It's like you're the Hulk, but only your balls got angry

 One New Year Resolution was to post every day once I got back up and running again, so I shall do so now even though I've been running around like a blue-arsed fly most of the day - in one instance to fix someone's Vista-powered laptop, so you may insert your own "just when I thought I was out they pull me back in"-style reference there.  I maintain this to be my own fault as things only get done if and when you organise time for them.  Normal service to be resumed tomorrow, hopefully, but in the meantime I am struggling with old-school colouring because it's a nice relaxing thing to much around with at the end of A Bit Of A Day.

Ladies, let's not do this - at least not with our shirts on.

Babble has been in the bag for a few weeks and I decided to give myself a wee rest seeing as I've heard nowt from Com.X since submitting the pages (which is either a very good sign or a very bad one), only it was not to be as I had a couple of projects owing to lads and I thought it best to try resting only when I had a truly clean plate.  That and Dirk Von Dom sent me an email that partially read "where are my fucking pages you spud eating bastard?"  You can tell he writes short stories, he has a very concise way about his missives.
I also have a strip owing to Paul Scott for the always-impressive Omnivistascope, which I'm still amazed I actually get to contribute to.
But because my computer still runs on Vista and it is a weekday:

You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with.

I am over in medias res openings for my shows. It seems like every episode I've seen in the last few weeks has been the middle or end of the story I haven't seen yet.

Watching: Charlie's Angels, which I decided to see to its end since it got itself canned after only 7 episodes. 7 episodes of hot women and things exploding to a guitar soundtrack and somehow they could not get people to watch it. Hot women, explosions, guitar rock, Miami setting, and to top it off a link to an iconic camp-trash franchise and a killer theme tune and still it fails. If you think about it, that is actually quite amazing.
This is trash, the audience knows it's trash, the producers know it's trash, the network knows it's trash - there was absolutely no pressure on anyone to excel or even approach competence so long as the soundtrack guy is liquored up and told to make widdly-widdly-woo noises to his heart's content, the second unit director is left to have stunt doubles kick people in the face on top of exploding speedboats, the cast - male and female - squeeze into ridiculously tight and small clothing in most scenes, and the writers are left to join the dots between all these elements in some arbitrary fashion that may or may not involve a female suspect who must be wrestled into submission after falling into something filled with oil. I'm not sure I even want to live in the kind of world where people exist that could screw that up.
Napoleon Dynamite - the new cartoon series based on the cult comedy flick of the same name. More outlandish and prone to fantasy elements than the film, which kind of turns me off even though it's a solid 'toon with some decent laughs here and there. S'okay, though.

You're just part of everything that's happening tonight and it's all bad

There's just no point in doing things by halves, is there, Vista?

ten bucks for the gilded lily, 20 for the Roman Holiday, 50 for the old Walrus n Carpenter, and for 75 you can sleigh ride down Kilimanjaro

Let's not learn how to do anything, let's just sit and contemplate the glory of me in all my complexities

Oh Vista - whatever my hands have, I suspect they got it from you. I'll be upfront and admit that this animated gif made from various screen grabs taken over one day is only amusing if you have Eric Pryde's 'Call On Me' in your mind while viewing it. Ah, Old Memes...

Of all the harm that ever I've done...

Yep. That's about right.

In the words of the wise Irish philosopher Susanne Morrison, "what goze arund cumms arund!1!", and depressingly sooner than I'd hoped, that 'working on dead' comment I made in a recent post in regard to relatives who have the alcohol bug has come back to haunt me.
In true Irish fashion, I haven't learned a lesson from this, I am getting drunk tonight, and updates may be sporadic while there's wake-housing being done.

Santa's wife has an eating disorder because he can have any woman he wants and she knows it

I'm sure that the few regular readers who check in now and then to find a screen grab of Vista crashing yet again probably think I have the same few screen grabs and just rotate them every now and then for the purpose of a running joke, but I'm really not...

That one's fresh from the oven.



Gordon Bennet, but I hate doing these talky sitting-around scenes as my visual continuity is terrible at best, and when you add distant shots of characters to the mix, facial likenesses take a blow to the nuts. GAAAH!

Watching: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, about which it must be said that even the theme tune is terrible. Don't get me wrong, on the surface it's a step up from the mid-90s X-Men and Spider-Man 'toons Marvel had out there, but it's also a step back from the amiable outrageousness of the superhero concept to cast them as a glorified lynch mob tracking down costumed criminals and changing them from colourful adventurers with kooky nemeses to dour fascists imposing their will on the world as an unelected collective representing their own broadly-defined version of 'justice', which is not undermined at all by having someone who claims to be the deity of a bunch of thieving, murderous rapists on the team alongside government black ops agents and a billionaire arms manufacturer who makes no secret of the fact that he's disarming people who have not paid him for their technology - technology he does not share with the world even when it is of benefit to mankind to do so.
It's a more serious affair than previous Marvel animated efforts and on that front it can be commended for moving with the times, but then again, 'the times' means catching up with DC's animated efforts like Teen Titans, Justice league, Batman, Superman, and to be honest, it doesn't actually catch up with them, and Batman: The Animated Series was 20 years ago.
So basically it's fine if you don't expect much or mind that the Hulk for some reason has an emo haircut and wears eyeshadow. There's lots of punching and shouting and furrowed brows and things blow up and everyone takes things very seriously. That's progress, I guess, but if it's a step on a path that eventually leads to a place in which humans can never again create the likes of this:

I wonder why they even bothered.

the more wheels I got the better I like it I’m the brother of a truck drivin’ mother

--And now no pressure sensitivity, Vista? Pft.
Not even worth thinking up a sarcastic comment like I usually do, but I shall try anyway in the interests of continuity and tradition:
Em...


Vista is unreliable and I hate it.




An open letter to the makers of Glee:
I am well aware your show is very popular, lord knows I watch it myself, so I shall spare you a fruitless entreaty to stop making what is clearly a moneyspinner, the ongoing production of which offers employment to some in an uncertain economic climate and I will not presume to suggest that my personal taste in music is a sound basis for the termination of what must be several dozen people, some of whom are undoubtedly breadwinners for their families.
Instead, I offer the following list of songs I find to be 'guilty pleasures' so that you may include them at your earliest convenience on the show and ruin my misplaced enjoyment of them forever much as you have previously ruined Journey's Don't Stop Believin' and the entire soundtrack of Rocky Horror - a feat that as early as Tuesday I would not actually have considered possible - and allow me to concentrate instead on more worthy music such as the angsty whitenoise of Radiohead or the communist propaganda of Billy Bragg.

Mud - Tiger Feet
The Sweet - Wig Wam Bam
Tina Turner - The Best
Alvin Stardust - My Coo Ca Choo
Elvis Presley - If I Can Dream
The Monkees - Last train To Clarksville
Gary Glitter - I Love You Love Me Love
Imperial Drag - Are You A Boy Or A Girl
Blondie - Heart Of Glass
The Donnas - Take It Off
REO Speedwagon - Keep On Lovin' You
Kenicke - Punka
Echobelly - Natural Animal
Cat Stevens - Miles From Nowhere
Carly Simon - You're So Vain
ACDC - You Shook Me All Night Long
Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Seussical the Musical - Notice Me Horton
Terra Naomi - Not Sorry
Clout - Substitute
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Looking Out My Back Door
Dinah Washington - Mad About The Boy
Jerry Reed - Eastbound and Down
Gene Pitney - Town Without Pity
Aretha Franklin - Do Right Woman Do Right Man

Yours,
Brigonos Mac Giolla Chomhgaill

I don't want any god. Damn. Tea.

You are killing me here, Vista.
Still, I did at least manage to start it eventually and draw a single panel of the 1970s UK kids' comic adaptation of that bit in Curse of the Werewolf where Olly Reed basically tries to escape the house to get booze.

There would have been more ideally, but here we are.

This week's Sons Of Anarchy was epic, as the hairy homoerotic road hogs travel to Belfast from the airport by some bizarre coastal trajectory that lets them swing past Ballymena where they pick up Malcolm from Star Trek: Enterprise and meet some members of the PSNI, who for the episode are played by the Nazis from any WW2 movie where Nazis set up a road block and demand to see someone's papers. Then they have an open air orgy on the streets of Belfast. Mental stuff.

I said "monthly visitor" and even did the little air quotes - how did you not get that?

Okay, rush job again:

This time, technical issues held up the shop:

Oh, Vista... don't ever change.
No really. I'm pretty sure I'm just gonna buy a Mac when the PC goes so I don't give a toss what you do.

Werewolf Week is just not meant to be, I guess, but I shall see it out.

Starting early today, Vista!

But choo won' stop me!

From drawing a lot of talky panels now I've got past the murdery bits.
Crazy deformed hands.

Watching:
CSI: Miami - "You think I'm stupid? Hello? Phd here." An actual quote as a college professor taunts the team with her superior intelligence.
NCIS: LA - Yes, woman, good call: tell him all about the little sister he's only now discovered he once had and who rests in an anonymous grave since her death in infancy because that'll cheer him up at this stage of the narrative, especially "she cried every night because she couldn't be with her little brother." Fucking hell.

Why, yes, Vista, my blog is far too image-heavy and in need of more of your reassuring white space! Always a pleasure when you take decisions about when I take a break from work into your own hands.

Watching: Enterprise season 3 - a lot better than I remember, though in my defence at the time I was more disappointed that the show was so derivative and significantly less than it could have been. What Trek needed at that point was the revamp treatment Battlestar Galactica would later get, rather than the reins handed to the producers responsible for creating the more insular and stilted installments of any given iteration of the franchise - basically, Trek needed guys like Naren Shankar, Ronald Moore and Manny Coto on staff from day one rather than later added in typical 'shit meets wall' fashion, as apart from a few mis-steps (soapbox moralising, an unconvincing lead) the third season was an objectively good sci-fi action series, albeit a very talky and poorly-characterised one that inexplicably thought that an episode where the main characters attempt to escape an exploding spaceship full of insane bloodthirsty zombies needed a b-plot where a Texan and an African-American sit in a small room and get along famously.
Stargate Universe - wow, it's like, so deep. He's, like, remembering his dying wife, which is like total pathos for him. This show is like so great because I have not seen any other sci-fi ever.
The Bridge - has outstayed its welcome. I'm not even bothered by the omnipresent, neverending and inappropriate incidental music, I'd just like to know what this show's supposed to be about. And Frank's secret meetings, which he apparently arranges in front of people, are increasingly hilarious for reasons I just can't fathom for the life of me.
CSI - "Some people would call a dead racist a good start" "Well we still have to call it murder" FUCK OFF.

Silver Banshee made an appearance on Smallville:

and was quite good except it was appearing in an episode of Smallville and by that measure became probably the funniest thing I've seen on TV this week - until I saw this:


No sketches today - my £900 Cintiq has turned from a monitor upon which you can draw into a 'no picture' tablet like you can buy out of Tesco for 25 quid, and this is apparantly less a quirky problem than it is an inevitability, which Wacom don't seem to be going out of their way to tell potential buyers. Which is nice of them. Actually, it's not as good as the tablets for 25 quid from Tesco, as the shape of the tablet's response area is different from most of the monitor settings, and the buttons on the side have no functionality, so by my reckoning, I've only wasted £910 I didn't have then and don't have now.

Well, that was a great way to spend an entire day - removing a virus from my pc that's left the damn thing running noticeably slower. I'm a bit stumped by how these viruses are supposed to work: they download these icons onto your desktop called 'Yourporn' or 'HotDonkeyCocks.net', and I'm a bit confused why people would think the response to this would be "This guy's gone to a lot of trouble to hack my pc, disable access to the Task Manager, Registry and System Restore, and fucked my internet connection and file association protocols, and even now I've finally got rid of the fucking thing the sound on my machine is gone, so I think I'll reward his tenacity by visiting these porn links and giving him my money."

So now I'm sketching for little reason other than it's the end of the day and I'll get pretty much nothing practical done now but I want to fiddle with the pc for a bit to see how it handles stuff. I could draw Godzilla forever, I think that's apparant from his periodic appearances on my Deviantart page, but I can never really remember what the big fucker looks like apart from the fact that he's grey instead of green in all but the very latest (post-millennial) movies, but I've coloured him green anyway, because the cartoon was awesome.

Catching up with lettering today, and what a joy it is to work with Microsoft's handiwork. Every day is a blessing of freezes and crashes and rather than upgrade to Windows 7 - probably an inevitability when eventually replacing the PC - I've decided to go without until I can fork out for a Mac. Do you hear that, Vista

You unfuckingbelievable

cocksucker

piece of shit?
I will actually pay hundreds of pound more to be sure of never having to deal with it ever again, and I consider that a bargain.


Watching: TNA, Vampire Diaries, ATHF, Brave and the Bold
Listening: Terranaomi, War Rocket Ajax

Sigh...

Sketching today. It was supposed to be Saucy Monday, but I think we can go ahead and assume that didn't pan out. On the non-saucy front there's some Nancy Drew sketching

but it only occurred to me later that I really should have gone for MK1 protofeminist Nancy instead of the later domesticated Mary Sue that reared her head in the 50s - if nothing else, it'd be an excuse to do some 1930s period trappings. A pin shall be stuck in that one, I think.

Watching:
Ugly Betty - I watch a lot of teen soap operas don't you judge me, and offhand I'd say you can pretty much tell when your show is in the shitter and headed for cancellation with these two words: lesbian kiss. Can't say I've seen the male version that often - actually, I can't say I've seen it at all, so it was a surprise to see it in this, but even if it does nowt for me personally, it's long overdue on telly. Just hope it doesn't spell the end of Betty, as it has it's moments.
Jay Leno - inoffensive chat with the big-chinned one and the always-affable The Rock in Duane Johnson mode "Damnable sell-out, how dare someone I like become successful" etcetera. Some MOR styling from Switchfoot, who are off my radar, and some cute kids who are politely applauded even though their humiliation and tears would be far more entertaining.
NCIS Los Angeles - the trailer for this is just a black guy walking along and then getting riddled with bullets. No deadpan delivery or misanthropic quips, in fact no appearance by the main cast at all - it's like someone saw this kind of tv show and thought "I can do that" and then made a straight A to B plot with no surprises or invention along the way, just assembled stuff that looks a bit like random elements from other procedural shows. That's not what's disappointing, mind - what's disappointing is that Chris O'Donnell isn't apocalyptically terrible so you can't even watch on the basis of it being a car crash. He's just sort of there, as is LL Cool J and Linda Hunt, who is one of those actors - like Lance Henrickson in that bullshit with the spiders - who's such a reliable quantity to the point that even though they're only actors and they aren't owed anything by the world in general, they really can do so much better than this and you're baffled how or why they're there at all. I have a theory that they shot it in her living room knowing she'd wander through the set at some point, though this doesn't explain her presence in The Practice. Possibly her house is very big.

Gggggggg..!
The great thing about typing your feelings out on the internet is that even through clenched teeth they're perfectly legible. I love Vista. I love it so much that it may compel me to stab someone in the face like that dude who loved Jodie Foster so much he stabbed Ronald Reagan. Or something.

I love you, Vista. Don't ever change.

Just having a wee doodle in among my thumbnailing jiggery-pokery as it's that time of year again when I have to come up with a cover for TKT - well, actually it was that time of year again several months ago, but I got busy. Now me and my good friend Vista will just load up some blank pages so I can get started on my real work thumbnailing that graphic--

GOD DAMN YOU TO HELL VISTA.
GOD DAMN YOU TO THE HELL THAT SPAWNED YOU.