Superpower: Sun Shielding

Posted on 17 August 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I made myself a deal when I thought of this cartoon. I knew I was going to publish it for today but I didn’t know the how of it. I said if there is an easy to use backward baseball cap in Bitstrips I would use the service. If you don’t know, Bitstrips is a service that non artists or non conventional artists can use to make comic strips. There are character and strip generators that are very versatile. So if you’re funny and lacking an artist or serious and like graphic art for your stories, you might be interested in Bitstrips.

 

Of course, Bitstrips is competent enough to have that backward pointing baseball cap so today’s strip is courtesy of them and me.

 

I published two strips last year called the IOC Files, the full story being here. I let down my country by not publishing them till after the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. If you live in the UK and don’t want to let down your country in 2012 you can use the same strips since they fall under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence.

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Zombie Jobless Headed Toward Me!

Posted on 13 August 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Here are the straight goods as revealed to me by this article.

Windsor, the Canadian city across the river from Detroit, has for awhile held the title of worst economy in Canada. But just recently the title came to London, Ontario. This might not be alarming to you but I live in the next large urban area up the 401 (for the uninitiated, southern Ontario’s Interstate highway). Metro Kitchener might be next so I carefully needed to check the data.

Here is what I think happened.

Detroit’s economy tanked some years ago (although it just might be recovering now, a bit). Depopulation hit some areas. Some workers escaped to the suburban areas but there were some real casualties. There were some more zombie like workers left. Of those, some probably had dual Canadian/American citizenship. They could manage to get across the border. Slowly, oh so slowly.

These zombie workers tanked Windsor’s employment stats. This made Windsor the worst large city economy in Canada for a while. But as disappointment met the zombie work force, they slowly, ever so slowly headed up the 401. They got to London and now this city has the worst employment stats in Canada. This must be where most of them are right now.

But it’s a loaded gun set to go off near me. Metro Kitchener is the next large city in line along the 401. Already the cover story is in place. Research in Motion, one of the largest employers in Metro Kitchener has let go 2000 workers. Maybe not all in this area, but still. (And you heard me Waterloo, I said Metro Kitchener).

Obviously the zombie jobless are going to hit Metro Kitchener. We must try to move them along as quickly as possible.

Perhaps we can entice them with the riches of the very large city after us on the 401 – Toronto. Even if the zombie jobless stay there, they’re not going to sway the jobless stats by more than a couple tenths of a percent. Toronto’s job market really is that big.

So, in a year or two when you’ve visited Toronto and found that that Burger King cashier was a bit zombie like, well there may be a story behind it.

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Take a Look But Don’t Touch

Posted on 11 August 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Any cursory glance at the mass media might tell you that the most attractive women have three traits. One, they’re thinner than average women. Two, they have larger breasts than the average woman. And three, their muscle tone is less obvious than the average woman’s.

You might counter that muscle tone example with Madonna and Kelly Ripa. But really, these two ladies became muscular after they were already famous.

Indeed the media delights in showing women who are examples of all three traits in sitcoms and movies. But really, can the three traits become more exemplary than even Barbie or a Playboy model?

Well yes they can. Women that are even more exemplary of this style are confined to their bedrooms. Why? Because they cannot get up, being so thin, so busty and so lacking in muscle tone.

I’m sure that the media has been dying to portray these women in movies or sitcoms, they just haven’t come up with the proper excuses.

Perhaps all that has been missing is an excuse for a male protaganist to end up in the bedroom of a suitable female. Well let’s just speed things up for Hollywood. *Crash* a suitable female’s window has been broken by the protaganist’s baseball.

“I’m so sorry,” goes the protaganist, “ Hubba, hubba,” he says as he enters the woman’s bedroom.

“I’m so sorry about the bedhead that begun in puberty and is still here in my less creepy early twenties,” says the suitable female.

“Hubba, hubba,” continues the male lead. “Huge breasts, scrawny frame, no semblance of muscle tone…”

“You realize that I’m far too weak and fragile for any type of sex, whatsoever?

“And if you want to get close in any shape or form, you’ll have to clean me and dress me and wash me and burp me and be ever so careful at all of this because it might wreck me.”

“Hubba, hubba.”

“Perhaps we have the eunuch slave that my parents have dreamed about since the onset of my puberty.”

“Hubba, hubba?” Perhaps the protaganist has entered into something he doesn’t quite know how to leave.

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Hands Inking Hands

Posted on 7 August 2011 by Larry Russwurm

The proper way to draw

 

I think Escher tried to be inclusive in his famous “Drawing Hands” picture. After all, one of the hands is a left hand and the other is a right hand.

Or maybe Escher just wanted to produce ‘one magical entity that was spontaneously creating itself’. If it were two right hands then presumably two humans would be ‘created’ when the hands are done.

I prefer the inclusiveness theory. But it was not possible for Escher to create all possible permutations with just the two hands. For instance if you haven’t noticed the difference before, look closely at the above illustration I made and look at the hands again. They hold the pen and marker in a way that is different than normal. Indeed they hold their pens the way I hold a pen. I used two right hands. Someone else might prefer to make an illustration with two left handers holding their pencils this way. Even more interesting might be the “self portraits” of a mouth painter painting a mouth painter.

I have always held my pencils and pens this way. I grew up in a small elementary school of 1 class per grade, so in the upper grades there was tittering and chuckling when the teacher found me writing in an ‘incorrect’ way. Teachers who wouldn’t dream of making a left handed child hold a pencil with the right hand, would force me to change my pencil holding for usually a couple days. They had to be on me all the time because without a conscious thought, I pick up my pencil and hold it as illustrated.

So I know how to hold a pen the ‘proper’ way. And indeed, my handwriting and drawing skills are about the same holding the pencil either way. I think your distinct signature and illustration abilities probably stem from in the wrist rather than the pencil holding method. My method of pencil holding leads to a heavier line but I can lessen it if I want to.

The only disadvantage to my way of holding a pencil, that I have ever noted is when extending myself to write at the top of the blackboard. With my method of holding the chalk I extend about an inch or two lower. Imagine if I were an inch or two shorter – such a disadvantage, huh?

In my very early 20s I met a girl at university who held her pen the same way as me. I had been hearing of these friends of friends who held their pens differently and it was usually concluded that they held them the same way I do. But this was the first person I saw in the wild who did it. I said something to her about it and instead of bonding with me about it she clammed up and sort of withdrew. Even when I showed her that I held my pen similarly. Must of been those years of being told she held her pen wrong.

This came up on identi.ca about a week ago. In talking about it, my sister pointed out about me ‘I was the one who writes funny’. And with that lame joke I end this post.

Posted in Art, Wee Bit O' Humour, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Obese and Wonderful

Posted on 5 August 2011 by Larry Russwurm

The obese and wonderful segment of the population, while perhaps being bad in a few ways, is good in at least one way.

Of course much of the public would see any increase in obese numbers as bad and unwanted. Indeed America and its increasing obesity has been a negative study in many news reports. So why on earth would I say that the increasing obese stats are good?

You see I am on antipsychotic medication. If it were the old antipsychotics there would be no claims about the obese. The old antipsychotics used to make its users twitchy. Imagine it is twenty years ago and you notice someone twitchy. “Are you a crazy person?” you might well ask.

But the modern antipsychotics don’t make you twitchy. Indeed their most common side effect is making the user obese. I am personally on these medications and it has made me sadly overweight as a consequence. When I first was put on the modern antipsychotics I had an increase in appetite. The only way this effect disappeared was when I was 50 pounds heavier.

So for those modern obese people? You have provided camouflage when I wished not to stand out from the human crowd and your heaviness shielded me from the stigma of being a paranoid schizophrenic. And it is for this that I thank you.

I don’t mind saying I’m schizophrenic to the people that know me. They’ve seen the behaviour and perhaps have judged and I don’t really blame them. But having physical attributes that say to any person who merely glances at me, that I can’t meet your expectations of normal, bother me.

And it is for this, obese people, that I commend you. Thank you for shielding me from excess judgement. Thanks for a little peace in this world.

Much like you, given a choice I would not be obese. But it is not as easy as choosing. There are many causes for obesity and I choose to hide behind that mutability.

So next time you are called out and it is said that the obesity epidemic is ruining North America? You can say that you are easing the stigma of that group of people that need antipsychotics.

Thank you. Stay strong. Peace out.

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Extra Punishment

Posted on 3 August 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I know there are some who are annoyed with the justice system. Perhaps they feel more victimized than the sentence to the perpetrator would seem to punish. Or maybe they’ve always felt that those who go against the edicts of society should suffer more, even if that suffering is slight.

We can’t give prisoners a bread and water diet. We’ve learned too much about the health effects of food and that could be considered a type of death sentence.

But we also clothe prisoners. Perhaps we could give the male prisoners hot pink outfits. The rage it might inspire would turn some prisoners’ faces pink, too. With anger or embarrassment, those of us who wish to add to the punishment aren’t picky.

But wait, you say, their are female offenders, too. They’d probably welcome a turn toward pink outfits. So we can’t do that. What I propose is so evil that criminal masterminds wouldn’t do it to their worst enemies. I’m talking about dressing the women up in clothing that is ten years out of date.

I see the nods from those of you who want maximum punishment. I just fear it lets one segment of the women off the hook.

Those women who are from backwoods or rural areas, might see the clothes that are 10 years out of date as a step up. In fact they might, upon leaving jail, request to keep their prison clothes and burn the clothes they were brought in with.

I know that eventually my mind will come up with a punishment for those women, I just need to think evilly enough.

But I know there is a segment of society which will go against these changes to prisons. To them I will ask ‘what happened to those sensible fluorescent orange jumpsuits I saws some years ago? Now those ought to exist in every prison.’

Fluorescent orange and yellow as any road worker or crossing guard can tell you is the opposite of camouflage colouring. It stands out against almost any background. And we want escaped prisoners to be as visible as possible. I know we don’t make prisons for prisoners to escape from, but we should face the reality of it happening.

My vote is for all prisoners to wear fluorescent orange and yellow jumpsuits at all times. If the prisoners and their supporters put up too much of a fuss about this, I say we threaten them with the start of this post.

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A Cheap Papercraft Future

Posted on 30 July 2011 by Larry Russwurm

This first of my cheaply wrought photographs shows me with something on my left forearm. You see with some of the flexible, paper thick computer hype, the obvious has been thrown about: the prediction of wearable computers. That is my wearable computer around my left forearm. I chose the forearm because it is simultaneously the most useful spot while also being the most out of the way.

Next we see the obvious flexible screen. I recommend that instead of having to reflatten it every time and angle it properly, it should somehow have a memory of the flattened position and either go there naturally after having been curled around your forearm or have an electronic way of doing that.

The rest of this piece assumes talking to your computer will not work in all instances. Look at hearing aids. They still struggle to bring out important info while diminishing background noise. And we’ve all had bad experiences with voice recognition software in unexpected places. And there are accents and speech impediments, no matter how slight. Thus, I assume keyboards would still be needed for at least the nearer future. There is a pivot on the one strap that the keyboard can turn toward a usable position.

A full keyboard is too long to fit neatly along the forearm. It needs to be bent in half. Because the QWERTY keyboard has its keys in non grid format, to fold it neatly in half is impossible. I fixed this by cutting in a staircase manner, thus not losing the integrity of even one key.

For maximum screen size, it would be best if the wearable computer was sized for different people. Oh no, more sizes to measure – length of forearm and strap length around the forearm in two places. Well I can’t think of a way to ease the strap length around the forearm in two places. However the length of the inner part of the bent forearm is the same length as your foot. Try it and see, I’ll still be here. So for that you already have your shoe size memorized.

I’m sorry about the cheap papercraft used to explain myself. I sometimes just think very aloud on my blog posts. I don’t expect any computer or tablet maker to steal my designs. Why? Because the ideas should be obvious enough to come up with on their own. It all depends on the technology. I just wanted to see how it might play out.

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Crappy Quotes

Posted on 28 July 2011 by Larry Russwurm

In this recent Yahoo News/ CBC article, a police officer of the mounted division in Toronto tries to rationalize why police don’t have to pick up after horses, or at least make their mounts wear a diaper.

Sgt. Kristopher McCarthy says of horse $#!+, “Within two to three days [horse] manure will just dry out and blow away”.

Before some of you agree because an authority figure told you, let me tell you that I grew up with a horse and a pony. Of course they used to $#!+ in their enclosure, largely in the same spots so they could eat the grass in other spots. This horse $#!+ would be there for months if not forever.

And in the winter, the horses would have to spend the time in their shed. My dad had to clean it out every once in a while, thus the manure pile we had came from those horses. It didn’t blow away. My dad was an avid gardener and that manure helped him to grow 11+ foot high sunflowers.

And to hammer the point home, the area I was raised in had lots of old order mennonites who still used a horse and buggy to get around. Horse $#!+ on the road lasted much longer than 2 to 3 days. Sgt. Kristopher McCarthy, you are a spreading tall tales. I know it strains the mounted police to have to pooper scooper their horses. But stop making excuses and just do it.

Also attributed to Sgt. McCarthy is the idea that horse droppings do not have any harmful bacteria like dog $#!+ does. Now, am I going to trust his word after the first lie?

Sgt. McCarthy says that “The difference between dogs and horses is that dogs eat meat and horses do not eat meat.”

Does that mean that vegans can defecate anywhere and it is alright? Imagine that unsightly mess everywhere.

Obviously, the fact that a horse is a vegetarian makes little difference. Remember the Walkerton tragedy? Vegetarian cow manure was the ultimate cause of the deaths of seven people and also sickened thousands.

I’m afraid we’ll have to disregard nearly everything that Sgt. Kristopher McCarthy says about horse $#!+. Nice try to keep your horses undiapered, but you have been caught.

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Another Gen X Manifesto

Posted on 23 July 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Gen Xers differ from each other. That is the reason there are many Gen X manifestos. So listen up baby boomers and those who wish to know more about Gen X.

Baby boomers started as a group by events that seemed to come from up on high. The end of World War II is the beginning of their lives

The media liked to follow the lead baby boomers. ‘They’re in the nurseries’, ‘they’re in school’, ‘they’ve started work’, etc.

Because there was no agreed upon beginning of Gen X, the media couldn’t do the same for my generation. In fact the media has almost completely ignored Gen X because of this. So I choose to declare the beginning of Gen X to be 1967, coincidentally, my birth year. But I don’t want the media to hound me, so I’m picking a leader all Gen X might agree to. That leader is Kurt Cobain, also born in 1967.

Why him, you may ask, and shouldn’t Gen Xers choose different leaders? Well firstly he is dead, which is a good state for any leader. So he can unite the “Question authority” crowd and the “Defer to authority” crowd at the same time. Can any live leader do that?

Plus the media already hounded him, some say to death. And his death is one of the few facts about him that most agree with. Gen X with all their varying ideas and conspiracy theories about his life and times might accept him as worth following, because of his death.

Now that we have established a leader maybe the media can pretend to care about Gen X by following him lavishly. There are updates we all want to know.

Was he secretly buried in Viretta Park and if so are the worms going in and out?

Were his ashes scattered in McLane Creek of Olympia or the Wishkah River in Washington or were his ashes stolen in 2008? And can we clone a new Kurt from ashes?

Was he cryogenically frozen so that 3011 can enjoy that grunge sound?

Or were his remains sent into space? If so, what planet should his remains be passing about now?

Rest in peace wherever you are Kurt and Gen X will produce as many conspiracy theories about you as there are Gen Xers. We’re going to make our leader proud. Or ashamed. We can’t really tell because he is gone.

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An Incredibly Vile Insult

Posted on 20 July 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Just this weekend I was insulted in such a vile and terrible way that I had to share it with someone. Michael Adams of Environics was the name caller. He called me, and indeed everyone born before 1970 and after World War II, a baby boomer. This was on a TV Ontario show, Big Ideas, which airs varying lectures.

Now for those of you born closer to World War II, you’re probably used to the tag and don’t mind it. But to me, someone born in 1967, it is rubbing salt into an already infected wound.

For one thing, my age group has been called the opposite name of the baby boom – the baby bust. It is up in the air where exactly the baby bust started. Some say as early as 1960 or as late as 1966. It’s supposed to go on till about 1982 or so. That’s about when the abundant baby boomers had their own kids to end the bust. So almost by definition, I am not a baby boomer.

I guess Michael Adams never saw the television show Family Ties in the eighties. It was a comedy where the parents were supposed to be successful baby boomers with the irony of having Micheal J. Fox as a son. Fox’s character wore a suit, despite being in high school, and had a generally conservative view of things. The point was generation X (or the baby busters) were different than the baby boomers.

With constant coverage of the “lead” baby boomers (those born in 1945 or 1946) the media killed any liking I could possibly have for these people.

It was worse, because when my age group wanted to enter the workforce, there were many fewer jobs available, because the bloated horde that is the baby boomers had filled the job market almost to bursting.

And now, to call me a baby boomer? Vile Michael Adams, vile. Why don’t you use your little stats company to set a firm and agreed upon start to the generations instead of expanding the definition of baby boomer.

You can’t, as you’ve done, change course for everyone, midstream. Just because you wanted a generation to be about 25 years long, because that’s closer to where women start having babies, you can’t. A generation can be as short as 15 years or as long as ?(the technology keeps improving for women who want late babies).

The media started this years ago, so I internalized the name gen X. I know people born even before 1960 who were convinced they weren’t baby boomers -why did all the coverage feature just the lead baby boomers? In fact I’ve joked with some of these older people about boomers. To their core of humour they don’t believe they are boomers. You’re not going to suck in that many people to be your baby boomers, Michael Adams.

And looking you up online, Mr. Adams, I see you were born in 1946. You seem to relish your position as being a “lead” baby boomer. And like any petty leader you are trying to extend your kingdom to my generation. You are not my leader, go away and quit insulting me.

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