Since Bitstrips has a cyclops available for use, I couldn’t resist joking about the one thing I know about a cyclops. There’s lots to play with at the Bitstrips site. I’m going to post a cartoon with that site’s help every Thursday the rest of this month, and maybe even further.
Rush Limbaugh gets cartoond for calling a female university student a slut and a prostitute. So why didn’t I put any specifics about Rush in the cartoon? Well you see I have this feeling about Rush. This cartoon remains general so I can repost it as easily as Rush can say something stupid.
I hate novels about writing.
I hate songs about music.
I hate movies or television about Hollywood.
I hate art that asks “what is art?”
The first three of these were developed by me as a simple member of the audience for these art forms. I don’t want in jokes when I don’t have a hope of knowing all that the in crowd knows. All three of these are fiction anyway and if I want more, I’d rather hear the more honest appraisal of non fiction.
The “what is art?” thing is something I heard in defence of modern and abstract art. I once heard a critic say that this modern art dares to ask the question “what is art?” My opinion? That’s a stupid, navel gazing thing to ask, as with the other arts, I’d prefer my art to be about something. Since we’ve been pummelled with “what is art?” pieces for over a century, is it too much to ask that artists look elsewhere?
Everyone knows I loved Seinfeld, but in that long run they had those stinkers with the television show about “nothing”.
Paul McCartney, I don’t want to hear your comments about silly love songs. Does anyone remember the band M anymore and their Pop Music?
If I see one more writer obsess about the blank page in a novel, I will read no more books by that author.
There are two possible remedies to these things. The artist can take journalistic curiosity and apply it beyond their own narrow field. Ask questions, conduct interviews and above all research. I’m sure some of the best art has been developed this way. If the statue David had laughable anatomy, wouldn’t we think of it as being quaint and not at all representative of the Renaissance? The quest for perfect anatomy is one of the hallmarks of Renaissance artists.
The second remedy is to be a bit of a polymath. Look what John Grisham does by knowing law and the craft of writing. My favourite two authors of science fiction are Isaac Asimov and Larry Niven. One had training as a chemist and the other as a mathematician.
Most authors don’t reach their stride till their thirties. I suspect the majority of them need training in another field to become interesting. The journalistic method can be used if you have your eye on the earlier, in your twenties, success. I demand this branching out and I know I’m not alone in my opinions.
So I take some pride in my sister, Laurel L. Russwurm, and her 1st novel, Inconstant Moon. I personally know that she used the journalistic curiosity thing in writing this book. Also I know she is skilled in more than one area of knowledge as evidenced by the troop of university students taking disparate majors. Laurel already serialized the book and now it is available as an ebook at the link. It is a crime thriller. I take pride in that, too, as I’ve always liked thrillers more than horror stories.
So be a good artist and be a polymath. If no one else, then I will like you better. But usually if there’s one in a whole society, there are others. I just heard there are two girls named Unique in Alberta.
Again, try bitstrips.com . This cyclops is close enough to a generic alien for my tastes.
For many years western Canada has complained about being out of the loop when it comes to national politics. Formerly the best their politicians could do was win an election by banding up with Quebec (see the Mulroney government). But for the longest time it seemed that Ontario was the area of Canada that decided elections.
Not so, this time. The west has been growing with population and combined with more rural Ontario ridings, last year Stephen Harper managed to win a majority with a definite western bent. It now looks like the west is the power of the country.
As an Ontarian this has taken quite a bit of getting used to. It is only now that I see the country in a more western light.
First of all Alberta is by far the most loyal province of the sitting government. Harper’s insistence on getting the Keystone XL pipeline (which would go to the US) done or maybe a pipeline to BC (to ship oil to China) seems to be his priority. Might I suggest a third option? Perhaps he could build the pipeline to have not part of the country like northern Ontario and have Canadians doing the value added jobs of refining and processing here. Then we could ship finished product to the US or elsewhere. If only Ontario voted in a bloc enough to remind Harper that he is the prime minister of the rest of the country, too.
Indeed, now that there is a western centrism in Canadian politics I think Ontario should reposition itself. Thunder Bay, the port that links the west to the Atlantic via the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway should become more important, shipping grain and potash and oil products and minerals from the west to Europe and other markets. In fact, Thunder Bay is so important to western Canada that maybe Ontario could make it the new capital.
And the name Ontario chose for itself was that of the first great lake you would encounter from approaching from the east. Now the approach from the west is more important so the first lake you encounter is Lake Superior. Perhaps Ontario should change its name to Superior. I like that. I can say that I come from the province of Superior.
Of course if things digress like some think it might, Superior might become a have not province. It’s hard to coax other provinces, however big and western their hearts might be, to give transfer payments to a province whose name belittles you. Ah well. So it might not last.
Maybe we could split the difference and say that we’re the Erie province. Maybe we could all become goth. I know the youngins might like this what with the recent successes of vampires and werewolves.
Still, as long as I live in Ontario, it will always be the province Superior to me.
I’m besieged by so many comic strip ideas that every 8 months I come up with a Bitstrips cartoon. This time I said to myself I would only publish if they have an easy to use dog. They did. At my accelerated pace of learning, by 2212, I ought to have a good idea of what all Bitstrips can do. Assuming they don’t keep adding features.
It’s a good site. Go play around at the link.
^That title makes sense if you realize that the state of Michigan is “the mitt”. Look below to see my drawing of Michigan. The lower, bigger, more populous part of Michigan looks like a mitt, hence the name for the whole state. More completely it might be call the mitt and the sideways icicle.
So the title explained is: Michigan elects Mitt Romney in the Republican primary, after Romney dissed Michigan a couple years ago by voting for no bailout of the auto industry, and Romney left Michigan many years ago but it is his home state.
This site is sometimes known for its geographical humour. But I don’t have nearly as many jokes about place names as I had for the southwestern Ontario elephant. Probably because I don’t live in Michigan. However I can say that Detroit is the muscle of the opposable thumb and thus very important. Port Huron and Flint are the thumb knuckle and thus flexible. Kalamazoo is the wrist – I’ll leave it to Michiganers to say whether that’s limp wristed or not. But most importantly, Cadillac is on the fingers, at about the ring finger, at about the spot where you would put a wedding ring. That’s right Michigan is just a symobole that some people want a Cadillac instead of a wedding ring.
And the mitt and the icicle is a good symbol for the winter, but what about the caving mitt and the sideways stalactite for the summer? And once global warming completely takes hold we can call Michigan the oven mitt and the weird fish stick.
I’m writing this article about obtainium, poor sister of the more famous unobtainium from the movie Avatar. We heard so very much about unobtainium from that movie. How it was worth raping a planet for. How beautiful the planet was because of the unobtainium. And in between the unobtainium hype there might have been a lesson about conservation.
The name of obtainium suggests that it is a metal. Indeed, I think it is the secret metal in the pennies of Canada and the U.S. For a number of years it has been true that pennies made from copper cost more to produce than their face value. So, it is my studied guess that Canada and the U.S. have replaced most of that copper with the ubiquitous and cheap obtainium. So those jars of pennies that everyone in North America has, just in case they ever need to cash them in, are mainly obtainium. Indeed, the natural unit of measure for obtainium is the ‘jar’.
Like other minerals, obtainium has its effects on health. With trace amounts of it being most places in the environment, most humans are affected by it. Indeed there is a direct correlation between obtainium being in the body and young humans being able to succeed at attending Jr. Kindergarten. That’s how important this mineral is.
Ants are also known to contain high amounts of obtainium. Indeed everywhere on earth, without permafrost, there are obtainium fuelled ant colonies. As a human, you might think that humans are the most plentiful creature on earth. This is not the case. There are far more ants than humans. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the mass of all ants on earth exceeded the mass of all humans.
Some obtainium is needed and used every time a tax is charged. And the fatalists have noticed that obtainium exposure can lead to death by old age.
There are also specific forms of obtainium. For instance, Justin Bieber is afflicted by a kind that causes crushes in young girls. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are afflicted by a type of obtainium that attracts paparazzi.
A certain type of obtainium exists only in town centres and causes concrete jungles. Lack of exposure to this type of obtainium can cause extreme hickism.
But by far obtainium’s most common form is as dirt. You can temporarily rid yourself of obtainium, but that sets in motion its innate commonality and once again it appears in a few days. Rumour has it that only unobtainium can be used to make obtainium dirt vanish forever. I say lets rape that planet in Avatar. Conservation shmonservation.
And speaking of dirt, with Avatar’s huge money grossing ways, expect Avatar sequels to be as common as dirt in the very near future.
[Postscript: I didn’t realize the word unobtainium was used in other arenas than Avatar while writing this piece. As well, the word obtainium has the definition of being reused material used to make sculpture or mixed media. Since I was unaware of these definitions at the time, the article is what it is.]
Cats seem to lord it over anything smaller than themselves. They kill mice, eat flies and even kill rats and rabbits. Cats are tough for their size. This seems to be true all the way up to the big cats.
So you find a toy that moves on its own, a wind up toy, and you think its perfect for the cat. It’s smaller than the cat so there’s no chance that the toy should scare the cat.
You finally get the toy home and in the same room as your cat. You wind up the toy and let it go. And off goes your cat. In the opposite direction. Your tough feline is terrified of this little thing that moves.
Fine. Years later you find an even smaller and even quieter wind up toy that is soft and furry and looks like a mouse. This time it will be different you think.
You get the toy and your cat in the same room again. You wind up the toy and your cat is off again. Again in the opposite direction. Your feline is a big chicken.
As near as I can tell all cats run away from all wind up toys. I’ve known different owners to have the same problem with wind up toys.
Maybe wind up toys sound too much like hissing or growling. Or maybe they sound like a cat’s mortal enemy – the vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaners and wind up toys both sound like white noise to me, something that is calming in humans (at low volumes). We must be fundamentally wired differently for sound.
My new black cat, Bast, needed toys so I bought her a mouse with feathers that is on a spring attached to a suction cup. I attached the toy so the suction cup was on my fridge door and the spring and mouse stuck straight out sideways.
I’d envisioned Bast batting away at the mouse with the toy going side to side or up and down or even in a circular motion. Well Bast was attracted to the toy just as I hoped. It’s just that she went for the suction cup.
How dare you defy gravity said my cat the engineer. I must chew at the suction cup till I find its gravity defying trick. It took about a minute for Bast to get it off the fridge. I must have suction cupped it about twenty times to the fridge – always with the same result. Bast would chew at the suction cup till it came off and lay on the floor.
The last time, she must have chewed at the suction cup as the toy lay on the floor. There is a gouge bitten out of the suction cup and now it won’t work anymore. I hope you had fun making garbage, Bast.
From my experience the toys that cats like the most have a bit of catnip on them. Perhaps if the mouse part had catnip, Bast would have played with that end and would still be enjoying her toy. Even if catnip toys aren’t that interesting to cats, they’ll at least attempt to play with the toy.
Now I’ve got a great idea. I’ll put catnip on a windup toy…
Spam So Wrong It’s Ironic
The most annoying part about blogging is dealing with all the spam I get as comments. I sift through more than 100 spam comments every day. Still, it is my belief that spam wants to be caught and not distributed. There is usually at least one telltale sign per spam that lets you know you are doing the world a service by not allowing it on the web.
And some spam makes me laugh. Because it has done such a poor job of getting past your radar it is obviously the opposite of true and thus ironic. Below are 6 spams I caught in just 3 days that were this kind of ironic.
The first one is ironic because my about page is just two pictures of me. There is no paragraph and there is no article.
The second spam is ironic because it refers to other comments of this article. The 0 below the title “Obese and Wonderful” is the total number of comments that appears with that post.
The 3rd spam wants pics with my article. The article is 5 political cartoons and their explanation.
The 4th spam wants a follow up post. There is a follow up post to “The Horny Shower Curtain”. It is “My Shower Curtain is a Slut”. If the spammer had only read a handful of the comments they would know this.
The 5th spammer talks about video for a post that doesn’t even link to video.
And the 6th spam is from someone named Gabriella saying hi to me as a family member. I’ve never met anyone named Gabriella and if you were some distant relative, why not say how we are related? Instead, I just deleted this spam.
I’ve made it my golden rule as spam detector that real comments will mention something specific in my post. Something that triggered the comment. Notice that none of these spams does.
And I humbly apologize if I’ve gotten you to read some spam.