I didn't get much sleep last night, which is why the art is crappier than ususal. I really hate the last panel, but my pillow is calling me. Sorry about that gang...
O.K. my work is complete crap when I'm overtired. As opposed to the partial crap that I usually serve up here. Anyway, good crap, bad crap, it's my crap, and there's still a little pride of ownership going here.
I've redone panels 1 and 2, added a little more detail. I'm a little happier with the outcome, but The Muse Will Not Be Flogged. Oh Well.
Christmas shopping, that is. Now all I have to do is wrap, mail, or Amazon.com it to it's respective (lucky) recipient!
The Main Sequence is here.. Kinda grim. It gets wetter as we get to the Holidays, I promise. Then there's the inevitable fanboy fiction that we all know and love so well
Santa will leave coal in my stocking if I don't do this! Content is here.. No fanboy fiction this week.
What follows is a list of seemingly unrelated facts. Bear with me.
Last Thursday one out of every three managers (director and above), and one out of every ten "worker bees" were let go from my company. People at my pay level got six months of severance. There is a lottery called "power ball" here in the Northeast.
So now the statement "I didn't hit severance power ball" should now make sense to you.
I really can't say who I work for, but I'll leave it at "a financial company". Which is to say, they don't really make anything, except money for their stakeholders and aggrevation for their employees. Suffice to say I work in the IT department for "Mammon Corp."
It's like this: one week out of every six I'm "on call", which means we get called first if something goes wrong with one of the systems we "maintain". I say "maintain" in quotes, because we're not allowed to look at the code. It's like being responsible for keeping a swiss watch running, except that you're not allowd to open the watch, and all you're given is a ball peen hammer and a screwdriver to fix it.
Oh, that, and it's less like a swiss watch, and more like some Chtonic nightmare beast eats whatever gets put into it, Darke Magik happens inside , and shit comes out the other end. For which people in suits pay lots of money.
The little fucker bites when it gets indegestion.
And we get the blame if anything goes wrong. "Plenty of blame to go around", as they say. Sometimes walked to the door.
And, yes, I'm working on my "exit strategy" even as we speak. Have been for a while, actually. I've just been hanging on, hoping to hit Severance Power Ball.
It's going to be a good holiday if the drama doesn't kill me. I have an 18 year old son who has a little problem "listening". Damn, he reminds me so much of me when I was his age. Hell, he reminds me of me right now. Only I think I listen a little better than that. I've learned just to ignore people on purpose, actually.
Malice does have it's place in the inter-personal relationship toolkit.
O.K. So much for hiatus. Sorry about that kids. The New Stuff is here and here
Not much to say at the moment. I'll write more later.
So some of you have followed a link here. Others are just nosey. I'll cut to the chase. First of all, I am not going to make my Shield of Creation comic a soapbox for my worldview. All I'm going to do is--in the best tradition of science fiction--ask the question "what if".
My "what if"? How would the people who lived in a universe where the supernatural actually exists deal with people who came from a universe where it didn't?
What would happen if people who took souls and gods and angels and devils for an established fact deal with people who come from a place where none of that exists.
And to head this one off at the pass, Ladies and Gentlemen, as surely as those things exist in the Oracle for Hire universe, they do not exist in the Singularity Blues universe. My universe. My rules.
Notice I didn't say our universe. That's my out. If this disturbs you, you can always say "it's just science fiction".
The Undead Arive. Hilarity Ensues.
The usual suspects can be found here ane here
I can't say things are better here in the Great Northeast. But there are glimmers of hope.
I was MIA last weekend. I don't know if anybody noticed, but if you cared, then the new stuff can be found here ane here
Yet another abbreviated strip. Sorry 'bout that.
You know you want it. To get it, go Here and here!
Do you know how hard it is to blaspheme in a secular society? It's damn near impossible, people. So I've settled on three major "dieties": Fate (the hand that is dealt to you), Fortune (how you play the hand), and Sweet Mother Mercy (who is, of course, the descendant) of Mercy General Hospital from Guliani days. Now you know...
Here and here. Come and get some!
NPR is pissing me off. From Ted Koppel telling us we have to stay in Iraq to avoid the fiasco of Vietnam (News Flash, Ted: we're already fucking there) to the puff piece on Tony "Pimp-In-Chief" Snow ("We'll miss ya, Tony! Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge!"), I'm getting the feeling I might as well be watching "The Daily Show" for my news.
Or Fox. At least they're not schizophrenic.
There's one show that heartens me in the "balance wars": "This I Believe". I thought this was going to be a spot on how Jesus or YHWH or Muhammed (fortunately you can still print the word without some asshole screaming "jihad" and trying to kill you. The Jews outgrew that nonsense centuries ago, so "YWHW" appears witout fear of immanent death) Made Their Lives Better.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered this was the kind of thoughtful programming I listen to NPR for.
I'm afraid I'll have to fill this in later. Sorry, guys.
Madeleine L'Engle died last Thursday, September 6, 2007. Among the honors she has acquired in her long and productive life is a small but significant one: she is the one who introduced me to Science Fiction.
A Wrinkle in Time is the first science fiction book I ever read. I was captivated by the ideas, and moved by the people in her book.
Ms. L'Engle and I disagree on a great number of things, philosophically. She was a lifelong Christian. I am a "johnny-come-lately" atheist. On one thing we both agree, though: people are important.
Thanks, Ms. L'Engle. I enjoyed the ride.
In 24 hours I"ve had 2 sleep shifts, consisting of 2 hours of sleep per.
No. I'm not happy.
But here's today's offering. Not exactly burnt, but certainly fried.
As opposed to "what it is": well, here it is. Who loves ya, baby?
No Christian apologist pisses me off more than C. S. Lewis. I suppose it's the current popularity of the Narnia books, but you would figure that his long term relationship with a divorced American woman (shocking!) would have loosened him up a bit.
You may notice I have named the Siege Engine after the darkest of his science fiction novels, That Hideous Strength. It was mostly done in a fit of pique, but as I learned more about it, found it was more and more fitting.
For those interested in the source of the phrase "That Hideous Strength", look no further than here.
In a nutshell, the phrase That Hideous Strength refers to the Tower of Babel (see reference, above). So it's fitting that the phrase be applied to a weapon with a structure that juts half it's diameter out of it's bulk.
Too bad there's nobody to rebel against. In the Singularity Blues universe, anyway (heh).
As you may or may not know, I have instrumented most of the new web pages with Google Analytics. Just to get an idea of what the site was doing, mind. If this bothers you, let me know.
Anyway, it seems that most of my traffic is for Shield of Creation, as opposed to my own webcomic.
Wowsers.
Guess I better get Dominic back into action right quick. Have No Fear. Bwahahahaha.
This was supposed to be a "small" update. Ha. Beats drinking, kids:
We have an update, but it's a poor man's version. The fanboy fiction has more love than the main arc, I'm afraid.
Due to a little bit of corporate insanity, I was able to devote some time to plotting out the next few weeks of the major plotlines, and a minor one.
Once again, the artwork is pretty shakey, but I really like the way the dialog has gone. I hope both of you are entertained!
It seems I have less time to devote to My Curious Hobby, but this week there's more of the main story and related items
Yeah, I'm "on call" again, so my updates are a little lean and involve a good deal of "cheating". The damn prose sparkles, tho.
Being "on call" means being at the company's beck-and-call for a whole week. This is how Corporate America has re-instituted the sweat-shop...without the sweat.
Not that I'm not grateful for my job, I am. I just get the feeling that I'm being taken advantage of, sometimes.
O.K., most of the time. Especially when I hear about how well my bosses are doing, and I haven't had a real raise in ten years.
I have seen in the news groups that some of my new readers find my work "creepy".
You have no idea how delighted this makes me. "Creepy" is what I was going for. Borrowing heavily (nay, "gang raping" may be a better phrase) from the work of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (with a dash of Lord Dunsanny and, dare I say it, Stephen King, thrown in), I am quite happy with the result. At least in a literary sense. We're very close to the end of this arc, so buckle up.
I finished up early (by cheating like mad), so here you go.
I have a small, furry visitor I have to deal with this weekend. No telling how long my wee cowrin timerous beastie has been wandering around (without helping with the rent, mind). I'm afraid I'm going for The Final Solution here. Sorry, Sam.
I really couldn't stand the artwork in introduction number two anymore, so I've updated it. I'm pretty sure I've tightened up the dialog, at least a little bit.
Main sequence is here
Fanboy Fiction is here. The experiment is an embedded SVG file in lieu of a graphic. It looks big, it's not. Let me know if this works.
I never really expected this strip to be popular. Hard to get a reader base going when you don't "advertise". I'm afraid I'm about to scare off what few I picked up from Mr. Terracciano: the kid gloves finally come off with this story arc.
I warn you on the front page that this comic is freethinker friendly. And there's a link to exactly what this means. However, there are some out there that insist on breathing through their mouths instead of their noses. So here it is, straight up.
I am an atheist. I'm still working on spelling it correctly, but that's neither here nor there. I'm aware that this puts me somewhere behind pedophiles and suicide bombers in popularity.
Let me put this into perspective for you. Think of all the gods you don't believe in: Zeus, Odin, Shiva, etc. Think of me as a guy, just like you, except that I believe in one less god than you do. Thank you Richard Dawkins.
This is an attempt to convince you that I'm not so terribly different from you. I won't suddenly go psycho on you, or rape your women, or salt your fields, or whatever.
What I am going to do is blaspheme. If you choose to overreact (like, say, Moslems to the Knighting of Salman Rusdie), then that's your problem.
You, of course, have every right to say "You're wrong"! Please feel free to tell me why. Be brief. Give me the Cliff Notes version. Warning: I am an ex Roman Catholic. I was raised to believe that my former religion was the only true one, and we had the historical chops to back this up. So if you are a member of one of the many break away cults that sprung up around the time of Martin Luther, please don't waste your breath on me. Capish?
I am a secular humanist until something more appealing comes along. One of the great things about living a fact based life is that you always have the perogative to change your mind in the face of overwhelming evidence. Safety Tip: I do not count the Bible (or any other circular argument) as "overwhelming evidence".
I cannot disprove the existance of god. All I can say is if there is a god, or gods, then there is no physical evidence that they take the slightest interest in us. "The universe exists" is not evidence of a god, but if I indulged you and said that it was, it would still not be evidence of a specific god, say, one who lights bushes on fire and tells sheep herders to take off their shoes because he just washed and waxed the desert, thank you very much.
Why am I getting so strident? Because when most people say "atheist", what they mean is "criminal". To "Mainstream Amurika," an atheist is a parasite at best, a sociopath at worst. I am neither of those things, but it pisses me off that (some of) you think that I am.
Which brings us back to the comic. There are a shitpot full of themes working in here. One of the main ones is the Fact Based Life versus the Faith Based one. All I'm trying to point out is it's better to light a candle in the dark than to go through it oblivious and whistling.
I got done what I needed to get done, so here is the latest Shield of Creation episode.
And I have too many of them. I'm about half done fanboy fiction, but the New Chapter is up!
Nothing else today. I have to prep for a job interview
"Rainy days and Mondays always get me down."
from Rainy Days and Mondays
Paul Williams & Roger Nichols
Since there are 52 weeks in a year, and since I've survived over 51 years, this means that I've survived over 2652 Mondays.
I have no idea what percentage of these were actually rainy.
Odds are I would have been a morose son-of-a-bitch anyway, even with all of these Mondays under my belt.
So where am I going with this? Hard to tell. Bear with me for a minute.
Without going into too much detail, I'm currently having a disagreement with my parents about how I should handle one of my sons.
The hell of it is, my son is taking my decision better than my parents are. Oh well.
By Fate and Fortune, I thought this chapter would never end! But, as you see, it has.
Huzzah, huzzah, unfurl the banners, release the doves.
And by Popular Demand (and a few death threats) I have ground out the next installment of my fanboy fiction, so put away those sharp instruments, guys.
Well, it's hiatus time again. I'm going to a wedding in Florida (not my own, just relax guys). I've put some filler art up in the main sequence, and added a new button to the Shield of Creation page to draw attention to the Operation Starlion parallel story. This is a continuation of the story I started, and my "editor" suggested I pull because, let's face it, you're here for Dominic, not my own characters.
Bastards
Anyway, for those of you who are interested in what's happening on the "other side of the Veil", there you go.
I'm pushing both updates at the same time, but you'll see it all at once. Part 29 of my DD fan fiction is now up.
I'm taking a page from the book of the anime masters by using three panels to stretch this week's offering into seven! I'll see what I can do on side projects.
I'm adding one more layer to an already overburdened system: an RSS 2.0 feed. Not that anybody reads any of this anyway...but what the hell...
Got the latest Shield of Creation offering up and running. Have fun.
Got more done than I thought I would. Go nuts guys.
Since I'm "on call" this week, there is no "new" comic per se. However, last weeks offering has been cleaned up with two additional "transitional" panels. Now Foolio's comment makes more sense (well, more than it did), and there is a transition between Phoebe's Epiphany and Xou's rant. Xou's rant has also been edited and, ah, "enhanced".
new fanboy fiction is up, . So. Who loves ya, baby ;)
Most of the panels in this week's offering are split into thirds, hence the tryptych reference. Consider this the Word of the Week.
I guess I must be feeling better. The writing is getting a lot easier. I feel like I put a lot of work into this week's episode but I'm not sure I'm happy with the results, however. Jamming in a little too much into each "episode"? Perhaps. It's taken me almost a year to get through one stinking hour in the comic, so I may have to go back later and re-pace this section.
In addition, new fanboy fiction is up, . and Dominic and Pilot experience a few "technical difficulties".
Enjoy
I recently had sinus surgery (think of it as a "roto rooter" on your sinus cavaties.) So I'm afraid I really have not felt up to the creative challenge of this comic.
Ah, well, I can breathe again, and a new comic is up. Go nuts, guys ;)
Ah, yes. Spring has sprung. In a few days I'll be having nose surgery (they've already checked my colon, and, yes, I'm the perfect asshole).
The new shit is up. I hate to refer to it like that, but it always seems to be a race between quality (which is always dubious at best) and quantity (i.e., I'm trying to grind this stuff out once a week). I'm not happy with the strip, and let's leave it like that.
I fall in and out of "love" with it. I still "believe" in the story, I still like the characters. I'm just not sure if anybody else does. Hard to be a "creative" person if the only feedback you ever get is from your twin brother (and he's just as wacky as I am). Thanks, though, Rich. At least one other human being is getting a chuckle out of it.
Why so morose? Why am I being such a "moody Irishman", as my Beloved likes to say? Trouble at work. Trouble on the home front. A date with General Anesthesia (but not, unfortunately, Private Room). It all boils down to a major headache at the moment.
Couple that with the fact that my younger brother as abandoned my "drug of choice" (World of Warcraft), so now I get to spend my free time worrying.
And I'm too cheap to start heavy drinking or drugs. Hooray for virtue.
Oh, well. "This, too, shall pass". Or is that what they say about kidney stones? Happy spring, everybody!
I'm on a conference call right now. Trouble, big trouble, in the land of automated financial transfers. But the comic is here!
Have fun.
A lot has happened this week. Most of it I just want to forget.
Main line story is here, and fanboy contribution is there .
I hope everybody has a great weekend!
Well, it looks like I'm not in immediate jeapordy of losing my job, so I'll take a little more time on my curious hobby. This one isn't quite so funny, but it advances the plot by leaps and bounds.
We also have a monster update to the Shield of Creation story. Slight change of venue here, hope you don't get lost on the way to Hyperspace...
All that, and a quote from Shakespere, too! Enjoy!
I see updates. I see them all the time!
And even though I don't believe in ghosts, it didn't mar my enjoyment of either The Sixth Sense or Ghost, (or even The Ghost and Mrs. Muir )
Big deal, who cares, what's in it for me? you say? Well, maybe a chuckle or two for you. A false sense of accomplishment for me. And my hosting company earns the $140/year I pay 'em for this particular site. And really, isn't that what America is all about? What are you, a Communist or something?
FX: sound of travel throgh hyperspace as the topic is changed
My new hero is Daniel C. Dennett, and Breaking the Spell.
I would love to be an "in your face" style athiest. I really would. After six years of the Bush presidency, I would love to go to my fundamentalist friends and scream "YOU ARE FUCKING DELUSIONAL AND YOUR CHOICES ARE KIIILINGG USSSSS! HEEELLLOOOOO! IS ANBODY ALIVE IN THERE!?! WAAAAKEEE UUUUPPPPP!"
When you scream fire in a movie theater where no fire exists, you are called a criminal. Now, what do you think is going to happen when you scream fire in a move theater that is ablaze, but not only can nobody see the fire, they can't even smell the frigging smoke.
That's right. You get hauled away. The people who die in the movie theater? Will of God, my friend, the fucking Will of God.
So how does this explain my lack of intestinal (or, worse yet, scrotal) fortitude? Mom and Dad. "Sure, John, blame it on your parents," I hear you say. Well, it's worked for my brother Richard for almost forty years, but that's not the point. The point is that I still rely on them for things. Like love and affection. Occasionally money (and for the record, I do feel guilty when I accept it).
So, when I think about shoving my unbelief up someone else's ass, I stop and ask myself: "Would this be a good thing to do in front of Mom and Dad"?
They know the score, of course. I haven't been to Church in years. They worry about me going to hell. I worry about them voting Republican. In the end, there's not much we can do about either situation, so we just sit and smile at each other and say "I love you."
You know, that's enough for me.
Once again, I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to work on the strip this week. In between the madness at work, home issues, and the general crazyness with the weather I've been a little behind.
Throw in genuine lazyness, and you have a recipe for disaster. Still, I got more accomplished this week than I thought I would.
The last two weeks have been hellish. Two weeks ago I was "on call". This means I'm at the Corporation's beck and call, 24/7. It was "busy". This meant that this was a "sleep optional" week.
Last week, I sweated blood over a stupid internal project. Today, I am submitting resumes.
In addition, I'm submitting this
...and I'll tell you no lies, here is this week's offering, offering the cuddly cuteness of the Care Bears with the sophisticated menace of Hannibal Lechter.
Just to offer you guys a Heads Up:, I'll be going into the hospital later on this month for my sinuses (having a sinus infection for 20 years is no fun). This may or may not cause an Interruption in Service. I may have to offshore the comic to artists in Bangladore...
Yes, this week's nightmare is the opening of a knock knock joke. Extra credit: do you know how this joke ends? More importantly, how will this particular knock-knock joke end for our heroes?
I have also taken the liberty of adding a wee bit more to the Shield of Creation storyline.
I'm playing the Burning Crusade extention to World of Warcraft. So in the middle of getting two characters to level 13 guess what didn't happen.
No comic. Exactamundo. Still, I have a hiatus graphic up. It's a very nice graphic. Untill next week, then.
O.K., I'm exaggerating. But not by much: behold:
That little blip around the 7th was the result of an self-inflicted automated site inspection that (at the time) skewed my web results tremendously. Heh. Witness the Power of the Community.
I always thought that I was among the "few" who were Dominic Deegan junkies. Looks like I underestimated just how popular "Teh Seer Supreme" really is. You guys rock. Now buy some swag from the man, or throw some cash-eesh his way.
Now that I have my thoughts and feelings out of the way, I want to say thank you for visiting. I hope my efforts reflect well on the inspiration.
NOTE: THE QUESTION OF 'CANNON' Cannon is here. Here, well, here you'll only find conjecture. Hell, I can't even spell "Barthis" right, what do you want from me?!
So enjoy your stay. No pushing or shoving, you'll all get your turn. Be polite, no matter how much of an asshole the guy next to you is. Have fun, and play safe.
I have two other web accounts, just so you know. There's my Deviant Art account, and my experimental account.
Consider this to be my "first snowball of winter". Again, not a big update, but I'm still in the "grip" of my fanboy obsession with Dominic Deegan. This should be good for a gruesome chuckle, though.
This, I'm afraid, does not really bring The Funny...for which I apologize. I'm having a dry spell, of sorts. I'm doing a little more worrying these days. Surgery, doctor's appointments, the clutch on the car, looking for a job. It's enough to drive you to distraction!
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, so I want to thank all the Brothers out there (and not just the Black Irish) for rabble rousing for this one. Now if we can just get St. Patrick's Day off, and Columbus Day...
The news page was starting to get pretty long, so I moved all the "old" news into another page. Not that anybody reads this anyway, but it saves load time for me, anyway.
Thankyouforyourattentionhaveaniceday!
First, let us get formalities out of the way. While I can't guarantee a novel hyperlink to the weekly offering every week, I'll see how long I can go before I run out of gas. How's that?
Whew! I'm glad all that global warming stuff is just hot air from a lot of egg-heads! It's truly comforting that I live in a Faith based world, rather than a Reality based world.
Yeah. Right. The problem with the current regime is someone first has to give Dick Cheny a blowjob, so we can get rid of him. Then, and only then, can we give the President himself a blow job so we can be rid of him. Hey, Mr. President, "surge" this.
It's hell being Reality based. It really is. Oh well, once again, into the breach.
You might also be interested in the lates update for Shield of Creation.
So I'm looking at my rank in buzzcomix, and it turns out I'm number 88 out of 100. I'd feel pretty damn special if I didn't know that the graph of readership on this particular x/y axis is lograthmic rather than linear...but what the hell, I never expected this to be popular anyway.
Still...#87...pretty stinking cool