Wow, I haven’t ranted in a while.  That’s not good.  To make up for it, I’ve found this:

It’s a short film called Terminus about a giant stone man that annoys a more normal, less-stone man. It’s made by one of the co-writers of District 9. It’s special. Apparently it’s being made into a feature as well. Hot damn. I can’t wait for that.

I love that CGI has totally opened up and is being used in short films like this. Ten years ago, that level of special effects could only be seen in features, and it was damn expensive. Now, anyone can do it. This is the kind weird, off-beatly hilarious short film that I wanted to make in college in film school, but every time we tried to make something like this, we’d either get laughed at, told it was impossible, or people would ask us so many questions that the entire point of our work was compromised.

So here’s some random thoughts for the week:

• I love and hate cats.  When you find a cool, friendly cat, it’s like the coolest thing.  Like a neat surprise.  I think that’s because most cats are assholes, so a nice cat is against the grain.  It’s a rebel.  I can respect that.  Doesn’t make me think any higher of their species, but I can respect that.
• China is just stupid.  I understand that their country has an extreme balancing act they have to play with their own populous.  They can’t have a free, happy country because every time they do that, people get pissed off and throw a revolution.  And I understand (kind of) their antagonism against the Dalai Lama (who, seriously, is a righteous dude… not sure how anyone could argue he’s not).  But making threats against the US like we’re they’re little brother is kind of a silly move.  Like, annoying.  Like a mosquito.  If you want to be the economic power-house you act like you are, put your adult-pants on and stop buzzing in our ear.
• I think Doctor Who is dumb, and almost impossible to translate from whatever weird British world it comes from into my American brain.  Is it a comedy?  Is it a drama?  Do I take this seriously?

• I like science fiction.  But that… that’s just too British.
• Then again, my country invented this:

• I’m not the target audience for this “Lady Gaga” creature.  I hate fashionista people.  You know.  People that cuts lamps into funny shapes, put the lamps on their heads, trot down runways, and then tell people their artists or some crap for cutting up lamps.  I also hate bad music.  So I’m not the target audience for… whatever the hell this creature is.
• And it is a creature.

Today’s comic reflects my opinions about Apple (and my own nerdy love of science fiction… check out the hover text!). Apple seems hell-bent on riding the world of buttons and switches with their devices.  They also seem totally cool with moving technology backwards (the Apple Tablet, or as it’s called, the iPad, is basically a giant iPhone, only without any kind of 3G network, a camera, a phone, or a lot of crap).  I love Apple for their computers and their operating system (they could bribe people into putting some freaking video games out for Mac though… please).

But I’ve become more and more frustrated with where this whole iPod minimalist fetish thing is going.  No more keypads, no more power switches, now all we have is a big-ass screen.  It’s the future!  Right?

Time Tangent: The future called:

"Hey! There's a shit load of buttons here!" - The Future

I honestly LIKE buttons.  I wish to hell my iPod just had a “shuffle” or “menu” button on it so I didn’t have to scroll through a dozen different menus to get there.  Video games on the iPhone are a joke, because you cover half the screen up with your ugly fingers in order to do anything.  I think a lot of the apps for the iPhone are nifty (downright brilliant) , but sometimes I just want my phone to be… a phone. I want it to be a phone first and best before it’s anything. And AT&T… it’s far from the best of anything.

I really don’t understand how Apple press releases have become “events” now. Seriously, every time Steve Jobs farts, we get a video of him parading around on stage telling the world what it smelled like, and the internet EATS IT THE HELL UP. We EAT this man’s FARTS.

Ironic tangent: I obviously am not helping to curb this. Thank you.

This tablet thing is another in a line of disappointments from the company, not to mention another product that’s trying to appeal to the button-genocide our culture is going through. I don’t get why we have to do away with buttons. In the video game world, we have the Wii then Project Natal for XBox, and now Sony is getting into the motion control business with their new controller-

Okay, you got to be f***ing kidding me. That’s a goddamn dildo.

As neat as the Wii is, it’s a toy. My arms are no where near as responsive as my fingers and my thumbs are, and it’s not going to change. That’s why controllers had buttons and such in the first place! They work. And the less I think about Natal, the better.

So yeah. Dear Apple: Make me something with buttons again. This button holocaust must end.

Hippos are dangerous animals. This is evidenced in the 1995 documentary, Congo:

I can’t make references to Congo without doing this:

Howdy all!  Today’s comic came kind of late and with a muddy punchline.  I like the idea of a king needing his “papers”, but I couldn’t get a better joke out of it.  Eh, it happens.

I have two rant-like tidbits for you today.  Firstly, I was meandering over the quotes section of my facebook page (no one even checks those sections anymore), and I noticed a quote from Alan Moore I had noted about the nature of comics.  I had totally forgotten I wrote it down, and in a minute, I will share it, but only before I get something out of the way, as the name “Alan Moore” tends to bring a lot of moans from people in the comic crowd as, if you’re going to act like a comic snob and talk about “artsy” comics (but you’re an idiot), Alan Moore is the first name you learn (nothing against Mr. Moore… that’s just the nature of idiot artsy comic fans).

Alan Moore is one of the most divisive voices in comic books.  I know a lot of people who love him, and a lot of people who out-right loath him.

I’m in the middle.

Some of his work is some of my favorite comic work out there (Top Ten is insanely fun, his run on Swamp Thing is the stuff of legend, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is fantastic).

Some of his work is stupidly overrated.  Watchmen is great for what it did for comics, and while many aspects of the book are phenomenal, especially David Gibbons’ art, I don’t think it’s the Holy Bible of comic book like a lot of people think… seriously who read the Tales of the Black Freighter parts of the book?  And the squid ending… while shocking when it first happens, gets sillier every time I read it.  And V for Vendetta bores the tears out of me.

Some of his work is flat-out terrible.  The less you know about Lost Girls, the better off you are as a human being.

But Alan Moore, however you feel about him, is one of the most outspoken voices for the value of the medium of comics.  He’s wickedly intelligent and, especially on the subject of his own artform, deviously brilliant:

“One thing is that with the comics medium, it has been proven—I believe by Pentagon tests in the late ’80s—that comics are actually the best medium for imparting information to somebody in a form that they will retain and remember. That’s not just me saying that, that’s the Pentagon.

I personally feel—and this is just pseudo-scientific hippie bullshit—I feel this might be because the unit of currency of what used to be called our left brain is the word. Our left brain is what goes about speech and rationality. The unit of currency for our right brain, conversely, would be the image, because the right brain is preverbal.

So perhaps it is because of the combination of words and images in a readable form that comics does have this unique power.”

I spent most of my day today (as I spend most of my day everyday now that I’m unemployed) drawing comics.  Either drawing Meaningless here, or DropKick, or one of my other comic book projects.  And today I had finished a page that I am especially proud of, and I was hit with this complete euphoric joy that I couldn’t quite explain.  I really connected to the comic medium in a hippy, tree-hugger kind of way.  And coming across that Alan Moore quote I noted so long ago just hit it all home.

My final bit of ramble today is to draw your attention to this fantastic article I read on Slate today, which covers the history of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.  Not the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but the act that came before it… in 1957.  I know a lot of people upset about the current health care bill.  I know a lot of people (hello family) who hate that it exists at all.  I know a lot of people who hate that it’s watered down and no-where near as revolutionary as they want it to be (hello friends).  I see it how this article portrays it, as a stepping stone to a larger legislative movement.  Legislation moves slowly in our country, and it’s a good thing, as otherwise if we jumped radical change into the system all the time, our government would move with the tide of the media and the mainstream attitudes of the country.  Our laws would change like the opinions of a teenager.  “I love Susie today.  Now I love Mary.  I want to wear death-metal t-shirts!  Now I want to be uber-Christian.”

Moving slowly allows change to develop naturally.  The pieces of the new health care system will be laid out slowly and allowed to grow if they are beneficial or die if they are not.  The Civil Rights movement moved in a surprisingly similar fashion, like this article displays.  I found it to be very interesting.

That’s all!  I know I’ve been kind of serious today.  To help fix that, here’s this:

Despite what “Caruthers” thinks, I did indeed draw this sucker.
Also, amazing news!  I fixed the comments system, so feel free to lambaste me with verbiage.  I DARE YOU.