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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Bill's LiveJournal:
| Thursday, February 5th, 2004 | |
| 7:22 am | |
| Wednesday, February 4th, 2004 | |
| 2:12 am | Hmm...Lieberman's out of the presidential race. Aside from the fact that he's been using videogame violence as an easy rallying point to draw witless parents to his camp since the early 90's, the man just looks and sounds like a fucking incontinent troll. We hates him, we does. Here's to hoping that Ol' Joe gets hit by a train before 2008. Cheers! And speaking of videogames - while bashing away at the Flight this past weekend, i fell into a pattern where i'd color tinker with the soon-to-be-doomed page for 45 minutes, tap the "save" button, and then scoot over to the MAME-computer to play games while my laptop did it's thing. (Yes, the laptop takes about 5-10 minutes minimum to save these pages. Ay-yi-yi.) Anyway, Jay and Eric have loaded over 2000 videogame ROMS onto this new computer - almost every NES, SNES, SMS and Genesis game ever created - along with a few hundred arcade-game ROMS. So it was while i was waiting for my pages to save that i began my love affair with SNK's series of "Metal Slug" games. Now, i've heard people whisper about these Metal Slug games in hushed voices before in various online game sites and forums. The Penny Arcade guys have made awed reference to them in the past, in much the same way that i imagine cavemen used to tell stories about the near-mythical Mastadon, way back in the day. But nothing prepared me for the sheer aesthetic lushness of these Metal Slug games. Sure, the gameplay itself is as rote and as shallow as any crap-ass side-scrolling shooter from the 80's (run from left to right while shooting as many Bad People As Possible using your Riduculously Giant Guns, duke it out with a Giant Boss Moster-Thingy for 10 minutes, rinse, and repeat), but it's the sheer amount of graphic detail and - believe it or not - the off-the-wall sense of humour (which is something rare for action titles) that SNK packed into these games that really, truly set them apart from most anything else i've ever seen. Ugh, i can't even go into detail about these games without verbally hemmoraghing even worse than i already am, so i'll just shut up about all that now. (Though now that i think about it, my thoughts are probably turning to videogames right now so that i don't have to dwell on Elise's sudden plans to relocate to New York at the end of the month. I wonder where i can find Metal Slug cheats. Boy, do i ever love Metal Slug!) *whimper* |
| Tuesday, February 3rd, 2004 | |
| 5:47 am | FUBAR, man.With a side of SNAFU. The Flight page that, aside from a 3-hour nap this evening, i'd been coloring since 11 am yesterday morning....well, it looks like it's been corrupted beyond repair. I'd laugh my ass at all this, if only i wasn't already feeling overwhelmingly heartsick and just flat-out prone to crying like a puppy with it's tail jammed in a car door. Well, i'll see if Eric can recover that bad boy tommorrow. If not, i'm going to have to mail Kazu and tell him that the strip is officially a bust. (Well, a "bust" in the sense that there's no way in hell i can continue gently assembling 600-dpi 200-meg 16-million-color pages with my wee laptop as it threatens to combust and devour the pages everytime i tap the "save" button.) I wouldn't feel so distraught about this if it hadn't already been turning out so fantastically. The coloring job that i'd hammered out was unlike anything i'd really done yet, and it actually managed to drop the jaws of everybody who saw it: "Holy fucking shit, lookit the veins and spots on those leaves! And holy SHIT, lookit that WHOLE FOREST FLOOR of LEAVES! You're fucking CRAZY, Bill!", etc, etc. If anything else, at least i now have renewed confidence in my coloring skills as i prepare to dive into the home-stretch of the launch-batch of Pan pages. (Let's here it for coloring penciled/non-inked pages using Painter's watercolor tool! Looks gritty yet awesome! Woo!) And Jen's Flight strip looks it'll be coolest-looking thing ever concocted by a Pants Presser. (Well, until the real Rand rockets into the realm of comics, that is.) Now, to bed with me. Fuck. Current Music: Eh-heh, the sun is coming up.... |
| Sunday, February 1st, 2004 | |
| 10:42 pm | Cue the strings, boys.  My sincerest apologies to the Comixpedia crew, but i just had to post this. Scott McCloud, did you know that you're the wind beneath my wings? (And i swear to Shiva that one of these days we Pants Press kids will eventually warm up to just calling you "Scott" someday. Scout's honor.) Anyway, in other People Being Unexpectedly Bad-Ass news, i was treated to a free showing of "The Triplets of Belleville" today (complete with complimentary popcorn and lemonade!) courtesy of Nick. The movie was wonderful (i'm already jonesing to score a copy of the soundtrack, and besides, how can you not love a movie where elderly women go fishing with World War One-era hand grenades?), but the whole experience reminded me of just how brain-shatteringly uncouth (and unsubtle) i am when i'm thrust into situations where i'm surprised with Unpaid-For Goods And/Or Services From Friends On The Job. But look, it's Anne doing a handstand! And Claire doing the Batusi? Patrick's sheep bleeding! It's like Muppet Babies, but without all the bad Fozzie puns (and resulting tomatoey mess)... |
| Saturday, January 31st, 2004 | |
| 3:34 am | Then again, thinking about the champagne on the porch reminded me of Erika (i bought it in anticipation of her dropping by for a quick day or two a few weeks ago, but that never happened), and so thinking of Erika in turn sort of helped knock me out of my snarky mood. A bit. At least i don't feel like pissing lit rocket fuel on the Pope right now. In fact, when i sometimes think of Erika, i imagine that scene in "Schindler's List" when Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley pull an all-nighter while drawing up the titular List....only in this case, substitute the word "list" in the scene with "Erika", and you'd get to see Erika how i see her: "This Erika...is an absolute good. Erika is life. All around Erika's margins lies the gulf." Then, of course, i also get a mental picture of Oskar Schindler and Itzhak Stern taking hits from a bong ("For every one you smoke, I smoke half") while hanging out in Erika's dorm room, but you get my drift. The End. |
| 1:59 am | I am the model of a major moron. Jumpin' Mary in a Mudbath, i can still smell that Hershey's "S'mores" bar. The air reeks of shit. I think i will puke very, very soon. (It also doesn't help that the only thing i have to eat right now is a plastic butter-tub filled with soup that tastes like Palmolive soap. I'm as frugal as the next guy, but i hate it when dishwashing detergent soaks itself into cheap plastic containers - usually Cool Whip tubs and whatnot - and subsequently tains the flavor of whatever food it houses in perpetuity.) Regardless: Watched "Comic Book" The Movie" with the guys tonight while coloring the Flight strip, though i think i've managed to blow the February 1st deadline for the anthology about as badly as is humanly imaginable. And it doesn't help that my laptop is creaking and groaning under the weight of having to manage 600 dpi color bitmap images, either. I dread having to email Kazu about this. And that's only the tip of the angst-iceberg in relation that that project, but that's so convoluted that i'm not even going into that right now. So. Christ, Livejournal sucks these days. The only things i've felt obligated to write about here have only been things that i've thrown up just to let people know that i haven't up and died, which is pretty sad in of itself, given that it's probably psychologically preferable that i didn't give a raging fuck about anything online right now, especially when i've got so many things to attend to offline...but still. On that note, Caliban from The Tempest rocks, and A Midsummer's Night Dream is still a tough nut to crack, despite my having been involved in a mock-production of that goddamned play in high school. The problem with Midsummer is that you've got four profoundly boring-as-fuck-all (and interchangeable) little shits who make up the core of the story's cast, which is no fun at all. Granted, the fact that most everybody else in the cast is either a randy fairy or forest spirit goes quite a ways to help allieviate the pall of boringness that the lovers cast over the rest of the play, but....but still. And lastly, i'd give my spleen (and a mighty portion of my left ass cheek) to be able to hunt down and bash in the brains of the rotten fuckers who robbed my parents' house. "The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief" my ass. Fuck, i wish i was a drinking man, and that i wasn't at work right now. Mrrph, maybe the breaking of a new dawn (and that bottle of champagne on the porch) will do something to pick up my spirits. Or maybe i should spend a day trying to bew myself a vat of absinthe with 3 pounds of melted Jolly Ranchers and some gasoline. Or maybe a viewing of "The Triplets of Belleville" will knock my brain up with brown-washed Gallic joy. Film at eleven. |
| Friday, January 30th, 2004 | |
| 1:35 am | In a spectacularly lethal mood right now. Current Mood: tired, cold, self-loathing Current Music: snow. |
| Thursday, January 29th, 2004 | |
| 1:31 am | I know that i could firebombed by some folks for saying this, but i really do prefer reading Shakespeare on the printed page to seeing it performed on the stage (or on screen). Actors tend to be stilted, self-conscious and bombastic when confronted with Shakespeare - every word must be savored and rationed with quirky passion, the prose treated like gold spun from an angel's ass, rather than just goddamned dialogue. Take this passage from The Tempest, for example: Now my charms are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have's mine own; Which is most faint; now 'tis true, I must be here confin'd by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell: But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands. Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant; And my ending is despair, Unless I be reliev'd by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon'd be, Let your indulgence set me free. Now, when i read that, i picture in my mind an weathered old man who'se pretty much ready to give up the ghost, and is in fact tiredly yearning to croak. When i read that passage in my mind, Prospero isn't thundering this epilogue aloud to an audience before him, or even melodramatically calling out to the Heavens above with tears of relief in his eyes, but instead is almost inaudibly whispering this on his deathbed...why, and to whom, we'll never fully know. The old man is a bit silly, considerably lonley, and very old, which inevitably leads to all kinds of murky questions and shuttered feelings that theatre people are sometimes to anxious to try and explain away with a frilly gesture of the wrist or a ridiculous waggle of the eyebrow. That makes me sad. And besides, I like the quietude of reading iambic pentameter to yourself rather than having it shouted at you from some dork in tights, anyway. 'smore intimate. Anyway (and on to change a topic completely), i had my first Firefly-related dream yesterday. It involved the botched robbery of a futuristic 18-wheeler hauling ration kits for the military (the truck jacknifed across 6 lanes of traffic, decapitating a dozen cars and almost killing twice as many people), and the subsequent retaliatory Alliance raid against the Firefly's crew in a decaying slum-block. Then Bill Murray's character from "Rushmore" showed up, and things get even stupider. (At least i didn't dream of friends. When that happens, somebody almost always ends up either physically hurt or emotionally torn apart. Yeesh. If we were all living in some kind of fucked-up Philip K. Dick world, i'd probably be selling my dreams to masochistic strangers to help pay the rent.) |
| Wednesday, January 28th, 2004 | |
| 10:02 am | Top 15 rejected band names (as compiled by Mike, Eric, Ben, and Laura on a piece of cardboard while i was at work last night, it seems): - Bill Sammich (thanks, guys) - Rascist Rapist - Fangs of the Panda - Raped by Christopher Walken - Zardoz (the Band) - Fatso Blasto - Bad Touching - Spacey Tinkles - Mr. Shits - Home: Cum in Queen - The Flying Guilltoines - Lo Pan - Blowed Up - The British Teeth - Rape the Handicapped (whoops, thats a potential album title) and - Dr. Kokkspenis Sukery (The things i miss out on when i'm not home at 2 am, i tell ya.) If anybody is looking for anything a little more highbrow to cleanse their psychological palate now, just click here. |
| Tuesday, January 27th, 2004 | |
| 11:04 am | Then let not winter's ragged hand deface in thee thy summer. The entire world's been turned into a goddamned snow-packed hockey rink. As such, last night's attempted trek to Murray Avenue (all of a block and a half away from our front door) for Shakespeare and fresh vegetables became a disaster equaled only by Robert Falcon Scott's failed 1912 expedition to the South Pole. So, for breakfast this morning, i was reduced to dining on ice cream. To quote Scott himself: "I do not think we can hope for better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more."." |
| Sunday, January 25th, 2004 | |
| 3:25 pm | Just spent my last pence on chanpagne and a roasting chicken, all in preparation for tonight's supposed Mega-Storm. Ahh. Current Mood: Annie Lennox |
| Friday, January 23rd, 2004 | |
| 7:43 pm | "Goodbye, kids." Bob Keeshan, ex-marine, ex-Clarabell the Clown, and ex-Captain Kangaroo, is dead. That sucks. I remember when my family first moved to Pittsburgh 20 years ago - it was a battered Captain Kangaroo LP from the Carnegie Library that made the transition to our new home bearable. Christ, i wonder what ever even happened to that record? I know that i don't have it, and that it's not lurking about the closets at my folks'place. Damn. (And speaking of dead children's show hosts, this also reminds me the time when my family sat next to Fred Rogers's family during a performance of "Peter Pan" - starring Chef Brockett as Captain Hook - when i was 10 years old. Crazy, huh?) Anyway, in other geek news, there's this:  I can only hope that the movie is as half as cool as that one-sheet. And part of me hopes that the movie becomes popular enough to warrant midnight cult-screenings of the flick ten years from now, where fans might chant aloud in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew as random members of the audience are mock-crucified onstage... |
| 3:40 am | Update: Singing duets from "Moulin Rouge" with coworkers at top volume (and at 3:30 in the morning) will do wonders for most anybody's mood, it seems. Current Mood: All you need is love! Current Music: Come What May/Roxanne/God Knows What Else... |
| 2:52 am | So Link walks into the Milk Bar with a Cuckoo under one arm, and the bartender says... I'm in a wretcedly bad mood when it comes to the general state of webcomics right now. I've been bored at work all week, and everytime i go to look around for new and interesting comics on the 'net, all i see is lame-o crap. And thank God i'm not reviewing videogame-oriented comics for Comixpedia right now. Instead of a series of rational, well-reasoned treatises on the pros and cons of peoples' individual comics, i would've invariably had a psychological meltdown, which would've began with me verbally skull-fucking anybody who'se ever even thought about creating a sprite-based videogame comic, and then would've ended in my becoming the anti-videogame-webcomic Uni-Bomber, what with me mailing exploding Xboxes filled with broken glass and rusted nails to every comic-creating 14-year old Slipknot fan in the country. Maybe it's the cold weather and even colder pizza talking, but webcomics are making my head ache right now. (Well, Dicebox aside. And Bite Me. And Narbonic. And Penny Arcade. And Dar. And Knights of the Shroud. And Scott McCloud's stuff. And Patrick Farley's stuff. And Derek Kirk Kim's stuff. And...) (Oh, shaddup.) |
| Thursday, January 22nd, 2004 | |
| 2:18 am | Of old friends and new roads. While blissfully zonked out this afternoon after another 24-hour spot of sleeplessness, i hade a gut-bustingly vivid dream in which i ran into Jannelle Hirschopf while visiting Vera and Co. in Toronto again. It's weird to see how, though i haven't talked to Janelle in 10 years, in a dream it felt as if those 10 years hadn't even happened and that we were close buddies again. Crazy. I miss the hell out of that chick. I hope she ain't dead or stuck in a Bengali whorehouse right now or something. Knowing Janelle, that would've been her luck. (And it's probably no coincidence that she popped up in a dream featuring some of the Pants Press girls. After all, she's the only other kid i've ever met in my life who could've gone toe-to-toe talent-wise with any of the Pants Pressers, with a personality to match. But that's neither here or there.) Anyway, what with dreams of the Toronto trip being regurgitated in my brain, and the let-down of not being able to make it to APE this year still fresh in my mind, part of me is crying out for another road trip sometime soon. Maybe somehwere cheap by bus or train for a weekend or so... Current Music: Power of Love - Huey Lewis (thank you, radio) |
| Wednesday, January 21st, 2004 | |
| 1:53 am | Say what you will about this bone-warping, skin-cracking cold - the crystal air and honeyed skies sure do make for some pretty sunrises and sunsets. |
| Saturday, January 17th, 2004 | |
| 6:08 am | I really am a horrible, horrible person. Great. Now all i wanna do is use the phrase "In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long" as often as humanly possible. I want to sing it aloud a la' Pavaratti to the bus drivers, to the children in the park, and to the telephone poles lining my street. P.S.: Boobie Cursor. P.P.S.: If the above-mentioned phrase actually dupes whatshername into boinking whatshisname in the drawing room, i will officially shit a flaming brick of roaring brimstone. (And then i'll be forced to write letters to all the ladies who've spurned ME over the years, so i can seduce THEM with the siren song of this magically-graphic offer of oral stimulation to their baby-making bits. Their sweet and WET baby-making bits! I'll be the most popular boy in all the land.) P.P.P.S.: This reminds of the time when, while reading "IT" as an 11-year-old, i ran across a page where the villain antagonizes the heroine by rudely offering to suck her clitoris up between his teeth. So of course (and partially due to my loose grasp of what a "clitoris" actually was), that lead me to loudly yelling the same thing to all of my friends (most of them males, naturally) for the rest of that entire summer. (And i have the gall to wonder why i wasn't invited to anybody's birthday parties that year. YEESH.) |
| Friday, January 16th, 2004 | |
| 2:51 am | I knew things were going to be bad even before i stepped out onto the sidewalk tonight. Even before the cold hit my skin and sucked the breath from my lungs, i could see how the fathomlessly dark sky had seemed to have stolen all light from the world. With the cold blue crunch of snow underfoot and those billions of cruel chips of ice spinning about the sky, wandering into the street was like stepping onto the surface of the goddamned moon. Anyway, i scraped up enough dough today to pay the phone bill (though in all fairness, the charge for a 3-hour call to New England wasn't quiiiite as steep as i thought it might've been, but still), with enough left over on the side to throw $20 at Alex Robinson for a wee little commission, order a new power supply for my aging scanner, and pick up four bags' worth of groceries. Between all that, and my sudden (and inexplicable) determination to check out the 2012 Summer Olynpics live and in person, life is pretty swell right now. *cautiously eyes the horizon for nuclear warheads suddenly tumbling from the frost-bitten skies* |
| Thursday, January 15th, 2004 | |
| 4:05 am | God stuff. Hoo boy. Blessed Apostle Peter, thou art the shepherd of the sheep, the Prince of the Apostles, unto thee were given the keys of heaven. Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God. The Sacred Sign of the Cross commands you, + as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian Faith. + The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; + She Who by Her humility and from the first moment of Her Immaculate Conception, crushed your proud head. The faith of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and of the other Apostles commands you. + The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you.+ Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the Living God, + by the True God, + by the Holy God, + by the God "Who so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, that every soul believing in Him might not perish but have life everlasting" [S. John 3]; stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church and hindering her liberty. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day of battle, be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the Power of God, thrust into Hell satan and all the evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. |
| Wednesday, January 14th, 2004 | |
| 12:04 am | Jesus Christ.   The ULTIMATE personality test brought to you by Quizilla Current Music: The Girly-Sensitive Mix. Oh, Good God. |