the part."

"If the male lead catches her cold and becomes too sick to go on, I KILL HIM and then draft Sis's boyfriend and make him read the part."

"If lead actor, Sis, and Sister-boyfriend all get hit by a car five minutes before opening, I refuse to go to their funerals and meanwhile draft two random people out of the audience to perform a public reading of the script."

"If I get hit in the same car accident and die then.... well, then this play is no longer my problem and somebody ELSE can figure out what to do with the fifteen minute hole in the program."

But none of the worst case scenarios came to pass! Sis pounded down Buckley's and Fisherman's Friends and medicinal herbal teas and nasal sprays and crap and got through the whole fifteen minutes without coughing or sneezing once! (During. After final curtain she stepped offstage and doubled up on the floor hacking like mad. ) And both of them turned in such great performances! They were so good!

And the audience LAUGHED! I was so afraid they wouldn't. None of our test audiences did, the one or two people at a time who we were able to fit into the lead actor's apartment where we were rehearsing. They just sat there in silence and then said it was "nice." I was so afraid they were being nice, that they were lying to spare my feelings. But this audience, our first, real, more than two people sitting all together in a darkened theatre audience... They laughed. They laughed a lot. They laughed at lines I had long since forgotten were funny.

And the adjudicator asked for permission to use my script in her acting class as a classroom exercise for her students. And this guy who won the award for best actor kept coming up to me afterward to gush about how awesome he thought my script was, in great detail and with great enthusiasm.

And we didn't win anything, and I didn't expect to, but it doesn't matter. They liked it. They laughed.

And I don't have to go into hiding in Switzerland.

Until I finish writing the next one.

Looks like the explanation being leaked from Amazon is "human error" as described here.

And here's an explanation of why some books got de-listed and not others; apparently the categories “gay,” ”lesbian,” ”transgender,” “erotica,” and “sex” were the tags which got toggled as "adult" in the database. I'd been wondering: I'd noticed that Fumi Yoshinaga's award winning shounen-ai tinged drama Antique Bakery had been de-listed, when her much more explicit yaoi story Solfege had retained it's rank. When I looked at the metadata categories, Solfege is categorized as "yaoi," not "gay."

We all knew that the explanation was one of three things: stupidity, malice, or stupidity AND malice. If it turns out to be merely stupidity, then that's a great relief. It does not however, explain why this wasn't dealt with back in February, when the first of these cases started to be reported.

I'd like a detailed official explanation, an official apology, and some kind of statement regarding what's being done both to fix the current situation and to prevent it from ever happening again. Until then, I'm not going to wholeheartedly forgive them, but I will downgrade from "volcanically pissed-off" to "severely annoyed."

But I'm glad that I did get volcanically pissed off, and that so many other much more clever, connected, creative people did. People should get pissed off when something like this happens. No matter how it started, it ended with the voices of a minority being silenced, and FUCK that. Amazon didn't start dealing with this situation until it became the PR nightmare it did. It's nice to see a wrathful Internet working in the service of good.

Amazon Rank.

For an explanation of what the fizzity-uck this is about, here is a good pissed off explanation. Also here, and here.

Here is a list of books that have been affected.

I would like to apologize in advance to my fellow Canadians, as I am about to seriously undermine our national reputation for being polite and easygoing. However, in an attempt to minimize the damage, I shall bleep out the curse words.

Ahem. [BLEEP] you, FOX. [BLEEP] you up the [BLEEP] and down the [BLEEP] with a rusty [BLEEP]ing [BLEEP], sideways, until it comes out your [BLEEP], you [BLEEPING] [BLEEPYMCBLEEPITYBLEEP]kitten[BLEEP]ers.

"Didn't know" we were in the [BLEEP]ing war? The one we joined eight [BLEEP]ing years ago to support the USA, our friend and ally, when it was attacked? Well, lucky you, you [BLEEP]s. I wish we didn't know. I bet these guys knew it pretty [BLEEP]ing well.

I gather this show is supposed to be "funny." Right. Real [BLEEP]ing funny. I bet the [BLEEP]ing families of this "ridiculous" country's soldiers, alive and dead, think this is just hi-[BLEEP]ing-larious.

Listen, nobody laughs at jokes about Canadians harder than Canadians do. We Canucks know funny. This? This, FOX, is not [BLEEP]ing funny.

I'm a little depressed about the loss of </a></b></a>scans_daily on livejournal. I know it's back already, but it'll take a while to rebuild, and what if our new home kicks us out too? The reasons and attitudes that got us shut down haven't gone away just because we've gone elsewhere.

I think what's depressing me most isn't so much the loss of the comm, it's why, and what some people are saying about it now. I suppose they'd been saying it all along, but I hadn't noticed, because I wasn't where they were. I was on Scans Daily, making jokes about Nightwing's ass or something. But apparently we were evil. We were pirates. We were taking food from creators' mouths. We were entitlement bitches who felt we had the right to steal comics instead of buying them like good boys and girls (mostly girls).

...It happens that I am currently in the process of sorting through my massive comic collection. It outgrew my shelves a while ago and spilled out onto the floor (which I maintain TOTALLY COUNTS as a very large, very low shelf). Last week I started to try to arrange the piles into different piles, in the faint, desperate hope that maybe I could get them organized and maybe back onto a shelf at some point.

So when I found out that Scans Daily was gone, and why some people thought that was a good thing, I just, sort of wandered over to the miniature cityscape of book skyscrapers I've got over there and started running my fingers over the spines, remembering.

( Memories... )

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, February 23, 1932 - December 18, 2008.

Goodbye, ma'am. Goddamnit I will miss you.

I am trying to branch out from adventure gaming, which is my home and native genre. I don't have the bandwidth allowance to play World of Warcraft without ridiculously hefty tithes to my provider, so I am tentatively trying my hand at some bargain-bin single-player RPGs my sister sent me. The transition is... difficult. I have all the finely honed combat skills of an earthworm. Even the earthworm might do better at some parts of the game than me. We sold worms for bait at one of my places of business, and many times have I witnessed the +5 boost to persuasion they get from their Pathetic Accusatory Wiggling skill. My character can manage the pathetic and the wiggling parts, but it never seems to have much effect on my digital enemies as I try to remember what the hell key I need to hit to draw my weapon while a wolf is cheerfully gnawing on my butt.

Looting comes a bit more naturally. One thing RPGs and adventure games seem to have in common is that if it ain't nailed down, take it, so I'm quite cheerfully picking corpses clean and gathering herbs like there's no tomorrow. But it won't let me pick up the rope. This is... FOREIGN to me. The one item in every adventure game you will ALWAYS find a use for, that you will ALWAYS need! If I don't pick up the rope, I'll regret it! I'll have to climb something or tie someone up or there will be a, a, a character who will only talk to us if we prove our worth by demonstrating our skills at knot-tying, I DON'T KNOW! It's ROPE! You don't pass up rope! But in this game, not only do you pass up rope, you don't even see rope! You walk right by rope without even acknowledging that it's there! This feels somehow sacriligious.

Sigh. I shall keep trying. The rest of the gaming world seems to think this sort of thing is the tops, and I did enjoy Warcraft during the brief time I was able to try playing it. (World of Warcraft! Combat so easy, earthworms can play! And possibly participate in guild chat, which would explain some of the spelling.)

And I AM enjoying the herb gathering. ("Oooh! Pretty plant!")

But right now, the demo for A Vampyre Story has finished downloading, and I believe I shall give that a try. It involves an opera singing vampiress, and puzzles, and perhaps, maybe, possibly, even rope. Much more my speed.

Phooey. For a while there, Canadian politics were EXCITING. I mean, we had an honest to goodness coup! Granted, it was a very, very Canadian coup, which was strictly legal and by the book and involved a great deal of letter-writing and, for a few hours this morning, a live round the clock door watch. SUSPENSE!

"As you can see, we are still waiting for the Governor-General's front door to open, and Stephen Harper to get his pasty butt out here and tell us whether or not he's still Prime-Minister."

"Wait, wait! It's opening!"

"And is there, yes, yes, I believe someone is coming out, and... oh. No, no, it appears it is just a security guard coming to close the doors, which blew open, and now there is a draft."

"That's the third time that's happened, isn't it?"

"Yes it is. In other news, the microphone boom guy is going to walk off a leg cramp, and we are sending Doug to get some double-doubles and Timbits."

All that build up, with the angry speech-making, and the breathless door-watching... The end came as a helluvan anti-climax. The Governor General came out of her hole, saw her shadow, and gave us six more weeks of Harper.

Sigh. Sorry, opposition parties. No coup for you. Not 'til January, anyway. Well, at least we don't have another damn election. Yet.

The neighbours to the south have just elected Barack Obama as their next president.

I find myself giddy with relief and trying to mentally calculate the potential expense of creating and mailing several million "Thank you" cards.

It's the day before the day before the Americans have their election, and I want to get something off my chest. As a Canadian, when I mention my nationality, a LOT of leftier Americans jokingly ask me if they can come sleep on my couch, or live in my basement, or set up a tent in my backyard. Initially, it made me feel amused and kinda smug. My country is awesomer and everybody wants to live here, yay.

But lately... lately my reaction has been deep sinking gloom or unexpected blazes of anger, and where the Hell did that come from?

I couldn't understand it, but I've been thinking about it a lot. I think I have it now.

Us Canadians had an election recently, too. A relatively quiet do, wouldn't be suprised if nobody else noticed. Hell, some of us might not have noticed.  Anyway, a recent article I read said that 15% of Canadians said they would have given up their right to vote in our last election if it meant they could be allowed to vote in the next American election. Which is stupid and crazy and shame on you, 15%, but.... God damn it, I understand the impulse. Because I am Canadian, I like being Canadian, I like voting in Canadian elections... but I really, really wish I could vote in the American election too. The USA is our next-door neighbour, one of our biggest trading partners, our closest ally. Everything that the Americans do influences us. Who the Americans pick as their next president has a HUGE impact on Canada, on the entire rest of the world, and the entire rest of the world can't do anything about it.

I can't do anything about it.

All I can do is bloody WATCH.

It's... sickening. Maddening. Crazy-making. I'm helpless. I'm completely powerless. I'm a citizen of a free democratic country with suffrage who has reached the age of majority, I'm not supposed to ever be powerless, that's the whole POINT. But in this, I am.

And the Americans who want to leave America and live in my crawlspace or whatever... they're not. They're not powerless. And I'm jealous. Not of being American, I don't want to be American, GOD no. Not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that, but I LIKE winter and health care and the metric system and spelling neighbour with a 'u'. But I AM jealous of that power, that control.  And when they joke about giving that up, running away... I get depressed, and mad. It's not their fault. They're kidding, and paying me and my country a compliment.  It's just that I would give so much not to be helpless.

So, to my liberal American friends who have asked or were thinking of asking: No. I'm so, so sorry, but no. I love you, and I'd love to have you, but you can't crash on my couch, or live in my basement, or pitch a tent in my backyard. For three reasons:

Because I can't. I'm way over here. You have to get it for me. I can't reach.

Because I wanted to be the cool house in my neighbourhood on Halloween, and because I wanted to reward the Trick-or-Treaters who shopped local instead of getting their parents to drive them to the suburbs on Halloween night, I started doing an annual minicomic to hand out at the door with the candy and cookies. After falling off the internet for a couple years, I'm now trying to ease back into webcomicry, and so...


New HallowMini for 2008! Because brains need Halloween candy too! Make sure you click back to read the two previous stories, if you haven't seen them. There's a printable version linked at the end of each comic. Just print and fold to make a book, repeat as necessary for the number of 'treaters you expect to get.

And a small note on this year's comic...

( Mild spoilers behind cut... )

Yesterday I found out that some rather important paperwork got lost in the mail, and as a result the government is under the (mistaken) impression that I owe them four hundred dollars.

Today I totalled my mom's car.

I begin to suspect that the cabbage that savagely bit me on Tuesday was in fact cursed.

I am uncertain what the correct procedure is to reverse the bad luck brought on by a cursed cabbage. The only thing I can think of is that coleslaw should be involved. And perhaps holy water. But would the making of coleslaw frighten away bad-cabbage-luck, or merely further anger the ancient and terrible Elder Cabbage Gods?

For now, I think I shall go to bed with all the covers pulled over my head and whimper for a while.

Today, the Tories won in my riding again, my period started four days early, and at work I was brutally gored by a cabbage.

GodDAMN but I hate being female sometimes. "Aunt Flo" is being a particular bitch this month. I've had the appetite of an anorexic canary all day, been sick as a bulimic dog all evening, and now, NOW, in the middle of the night, my appetite has suddenly returned with a vengeance.

An oddly specific vengeance. I want sushi. No, that's not right. This requires capitals. And bolded text.  I WANT SUSHI. I would currently perform unspeakable acts for a kappamaki. I would break laws written and unwritten for a California roll. If there were a tray of spicy tuna on one side of the room and an enraged rabid grizzly bear dripping bloody froth from her gleaming fangs onto the carpet between myself and said tray, I would launch myself at the bear without hesitation.

And then the bear would eat me and then the tuna, but I would MAKE THE ATTEMPT.

This is a particularly strange compulsion because I don't even LIKE sushi all that much. I've only been out for sushi twice, with friends, and thought it was okay, I guess, sort of. Figured it was an acquired taste, and since there is not a single seller of sushi within an hour's drive from my house, I haven't had much opportunity to acquire it. Except now it seems I HAVE acquired it. Abruptly. Near midnight. At the aforementioned house, with the said sushi sellers the previously stated hour's drive away, and not open. And since I previously had no particular fondness for sushi, there is nothing remotely resembling sushi-making ingredients or equipment anywhere in my house, else I would be frantically rolling, or possibly just devouring whole sheets of nori and drinking rice vinegar straight from the bottle.

I ended up devouring sweet pickles and peanut butter on stoned wheat thins, which for some reason my stomach and ovaries have decided is the closest acceptable sushi substitute among the available options. Don't ask me. Ask the hormones. Geeze, it's like being pregnant. I know I'm not, because A) Like I said, I am currently receiving a visitation from Aunt Flo, and B) I am not nor have I recently received a visitation from the Archangel Gabriel. Which is a damn shame, really, because if I had, I could send the Archangel out to get me some #$!*ING SUSHI.

...I need more pickles.