Idle Minds - News Archive

I demand the right to be educated as to how to choose the lesser of two evils!

Here in America we have the god given right to be educated about our democracy, yet they don't seem to want to prepare us for one. Wanna know why less than half of the population votes? Because they weren't brought up in a democracy, no kids were, schools don't teach kids how to participate in the government, they make all the decisions for the kids and never ask for input, thus making our public schools tyrannies. The people that deal with school every day of their life, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 36 weeks a year, 17 years out of their entire life (more if you're a grad student) have no influence over their educational experience. Wanna know why so few people vote? Because they don't know what the hell to do with a democracy, they grow up being told what to do and when to do it and then we're all handed a democracy and told to participate. America is the land of crazy assed administrators!

Sometimes people ask me who my favorite author is, other times they ask me who the hell I am, still other times they ask if I'd like to go play a game of Shadowfist, a mysterious game in which you have to hang out in the shadows and make a fist, I've never played before but I know they aren't allowed to wear watches for some reason. As for my favorite author, that'd have to be Warren Ellis, comic book writer of such kickass titles as Planetary, Transmetropolitan, The Authority, and now author of the new webcomic, Poppy. How can we ever hope to compete with THAT? I assume we'll be hiding the top 100 banners from now on, for fear that he'd apply. Ooh! On that note, thanks to all that have clicked the banner, in the week that we've been in the Keenspace top 100 we've gone from spot 79 to spot 38, booyes! Wanna help us get higher? No? Well click the banner anyway.

Update on the merchandise, Sam and I are making sure we've got a nice set of crap for you to buy, so far we've got a mousepad, a white t-shirt, and a sweater. We're starting on the gray t-shirt and one of the coffee mugs now, after that we'll be working on the baby tee, girls, once the shop is opened, please buy a baby tee, take a picture, then send it to me.... please? ...... Lisa?

I assume you've all heard the news on Napster by now, the company has been bought and is being bankrolled by BMD records, they're gonna start charging for usage of the Napster servers, the charge is said (not confirmed) to be about 5 bucks a month, which certainly isn't bad, and BMD says that they'll be releasing higher bitrate versions of their signed artist's mp3s. Don't start bitching just yet kiddies, lemme break it down for you a tad more, at the price of about 1 CD single a month, you can download any song you could possibly want which some of them in better quality than ever before, put it this way, if you can afford internet access then you should be able to afford the new charging Napster. But if you don't want to, there's always Scour and Napigator.

A bit of a personal note, I missed the Simpson's Halloween special, yet I don't care, to me the Simpsons has been degrading in quality for the past 3 or so years. It's lost all the subtlty that made me love it in the first placed, I hope to god it gets funny again, because as some of you (read: anyone that's ever showed interest in me when I go off on a rant about Peanuts) I can't stand it when something that sucks gets to hang around just because it's old. I can't stand the fact that Peanuts managed to go into reruns when it so blatantly sucked to anyone under 60 at the time of Shultz's death. Why do the bad comics get to stay? Why is it that Calvin and Hobbes had to end when crap like The Family Circus gets to remain? I suppose it'll be this way until the baby boomers kick off.

Oh yeah! The links! I almost forgot about the links! We all like looking at links! As you can see, I'm on a Turn-A Gundam kick right now, my first DVD arrived a couple days ago, and while I have no idea what they're saying, it's still very cool. Check it out sometime.

Yep, Stig's back, and I'm taking the news update only 25 minutes after arriving back at my house! You wanna know what my problem with Scribble.nu is? It's a public journal... I'll repeat that because it bears repeating, it is a PUBLIC (as in: anyone can see it if they like) DIARY (as in: a book you keep your private thoughts and emotions in). Does that make sense? I certainly don't think so, although Joel's tried to convince me with the whole "You can make entries private" arguement, which makes the situation mildly better, but it's still a bad idea to me, essentially (if you make a post public) it's no longer a journal, it's an E/N site, your personal thoughts and comments for anyone to see. So I'll say this, the day I set up a scribble account is the same day I make my own E/N site, however, I'm not totally against digital journals, just public forums like that. I do actually keep a digital journal, except it's with a freeware program called ActiveDiary, which spits out my journal to a hidden directory and has it's own file format that demands a password upon opening, this way I'm secure in the knowledge that my own personal thoughts and feelings will stay just that, personal. Joel says that I'm afraid to let other people see what I think (or something similar, I didn't really pay attention) but I personally don't give a rat's ass what people think of me or anything about me, my problem with scribble is the restrictions that come with it, you'd have to be a moron to keep anything but random thoughts in a public post, I use my journals to relay my thoughts as well as pen down interesting numbers or names that I found from the day, I'd rather not allow anyone who reads my posts the option of bugging a new friend with calls or something similar. I don't like scribble because of the uncertainty that comes with each post, and that's my main reason.

Above would be a full rendering of 'Manda-chan's amazing art style, which I hope will some day grace the pages of IMEX, it's also been submitted to MegaTokyo as a piece of fanart, though Piro probably hasn't come across it yet.

Yep, v.4.0 is up! I like this one MUCH better than the last, actually adding a bit of structure to the site and getting rid of that ugly, over simplified 3.0 has to be one of the best things I've ever done to the site. Well, that and add a News Archive with all our posts dating back about a month or so. There'll be a bit of tweeking over the next couple days, but it won't be much because I *really* want to finish up this layout.

Yay! Lucky me! Strangers with Candy is in reruns! So what if the series has ended? I still get to watch Jerri Blank learn nothing every week, without that bothersome League of Gentlemen chaser of old. You see, I don't get to watch much TV, from about 10 to 3 is the only time when I can be in the same room with a television, so my view time is considerably less than most everyone else. Generally I can be satisfied with 1 of 4 stations, NBC, Fox, Comedy Central, and Cartoon Network (though I skip on the news broadcasts, I'll stick to the paper thankyouverymuch). Comedy Central keeps me nice and entertained too, some of the comedians on that Comedy Central presents are pretty damn good (I'm talking to you, Wanda Sikes!) While others just end up creeping me out and/or annoying me (I'm talking to you, Steven Lynch!).

Good news for all you IM starved kiddes, for the next 2 weeks IM will run 6, count 'em, 6 days of the week! Why? Because we're finishing up this storyline and we wanna get done by all hallow's eve. Also, other site news, you may notice the little Merchandise link to the side, well, sorry to say we aren't offering anything just yet, though I have a great idea for a Joel shirt. I'd love to make us a black sweater or even better, a blue sweater. But apparently Cafepress only likes to let people have white to ash gray clothing printed. And since we now have a News Archive (in addition to our FORUMS) all the prior posts to this one can be seen there.

I'd love to hear any comments you have about this layout, it fits much better into the 800x600 reso than any previous incarnate of IM, and the colors played out nicely here (pssst... if you haven't noticed, IM's layouts have always been comprised of 2 somber shades of blue and white, and the occasional brain or brain in jar).

Not much to say today my little chickidies, so I'll leave you with a quote, "It hurts!"

Think of Phil Hartman as the Anal Retentive (insert job title here), de-age him about 20 years.... aaaaaannnnnnnnndddddd...... STIG!

I'm not joking either, I spent a couple days doing this layout, it didn't work so I had to compromise, and then it all came full circle, a layout that I wasn't too fond of in the first place (but did because it would be nice for our 800x600 readers) became uber ugly and not at all what I had envisioned, but I have had a new vision, and it is good. Oh, and if you're a dimwit, I just inferred that I'm going to be producing a new IM layout. I hope to god this'll be the last, I don't want to make a habit out of this, mostly because I work. In the grand tradition of keeping a layout a secret so I can lord info over the few readers that care... I'm keeping the layout a secret so I can lord info over the few readers that care...

Sam and I are in the midsts of generating some gift art for our favorite strips out there, most prominent being Penny Arcade, PVP, Real Life, and (if I have my way) Joshbabes. Ooh! The Amazing Manda has also come out of the sands of time and agreed to do our piece of MegaTokyo gift art, (she's the girl that did them pretty pictures at IMEX, which still doesn't have an ETA). So expect our special brand of ooogly to appear on some of your favorite comics soon! Yes! It's all a part of our master plan to something and whatever! If you're a normal person then you quit after seeing the words "master plan" for fear of a stupid rant about how we're going to be taking over the world, a lathe horribly unoriginal interviews on Battlebots! The worst show ever! And I quote!

"So and so was created for total domination, world wide" -Crazy old man in straw hat and hot pink t-shirt.

As you can see, today's strip was created to um... illustrate how much richer I am than the average person, but we rich people are the same as you, you see. We each have our hand maids put our pants on one leg at a time, we each have to clean that annoying smear off of our crystal capped cane every day before we dawn our top hats and monacles to take our daily tour of our factories. We each hit our workers and lock them up in solitary confinment when they steal lumps of our precious coal. So don't take today's strip as me trying to say I'm better than you, after all, just 'cause I'm rich doesn't mean that I've lost touch with the people. I'm just like all of you, only better... NO RICHER! ONLY RICHER!

You know what I'd love to do in the near future? I'd love to get off of Keenspace and become a self contained comic, possibly hosted on the coolest of cool hosting sites, Rydia.net. I'd also love to offer up special merchandise of us for each of you, but I'll be damned if I use Cafepress, they couldn't do the Joel shirt I have planned justice. Speaking of Joel, he has to be my favorite character in Sunday's strip, he just looks so much like, well, Joel...

Update on our domain name: I certainly am going to buy it off of NameZero, but to do so I'm going to have to get to my bank before it closes, and seeing as how I when it is open, this'll be hard. After we buy the domain, don't be surpised if we set up an everyone.net account, I've always wanted to give out e-mail addys and not actually have to set up the pop3s myself.

*coughcough* You know, sometimes I find certain sites totally by accident that end up being totally funny, not news, right? Well check out what I *coughcough* accidentally *coughcough* ran into a couple days ago. BTW, this has to be the best use of jointed wooden models I've ever seen.

MAC USERS! I FEEL YOUR PAIN! Well, not much anymore, though I do occasionally use a mac for my graphic design, but I too know the pains of having to use IRCle as a client, or even worse, Homer *shivers* but that has nothing to do with this paragraph, this paragraph has to do with me finding a kickass katakana font site (for macs) that I'd like to share. Hopefully these fonts have a couple of the characters that the fonts of Gray Graphics were missing.

Well, due to an utter lack of professionalism and ramapant idiocy on the part of Baby Boomers, I have dropped one of my clients, and I don't feel like picking up another one! I love this feeling! I felt so damn good on Friday that I slapped together a Flash pong game (if you want to call it that). It was fun making though, and for every 5 points you score, the ball speeds up. Enjoy!

Last paragraph, I swear, anybody got any dirt on LiteStep? I've played with it a tad before at friend's houses, but I'd like to know a little more if I'm going to sink my money into it (I've got a spare box that I use as a playground for this kind of stuff, and I'm getting tired of Turbo Linux). So please to be posting to the FORUMS because unlike a fansub distro, this is actually legal, remember, post to the FORUMS, and if you don't, I'll post your e-mail to the FORUMS so everyone can benefit from your wisdom...... FORUMS

NO SAM DAY! (Sam's out sick or working or something, so we've thrown together a strip for yas! Hope you like it, with any luck Sam'll be back tomorrow)

Yep, I'm back, thought they managed to get rid of me, didn't you? Stig here reporting another exciting SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! IM strip. Wanna know why I was gone this week? TO BAD! YOU'RE GONNA HEAR IT ANYWAY! Much like the guys over at Megatokyo, I've been overworked. You guys all know about my month long vacation for September, well, see, I forgot something in that time, and that would be that I agreed to take on a job which required me to use Director (amoung other proggies). Now Director was incredibly hard for me to learn (wouldn't know why, I took to Flash pretty easily) and it's always been sort of my bane. It's the program that I never mention at the top of my resume on the fear that someone might actually want me to use it. For those of you who don't know what Director is, head on over to shockwave.com and look around, practically everything you see there was done in Director. For those of you with a bit more multi-media experience, Director is to Flash as a PIII 1GHZ 700megs RAM is to a Commidor 64. A lot of the same principles of Flash apply, but it has a ton of additional features and is capable of much more. My problem with it is the reterming of everything (note to readers: I almost never bother to learn the technical term for something in my work, I just like to do it and let that be it, terming everything I do during work with the sheer volume of things I do during work could make a kitten's head explode, and if you're a decent human being then you don't want that to happen mister!). But I 'spose I'll put some more work into it like I was doing this week, I spent this week doing moderate work for my clients, learning director, and sleeping (which sucks 'cause I only got to see Lisa like 2 hours a night >.<;;) But now I'm back, and oddly enough I feel like diving off a high board today. But not before I bore you with a couple more paragraphs!

HUZZAH! I've got a new headset/microphone! (well, Lisa bought if for me 'cause my old one sucked). Labtec you guys, LABTEC! Have a look, sweet, no? Plus when I pull down the little mic I look like a Gundam Pilot!

Ah, to pilot a Gundam, my dream since I laid eyes on the series back in '85 (though it was a bit hazy then, me being 5 and everything) So you can imagine my excitement (though sullened because I missed Joel, Sam, and Panda-chan) when I found a booth of guys making their own mech and looking for a test pilot at AnimeEXPO this year! I damn-near wet myself! Have a look at my new best buddies' site. The guys were pretty cool, and they didn't lie to me saying that the initial mech I was up for piloting (yes I asked to be in it!) would most likely handle like a tractor. I've been quiet about it because, quite literally, I don't know what the hell's going on. But if I get to pilot a mech, then I can die happy (herm... maybe I'll just ask that guy who built a Zeta Gundam replica, if I can use his).

Heh, Sam's got me there, I have actually been planning a couple changes to the site. Most are purly functional and will only make your experience more enjoyable. Example: On 800x600 the site scrolls horizontally, I'm trying to fix that inbetween work but it's taking a little while. Also, I'm trying to get as much of the site automated as possible (why you ask? So if I'm not here the site can do everything on it's own!) Right now I have a bigger role in the site than I need to have, Our frontpage is almost totally automated (since we signed up for the Blogger service, which is what's making this news post available right now, but something I'd like to change would be the link buttons you see (they change every week!) If I can get these automated, then if one of the cast finds a cool link they can just upload it and it'll be worked into the rotation (this is farely simple, I'm told, but I'm by no means a coder so I'll probably ask Joel to do it). If it works out to what I'm planning, whenever you refresh (or reload for you Netscape patrons) you'll get a new set of IM cast favorites!

Well, I'm off to eat, what's up with you guys? You don't like our forums or something? I'm hurt!

UltraFlash 3000 - I've been sitting on UF3K for a while, it was a pretty cool flash site with a cute little animated style, but then came the redesign, and now it kicks too much ass not to share! I love seeing Flash developers incorporate some user preferences into their site, which is exactly what UF3k has done (allowing users to specify background music, which is easy enough, but also allowing them to specify the layout color! Which is incredibly sweet and different! I prefer a dark gray). Make sure you check it out, Supermonk along is enough to make this site worthwhile.

10/7/2000

I am vengence, I am the night, I am not, however, Darkwing Duck!

There's a part of me that wants to be Batman, a part of me that wants to be Kevin Bacon in Footloose, and a part of me that wants a cup of Daiquiri Ice from Baskin Robbins right now. The first is the most prominent mind you. Why is Batman so cool? Because he's not some kind of dumbass who jumped into a pile of beakers filled with sparkly liquids to gain power, hell no! He's a big scary man that's trained himself to be a big scary man who can kick ass. I'd like to be a big scary man that can kick ass. Now, I do actually have a batarang, that's why this strip exists, I have two actually, a classic type and a functional type. The classic type looks like the batarang from the early 90s cartoon, and the functional type actually works do to design changes. Just another reason why I am truly qualified to be Batman, in this world of Incredible half naked green men, and pretty Latinas with *HUGE* lips, we need a big scary guy that can kick ass.

Heh, wanna know something funny? The ancient layout for Idle Minds (read: El Crappo!) still exists. Originally we intended to host the comic on my Hispeed account, using various perl and php scrppts to get the automization, but I hate coding and Keenspace does it for us. Anyway, the point of this paragraph, the ancient layout still exists on my hispeed account from when we were testing it out, if you'd like to see it, click here (warning, shield your eyes with some kind of protective wear, this page emits fugly like... well... fugly.com). An update on our domain, we know that the frame doesn't disappear on some browsers, this is because it's run through Namezero right now because we're all cheap bastards. I should've bought the domain from Namezero over a month ago, but it didn't happen for some reason.

Remember that uber secret thingie we spoke about a while back? IMEX? Well, it stands for Idle Minds EX, our own little manga strip spinoff (essentially our answer to Megatokyo). Have a look at the site here the comic strip itself hasn't launched yet, our artist (Panda-chan) has been pre-occupied with stuff that she actually needs to do. The sketch gallery is up as well as some other parts of the site that I don't think I can remember right now. Don't I look hella cool? Don't hassle Panda-chan about it though, 'else the mighty foot of Joel shall find it's way up your ass! Upon arriving up your ass the tip of Joel's shoe shall break off, becoming firmly wedged up your pooper and totally inoperable if done correctly, do you really want to risk that?

*zzzzzzt* hey kids, Sam here, breaking in to Stig's regularly scheduled news update for a little tidbit of information. As you read this, I'm out editing a project for money, because money is good. This is one of the reasons I'm not writing said update from start to finish. I'm essentially speaking to you from the past! Well, around 2pm Saturday, at least. Anyway, you'll notice that this sunday's strip has something to do with last sunday's strip. And it's not coincidental! Sundays will have roughly something to do with each other, and will contain their own storylines. They're essentially in the same timeline as the weekday strips, but showcase the other characters. Enter: The Batman Saga. However short it may be *smiles weakly*.
In other news, I went to check up on the The Fine Print page over there on MP3 dot com and, lo and behold, they've got a new track up! Needless to say, this just made my freakin' day along with Joel's. So much so that I, finally, decided to trade money for their CD, $484.00, and have my own damn copy. While in the spending frenzy that was buying that, I paddled over to LewisBlack dot net and purchased his comedy CD as well. Mr. Black is one of my favorite comedians out there, and if you haven't seen him on The Daily Show, either of his two Comedy Central Presents comedy shows, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien or any other late night talk show, then you, sir or madam, are a horribly deprived human being. If you can even CALL yourself a human being.
On that note, I'll send you back to Stig and his update. Hopefully my friend Jason and I will finish editing this in time to check out the update!

GO WATCH RUN LOLA RUN NOW!!! I'm not asking you to, I'm TELLING you to! It's easily the coolest movie I've ever seen, right up there with Swingers, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Go, and even the uber cool Surf Ninjas! Teaming of a great story, a girl who can scream so loud that it shatters glass, and a debt to a mean looking gangster guy make this movie yummy (for lack of a better term). AND LOLA IS HOT!!!! *prepares to lose his nuts by the hand of girlfriend Lisa*

You know, updating the news here at IM is a very large responsibility, only bestowed to me so that I may abuse it and link you to friends sites, so that's what I'm gonna do smarty man! A lot of people have asked me whether I'm a Republican or Democrat (note that I didn't say, "since we opened the site") and I'm none of the above, I, like my buddy Isa, am an Otakan! originally I supported Pikachu, but since that whole scandal with the cross dressing and boozing he's lost my support. So this coming November, vote Goku! Because a moron in office can't possibly do any harm! (we hope). Also the site's being redesigned and it looks damn cool, great work Isa!

GRAAAAH! WHO IS THE DIGIMON EMPORER? I miss one episode and now I can't find a single person in all my hangouts that'll answer me! I think it's Joe, 'cept he looks all weird and stuff.... Wai! I had Lisa translate the title to Candidate for a Goddess and came up with Megami Kouhousei, which I plugged into a search engine and found this little gem. Read up on the series, it's hella cool, and pretty new apparently. Also, a very new anime that I couldn't recommend more highly, Love Hina (and according to Molokidan, Hina either means doll or country) has amazed me from episode 1, I'd have to say that Motoko's my favorite right now, with Kitsune in a close second. Both of these are available in DVD form, and I recommend you sink some cash into both, you won't regret it (or at least shop around the internet for some encodes.. just see them). Well, by the reflections on the glossy paper on which I sketched a couple Hitmonlee and Blastoise about 2 years ago, I can barely see my wall clock, meaning I'm leaving now and trying to justify it.... Bai now!

-Stig

**Image no longer available***

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Nihongo: Japanese Language - Props go out to Molokidan for finding this little gem, an English to Japanese, Japanese to English dictionary! I could spend hours playing with this thing!

Meet Meredith everybody, more commonly referred to as Mer (I don't know how she says it but I usually say "Mur" like that stuff those wise guys gave that baby king). Well, this is Stig, writing an update on Thursday evening again, I slept through most of the day so I don't have much of an opinion on the VP debates (having not seen them and all), but Sam swears that (and I quote), "Joseph Lieberman sounds exactly, EXACTLY like Dr. Zoidburg from futurama. I can't help but picture him with lobster claws and a white labcoat." I personally think he sounds like the dad from Alf, but that's just me.

I... I HATE SHAKESPEARE, there, I said it. Even though Sam'll probably threaten to kill me after he reads this and even though Lisa likes him too, I couldn't hate the man more. No, it's not for his use of Middle English (that's right, it's called Middle English, Old English sounds like German, 'cept sloppier), it's for his overall style. It's another personal opinion, but it's not as if I hate all authors, just Shakespeare and several others. I do like numerous other authors though, Poe topping that list. It's almost as if I've been conditioned to hate Shakespeare, in highschool I had a sweet old lady for an English teacher, ordinarily she was great but when we got into Shakespeare she acted as if it was the most enlightening thing we could ever read, team that with pointless discussions on every damn act in every damn scene and you get a young boy with oodles of supressed rage all directed towards Shakespeare. So here's to you California school system, for making me hate one of the "greatest" writers of our time!

New update on the orders that just don't want to arrive! My Swords-online order finally arrived, however after numerous calls and e-mails, Animetrix just doesn't seem to want to give me my damn Ryo-Ohki plushie! I made this order over 3 months ago now, and here's the excuse the lady on the phone gave me, "Oh, we don't get that in until next week, we'll call you before we ship it." and that was roughly 3 weeks ago today. So for reference, Swords-online can take some time but they will get you what you paid for, but Animetrix has little if no intention on ever delivering your order.

A couple people messaged me recently asking for some information sites on Cadidate for a Goddess, that fairly new anime that I've been flappin' my gums about, well, sorry to say that a browse of every search engine and meta search engine I know of has found nothing. In fact, all I've found are numerous links to Aa! Megumi-sama, which is a kickass series in it's own right (I've been playing catch up on the manga). I'm not going to give you any spoilers here, because I know that several people would be pissed at me if I did. I might post a sub page with a decent description later though.

You know what I'd love to see more of in coming months? I'd love to see more monthly manga anthologies, such as Super Manga Blast, Animerica, and Animerica Extra. But before that I want Viz to retract their resolution to start editing original manga for content, last thing I want is a dub version of DBZ on paper. But the manga anthologies are truly useful to beginning anime fans, by providing a wide range of flavors for a price tag of about 4 to 5 bucks a kid can find out whether they like Tenchi Muyo!, Aa! Megumi-sama, Steam Detectives, Video Girl Ai, Fushigi Yuugi, or 3x3 Eyes. And then the kid can follow up on the series of his choice. Or he can just continue to follow the manga archive, whatever.

Whoo! Guess what I found out today? Jimmy Fallon, SNL newbie and all around kickass comedian, will be half of the team that's replacing Colin Quinn for Weekend Update in this upcoming season of SNL, they're going back to the co-host routine with this season, Jimmy's partner will be a female writer whose name escapes me right now. Good luck Jimmy, I know you'll be better than Colin (but Colin was funny, just not in the update kind of way).

How're you guys liking the IM Javachat? I've yet to hear a single word on it, the default channel is Keenspot's chat, that's where you'll find all your favorite creators, from Greg Dean to the occasional appearence of Eight. I hear Sam and Joel have been hanging around there too as of late, I never took to the channel so don't expect me to be a regular or anything. Eight's even provided you with a list of nicks explaining what they've done and who they really are! I hope you guys like it.

Well, we've switched from color to black and white, we've also burned off our strip inventory, so all the future strips you see will be in the new, better panel format we've been using for Sundays ('cept without the logo on top). I've started work again and oddly enough, I'm not as happy with it as I usually am, I think that's 'cause I'm taking it light right now, I'll accept a couple more offers tomorrow, and churn out some new "Stuff" for you lucky readers, suggest something within reason and I'll probably make it, how'd you guys like to have an IM screensaver?

Me am no happy, I'm caught up with Love Hina and then Joel breaks the news that the writers don't know how to end it! Apparently the last 2 episodes aren't due until April or so. Grrr.... must... find... more.. Candidate for a Goddess. I guess I'll manage, my buddy Setzer (SETZAAA!) and I are slowly ebbing away at Gundam: The 08th MS Team and it's very good so far. I'd kill for some Zeta though.

A couple readers have reported that the IM site crashes their browsers, Sam thinks he's pinpointed it with the little Keenspace dropdown menu you see above, since that's a Keenspace tag there's nothing I can personally do about it, but we've brought the problem to Keenspace's uber admin guy, Nate, and generally he fixes these things very fast (I swear, his turn around is like 1 or 2 days!). Until then bear with us. Also, a couple readers asked me why I took down the JeffK banner, well in interest of load time whenever we get a new link of the week, we'll be replacing one of the older banners, thus you're served up nice new banners every week! If you like the old ones, bookmark now, 'cause you never know which'll be the first to go (pssst... next week's will probably be the link to Newgrounds).

Sam told me something rather interesting yesterday, after hanging around a bit in #webcomics on DALnet (Keenspot's chat) he says that the general opinion of PVP artist/writer Scott Kurtz is pretty low. This actually suprised me, Tycho Brahe speaks rather highly of him, as does Greg Dean so you can imagine my shock when I hear (third handed so I won't quote anybody) that a lot of Keenspace authors find him to be a bit conceited and coarse, now I'm not going to deny or confirm this, I just thought it was interesting, he comes across as such a nice everyman in his news updates and on the audio show. I hear he even had dinner with a couple of his fans (one of them being Megatokyo's Largo). Hell, maybe the old Keenspacers are pulling the new guys'/girls' collective leg.

While looking around for something to host that mp3 I linked in my sig yesterday (my Hispeed account doesn't allow them and I'm under the impression that Keenspace would frown on it too.) I stumbled across a host that didn't look too bad, esmartstart.com, they're unknowingly hosting my copy of the Neon Genesis Evangelion full length theme song, and so far there haven't been any snags. Just thought I'd share, maybe you've got a fanpage you're shopping around or something.

Heya, hope you had a good weekend. Mine's been so so. You may notice a startling simularity between the panels in this strip and that of the "Write Your Own Damn Punchline" contest panels. Well there's a bit of a story behind that, essentially Sam and I babble about the strips while the others do as they please, if neither of us can agree on a joke then we get Joel. The contest strip came from a rare occurance when none of us could agree on a bit of funny! Thus we made a contest. Today's strip also reveals a deep truth about myself, I'm not sure how Sam knew this, but I do want to be a detective and in a lot of cases, a hero. I even own that very Batman shirt you see me in on the stip, heck, I look almost exactly like my strip counterpart, 'cept for the hair and the fact that I rarely wear khaki pants (I go for Levi's Silvertabs). So props to you Sam, for alienating me by pinpointing one of my deepest fantasies! (just kidding!)

I'm not a big TV watcher, it's just not something I do, but when I do flip on the TV I generally watch 1 of 5 channels: Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, NBC, Fox, or CNN. And while I can say that I'm totally satisfied with the programming on NBC and CNN, there's something terribly wrong with the other 3, and those are as follows: (no, I won't link you to any of them)

I used to LOVE reading the free Impromanga titles online, but then the site mysteriously went away... well.... I FOUND IT AGAIN! The site switched domains on me and is relaunching on October 20th., have a look at the preview, my favorite title had to be Mecha College, but that's just because I'm a mech boy. Mech boy, for those of you "not in the know" is a term made up by me as I'm writing this to describe an anime fan that enjoys anime using mecha, perfect examples of this (and favorites of mine) are Neon Genesis Evangelion (themesong linked in my sig!), Gundam: The 08th MS Team, Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, and Candidate for a Goddess. EVA and CfaG are my favs as of this update, though I'm sure there will be others. Also, as long as I'm recommending anime... LOVE HINA! Joel and I are total episode whores when it comes to this series, I've got 24 of the 26 eps (with the last DVD preordered!) and I must say, it's very good. Sort of like Tenchi Muyo 'cept without all the outrages Sci-Fi and girls who don't like being sexually harrassed "by accident".

Thanks for all the distros you sent, Lisa thanks you too, she's in some kind of anime class at college right now and her professor needed some subs. A couple of them looked promising too! I won't link you here, but if you'd like the urls just email me.

Ooh! Almost forgot! As long as I'm voicing my love of Mechs, why not link you to a couple of my favorite sites? Gundam Project, has long been a favorite of mine, all original artwork and updated every week, he has to! He's contractually obligated! Also, Gundam.com, while a bit sour in terms of eye candy, has a gundam database encompassing most if not all of every gundam series, movie, or OAV ever made! The Mecha Domain has great & rare lineart and images from random Gundam serieses, have a look when you can. But my favorite site by far has to be The Neon Genesis Evangelion portal , this site has high levels of EVA info, everything you didn't pick up during the watching of the series can be picked up here, the definition of Instrumentality, the names of the angels, how many EVAs were completed, what they all looked like (unit 4 looks so cool!), essentially everything you'll ever need to know about Evangelion.

As Panda-chan would say *clears throat* @_@ KAWAII!!!!!, Adromeda's Galaxy: SD Image Collection

I'm somewhat sad, tomorrow is the end of one of my favorite, zanily funny Comedy Central original serieses, Strangers with Candy was easily one of the weirdest, silly funny shows on TV. The idiocy and constant hypocracy within the series is what made it funny! And I'll miss Jerri Blank, as soon as they end the reruns...

Like Card Captor Sakura? Me too, though I've only seen episode 1 and refuse to watch the dub (it started on episode 8 for cryin' out loud!), but I absolutely loved this site, The Complete Clow full images of all the clow cards, from the official set released by uber Japanese artist girls CLAMP (responsible for X/1999, the movie that's 4/5s good!). Take a look if you want, if you happen to be an anime girl with considerable web design skill (like most of the ones I've met) then you could use these CLEAN, HIGH RESOLUTION images for one of those kickass layouts you do, Amanda? Wanna try?

Wai! I got Photoshop 6.0! So far I must say, I love the new layout. Minor changes to the old version also help this run faster and NOT crash on lower end systems, for example: The type tool no longer has that annoying dialogue box pop-up, instead you write your text directly on the image (Like in Image Ready). No new default filters in PS6, though there are a couple new layer effects, some of which are very cool, I'll be playing with this thing for hours!

-Stig ( ~~zankokuna tenshi no youni shounen yo shinwa ni nare~~ )

Gray Graphics - Granted, most of this site is in Japanese, but I dare you to find a better katakana font site (psst... that's Japanese writing). Now Lisa tells me that at least one of the fonts is missing a couple kana (symbols) so that's a downer, but if you know how to use them then I suggest you try them out. A work of advice to the American fontaholics, the fonts aren't categorized by letter, example: typing in "a" will not give you the Japanese character that has that sound, so you'll need a buddy or in my case, a girlfriend who can translate these for you. Also if you aren't into Japanese fonts, Gray Graphics offers a couple pretty sets for the English alphabet too! I like Pollyanna, so much so that I used it on my "No, I'm never adding content" homepage, Cadmea.net.

Hoy! Welcome to Monday's strip! Wanna know why all of IM loves Iron Chef? Simple, the melodrama. Nowhere else can you find an announcer treat peeling apples as such an amazing feat. He makes it sound as if one of the Chefs just performed a life saving operation or something. Also, the enhanced sound effects and overly dramatic music make the entire show simply laughable. Unlike most of the shows on the TV food network, I never tune into Iron Chef with a notepad & pencil expecting to learn something (well, to be honest, I never tune into the TV food network intending to learn something, but like "This Old House" I can often be hypnotized into enjoying learning how to make something utterly useless or totally unpalletable.)

Okay, now's the part of the post where I comment on my views on different economical systems. Yay! Now, I am not a Communist, or a Socialist for that matter (though I do still believe that the latter is a better idea than Capitolism). The very fact of the matter is that I, Stig, am a-economical system. Meaning I don't actively support or smudge one over the other, not because I don't care, but because I don't like our options. I'm not going to support any system in a country where there are more types of Coke than there are freakin' systems! That's my piece, and I'd be very appreciative if you'd all stop trying to convince me otherwise, they're my views, not yours, and I'm not trying to challenge your views in any sense of the term,

Now, onto lighter terms. As some of you know, I work as a freelance graphic artist, and I am sad today, because this Monday marks the beginning of the end of my month long vacaiton. Why did I get a month? Because I'm a freelance graphic artist who doesn't have much trouble finding work. Also Lisa wanted me to have a break, the downside is that whenever I take a break I get sick, and I've been sick twice thus far (I also got a slash in my arm, but that's a whole budo thing that we won't go into, psst... it was deep enough to require stitches). With Saturday I go back to work (meaning I take on the 5 projects that have been queued with me) and thus I'll be, wait, well I guess I'll be here as much as I usually am! Sweet!

I'm not sure if online companies hate me lately or what, but let me give you a little idea about my situation. My girlfriend (Lisa, she's (-)07777!!!!!1111) has a birthday in July, at the top of July I found this out (we weren't dating at the time) so I bought her a gift from Animetrix.com and not only was the confirmation extremely slow (her birthday had been over for a month before I got it) but now, at the end of September, I still haven't recieved her damn Ryo-ohki plushie! Bastards! Also, I'm not sure why, but my second Swords Online order hasn't come through yet either, despite the fact that my first order with them arrived promptly. Now I assume my Animetrix order is all but lost, but why Swords Online, why? Also I spent roughly 300 bucks on my second order from them, so it had better get here damn soon.

Currently I'm looking for new and good anime fansub distros, so if you'd all be so kind, please to be clicking the e-mail link on my sig at the bottom of this post. Please don't post them in the forums, I'd much rather they stay open so I can actually order from them.

-Stig (who loves the majority of you, except for that guy. Bike shorts can never, NEVER look good fella!)

9/22/2000

Hoy! Two updates in a row! I rock! Well, anyway, I have a valid reason for doing today's update, I drew the comic. I tried my best to match Sam's style but I ended up doing most of it in Photoshop. If you'd like to have a look at some of the stuff I've drawn that doesn't suck, check out Marvel.com's black and white image archive, I did a Nightcrawler pic in there. Now, this strip is another testimate to how Sam and I CAN NOT cook, or apparently taste. Well, as babelfish tells me the Spanish say, "Ésa es la tira del día!" though from experience I can assume that this is horribly, horribly wrong. Now, onto more crap about me to take up space and thus make this update look a bit more impressive.

***Image no longer available***

What you just saw was my driver's license photo, taken a year ago last August. Scary, ne? I could explain why I look like that (pssst, that's not how I usually wear my hair! Please don't hate me smarty popular reader!), but I probably won't.

Now, as a Danish/American, I was exposed to a lot of sucky TV when I was a child (as is a customary Danish upbringing), and my one salvation from said suckiness was the muppets (and at times DJ Cat). So I was freakishly suprised when I found this site, easily one of the funniest things I've seen since the JeffK "Usar Feinddly!!!!11" Flash toon. Click NOW!

Links I'm loving right now:

- Javascript Games
- The Encyclopedia Mythica
- SNL Sketches
- The Serial Experiments: Lain Root

You know, them boys over at Penny Arcade? Thems good people, Ias like talking wit' dem...... Wow, without Communism I don't have much to say... I'm just going to quit now, rather than bore you with crap about me that you couldn't possibly care about, bai now! :).

-Stig (I walk the pathes of the Fozzy and the Gonzo.... and in some cases the Swedish Chef)