A friend of mine could use some help.

He's become entangled in a huge mess involving:

* a move to a new apartment

* an unpaid debt by a roommate

* an assault by that same roommate upon my friend

* part of my friend's finger being removed during said assault

* the roommate being arrested for this, and finally, as the punchline to this sorry mess...

* my friend being locked out of the apartment he was in the process of moving into.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7366447/

In a nutshell he needs money and he needs it fast. Anything you can throw his way would be appreciated.

Thanks, guys.

---

UPDATE: Holy fuck.

No, wait, let me bold that.

HOLY FUCK.

Yes, much better.

There's a lot more details about exactly what happened, in this post from Taral Wayne:
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7362143/

...but here's the punchline:

KEVIN FUCKING DUANE.

Assholio himself, that's the guy who took a chunk out of my friend Andy.

For those of you who don't know who that is... what lucky people you are.

Rather than explain the entire sorry state of affairs, since it runs about ten years in length, let me sum it up thusly:

He's a rat bastard.

He scammed and ripped off nearly every artist who was in the fandom during the mid to late 90's, and got himself permanently banned from Anthrocon for getting into a screaming match, in the middle of artist's alley, with Uncle Kage's mom.

He is, to date, the only publisher who I have ever had to pull my rights from, not just for non-payment of work, but for continually moving the goalpost any time I tried to deliver that work so that he wouldn't have to pay for it, and then insinuating that I was the crook trying to rip him off, on top of it.

Oh, and he got himself permanently kicked out of Canada.

If that doesn't speak volumes, nothing will.

Not to Godwin this, but to find out that he was living in my friend's spare room is a bit like discovering Adolf Hitler living above a kosher deli.

Somehow, this just makes the situation all that more cosmically understandable.

I've gone from "Lost a finger? How could this happen?" to "Oh, now it all makes perfect sense."

Because Kevin Fucking Duane.

And yes, it is absolutely vital that the middle name not be excluded, because that is how pretty much every artist who has ever had to deal with the little shit, refers to him.

*deep breath*

*exhale*

Anyway, he's in jail.

Again.

I'd say good riddance, but he's been gone from my world for a long time.

Let's hope it stays that way.

What with FA being offline for most of today, I decided to use the time to get into that project I've been talking about a lot recently - namely, the revision of my poser Cobat model.

I've recently discovered that my old Cobalt model was in even worse shape that I had originally thought. I thought it was bad enough that it lacked UV texture coordinates, and proper morph targets, but It now appears that it's also just too low-res.

Back when I first built him, as I said before, I didn't really know what I was doing, so to make things easy on myself (or so I thought at the time) I built him to about half the mesh resolution of a normal poser figure. This made it somewhat easier to build morph targets for the face, since it meant I had fewer verts to push around. However, it seems this has come back to haunt me.

Poser's indirect lighting was choking on it. With a mesh as low-res as mine was, there wasn't enough mesh data for it to work with, and as a result, when rendered under indirect lighting, or global illumination, the model came out with black smudges all over it. You haven't noticed these in any of the renders I posted, because... I airbrushed them away. Yes, in true Playboy-fashion, I was doing touch-ups to get rid of the imperfections.

I hadn't known that the black smudges were due to the model being too low-res. It took a bunch of goolgling and reading through bunches of messageboards where other people had reported the same problems, before I finally tracked down exactly what I had done wrong. (it seems there are a lot of things that can make poser's indirect lighting freak out and start throwing black smudges around. so I had to do process of elimination to figure out which one was the one I was dealing with)

As a result, I've had to go almost all the way back to square one. Dug out the old low-res model, and ran a meshsmooth on it to increase the resolution, and then spent the day painstakingly carving it up into bone groupings to create a test figure. Tedious and time consuming, however It now has twice as many faces as before, and my test render under GI shows a marked improvement in the black-smudge area. He wet from looking like a bystander at a tar pit explosion to having exactly one small dot which was smoothed away in the final render pass.

So, where does this leave me? here are the things I still want to do to it:

Proper UVW coordinates: this will allow me to apply textures to the model rather than just a flat color. This would let me paint on his missing eyebrows, for example. (did anybody notice that like the Mona Lisa, he's got no eyebrows?)

Better eye models: The eyes that he currently has were built from an old tutorial I found way back, on "How to build pixar-style eyes" ... but over the years I came to the conclusion that they just don't work properly. The reason for this, is that the cornea actually protrudes like a little dome, so they're not perfect spheres. And that extra little cornea bulge meant that trying to fit eyelids over his eyeballs was a real challenge. I think I'm going to adapt to something closer to the eyeball models used on Star Wars Rebels, which are clearly spherical, with no cornea bulge. (I also recently discovered that if I want the bulge effect without an actual bulge, I can use a Normals map.)

I'd also like to add the ability to shrink the pupil, and the iris/pupil for those pinpoint-eye dots I use to show extreme expressions. (I believe that starfox/krystal model that's been making the rounds has this ability)

Better eyelids: Again, in going with new eyeball models, I want to try something different with the eyelids. The way they're built at present, it's pretty much impossible for him to open his eyes any more than they are. I also want to add a simple eyelash to the eye, something that I had originally planned for, but left off to make things easier.

Morph targets: The fact that I'm working with a new, higher-res mesh means that this has now become mandatory. none of the old ones will work on it. I'm going to have to redo all of them. This also opens the way for me to get down to work on a phoneme set.

Teeth and tongue: He has teeth but as separate, attached models. I need to actually add these as part of the head model, since doing phoneme morphs pretty much requires them to all be one big piece that can be morphed together. These, again, were originally left off to make things easier.

My end goal is to bring the model closer to the way I draw him. It's going to take a lot of work though.

Luckily I anticipated this being a year-long project.

Anyway, that's where things stand.

Yes, it finally happened.

My family was originally going to go see it over the xmas holidays, with my brother buying tickets for one of the first few showings out in the San Francisco area. But as those of you who've been keeping up with my journals know, we didn't end up going west this year due to some medical stuff.

So, yesterday my dad and I went to the local, and took it in.

I have to say, that for a film made by "The guy who ruined Star Trek" it was quite good.

I give it an 8.5 out of 10.

A nice pastiche of ideas from the original trillogy: Star Wars, Empire and Jedi all rolled into one big ball.

There were a couple of bits of dialogue that felt a little too jokey for the scenes they were part of. The "Which of us should talk now" bit was one. Finn's hammy "I'm doing comedy so I'm saying this line of dialogue in a goofy voice" overacting in his early scenes on "Not Tatooine" was another.

The overall feeling I got from it wasn't "this is a Star Wars film" as much as it was "We played the Star Wars RPG, and this is a movie of our gaming session."

Ok, your character starts on this planet, your character starts over here and you have to escape from here to get to where they are. Ok, you guys have met now, you can talk to each other. Surprise, you're on the Millennium Falcon, and you just met Han Solo. Now, bad guys Are shooting at you. You fumbled your mechanics skill roll so now there are monsters too.

The core concept of the film, that "Darth Vader's grandson builds a bigger, deathier Death Star!" felt a bit fanwankish, too.

It was also missing some of the 40's pulp adventure film gloss that the original trillogy had in spades, and Star Wars Rebels has been so true to. The gradiated wipes as scene transisitons, for example. It was a little too "modern action film" in the overall production and direction.

It still beat the pants off the entire Prequel Trillogy, though. And I am actively looking forward to the next film.

So, to paraphrase a certain tin dog, "A job well done to the extent of eight point five six six six six six..."

So, after many rumblings of "coming soon" and hints that change was in the air, Patreon have rolled out a preview of their new creator page design, and it is... utter garbage.

The "welcome to my Patreon page, here's who I am and what I do" stuff has been stuffed into a subsection, which you have to click on to view. And in it's place they have instead stuck creator posts.

Which means, that once this thing goes from a Preview to the standard design, anyone coming to your Patreon page won't be greeted with a welcome message and information about who you are as an artist, but instead will be greeted with a big wall of YOU CAN'T SEE THIS BECAUSE YOU AREN'T A PATRON messages.

It's like they hired a designer who had no concept of what they were working on. Make it big, make it shiny, and who cares about actual usability. It's new, and new is always better, right?

I've sent them some feedback telling them in no uncertain terms what a design disaster the preview is, and that I do not want it on my Patreon page. I'd advise you folks to do the same, especially any of you who have come to rely on the extra money Patreon brings in. They're about to make the site user-hostile, and that isn't going to be good for anyone.

Go, view the Preview, and send them feedback.

Maybe if enough of us complain, they're rethink any plans they had for rolling this turkey out.

I'm not exactly what you would call religious. I'm not a big fan of the whole church thing, tho I do think the current pope seems to be a pretty right-on guy.

On the other hand, I'm not an atheist.

I've always found those two extremes to be equally loopy, because they both seem to be saying the same thing. Basically, that there is one absolute truth to existence, and I'm the only one who knows what it is. Ignore everybody else. They are wrong. I am right. Suck it.

So.... I'm an agnostic.

Because I have no idea what the hell is going on.

And I'm pretty sure that everyone that I've ever met who claims to, is talking out their ass.

And you're probably wondering what all this has to do with the current holiday season.

Here goes...

Every year around this time, my family - that is, myself and my mom and dad - fly out to California to visit my brother and his wife, and their two kids. It's tradition.

I should, by all rights, be there right now.

But, I'm not.

A couple days before we were scheduled to take our trip, my parents were at their local Church, taking in some food they had cooked for a pot luck supper. A sort of community thing where those who can, bring food. And those who can't are given a nice meal by those who can. A nice sort of rosy-cheeked, hey-everybody-let's-pitch-in sort of thing that brings people together. And I like that.

Anyway, while they were there my mother hurt herself.

She'd gone into the lady's room, and there was a brick in the middle of the floor.

She tripped over it.

The brick was apparently there so it could be used to prop the door open. Somehow it ended up not behind the door where it belonged, but out in the middle of the floor ready for someone to trip over it - which is exactly what happened. My mom tripped, fell, and threw her back out.

And after getting herself looked at, the doctor told her there was no way she could handle a plane trip in her current condition. She will be perfectly alright, but being crammed into a tiny little airline seat isn't on the cards right now. She needs to stretch out and take it easy.

So, our flight to California got moved to Easter. And I'm at home for the holidays.

Yesterday, I got a call from a friend and local fur. He's in the hospital.

He drove himself over to get checked out, after feeling a bit out of it. They checked him over, and now he's staying there to have surgery done. Heart stuff. Nothing too serious, but it will mean that he's going to be there through the New Year.

And he's been living with his 95-year old father, who is a diabetic. And who needs a daily set of pills to keep going. All of this medication was being handled, sorted and administered by my friend, who now couldn't, due to being laid up in a hospital ward. And being that I am the only person he really knows locally, he called on me to go over and take care of things for him. Because his dad was going to try and go for the rest of the year without his insulin or his pills, because my friend wasn't there to give them to him.

So, I spent today, Xmas day, over at my friend's house sorting his dad's pills, and getting his insulin injectors ready. And when we stopped back to the hospital, my own father sat my friend down and explained to him that the state we live in has a care system for the elderly who will handle all that for him, for free. All he has to do is ask the hospital to set him up with a social worker. My own parents have had to make use of this service many times, and my dad knew exactly who he needed to talk to and what to tell them to get someone looking after his father until he was discharged and could return home.

Okay, okay.. Christmas message. I'm getting to it. Be patient.

Here's the point of all this...

If Christmas had gone as planned. We wouldn't have been here. We'd have been on the other side of the country. So, nobody would have been there to get his phone call, and to make sure my friend's dad got his medication. Nobody would have been here to explain about the social network that was available to him.

My friend would have been completely alone. In a hospital. On Christmas.

And his dad probably would have died from not taking his medication.

And all this was prevented... by a brick.

In a bathroom.

In a church.

As I said at the start of this, I'm not really religious.

But you know, they say God works in mysterious ways.

And if you believe in that sort of thing, then I'm here to tell you that it seem to involve chucking bricks at old ladies.

Merry Christmas everybody, or whatever end of the year holiday celebration you choose to adhere to.

But, I doubt they will ever write a song about this Christmas miracle.

HEALING TIME
a story concept by Chris Sutor

Our episode begins where the previous episode ended, with Capaldi's Doctor in the console room, ready to take on the universe. He walks over to the console, and places his hands on the edge.

Shot of his hands on the console. A drop of blood lands on the console, between them.

Cut to The Doctor looking suddenly pained, as he grasps his head in agony. He is bleeding from wounds on both temples.

He collapses to the floor, and we have a POV shot, looking up at the spinning "wedding cake" structure on the ceiling of the console room, which goes a bit blurry. Everything goes white.

Voice from offscreen: He's waking up! Alert the medics!

POV shot: looking up into the concerned face of a person in hospital white.

Nurse: Are you awake? Can you hear me?

Doctor: (voice gravelly) Where am I? What's going on?

POV: The nurse retrieves a mug of water and hands it to The Doctor.

Nurse: Drink this. You've been asleep.

The medic arrives.

media: Ah, you're finally awake. Good.

We now cut to a shot of The Doctor, sitting in a white room, in a white hospital bed, in a hospital gown. He has two wounds on either temple, which are slightly bloody, he drinks from the cup.

As he lowers the cup, after drinking, we see that he's not Peter Capaldi. He's Matt Smith.

Medic: What do you remember?

Doctor: I don't know.

Cut to opening titles.

After the titles, we return to Matt Smith, still in a hospital gown and robe, as he's being led down a white, slightly futuristic hospital hallway. It turns out, he's on Gallifrey, and he's been asleep for a very long time, the result of having one of those dream crabs attached to his head.

He sits in a session with a psychologist, as they go over his recent memories, trying to help him come to terms with them. Most of the following discussion is done in voice-overs, of scenes of The Doctor slowly recuperating.

Doctor: So, I never regenerated?

Psych: Not recently, no.

Doctor: I never got all goth and emo and started wearing sunglasses?

Psych: Never happened.

Doctor: Earth's Moon never turned out to be a giant egg?

Psych: never happened.

Doctor: I never kicked Rassilon off Gallifrey?

Psych: Rassilon has been dead for centuries.

Doctor: And what about Clara?

Psych: Clara never existed. We've been monitoring your mind through the Matrix, and we believe she was a manifestation of your superego, trying to help you cope with the nightmare dreamscape you were trapped in. But no, she was never real.

Doctor: You're going to tell me I never met Robin Hood next.

Psych: Do I really need to?

Doctor: so, the Brigadier never turned into a cyberman. The Master never turned into a woman... what about Rory and Amy?

Psych: Rory and Amy are safe and sound, at home in the 21st century, exactly where you left them the last time you visited.

Doctor: Not trapped in the past by stone angels?

Psych: Never happened. And we would advise that you let them remain there. They've moved on with their lives, Doctor.

Doctor: So I'm all alone, then. It's just me.

Psych: Not nessecarily.

At this point, the Doctor is led through a door and into a room, where, sitting in a chair is...

Doctor: Susan!

Yes, indeed, Susan, played by Carol Anne Ford. A lot older than last time we saw her, but still very recognizable.

Now, back on his feet and dressed, The Doctor is escorted, by Susan, to visit his TARDIS, where it sits in a repair bay. The technicians there tell him that they have managed to reset the interior to factory spec (i.e, something akin to the original Hartnell console room, like we just had in HellBent), but the chameleon circuit is still stuck in the shape of a police box. Oh, and in trying to get that fixed, they seem to have made the steering a bit wonky. But not to worry, soon have it all sorted out.

However, things are afoot. There are forces at work on Gallifrey that are not happy for The Doctor to be there. As the Doctor tries to fit back into timelord society, an assassination attempt is made on him, and Susan is mortally wounded.

She, of course, regenerates into a new, younger actress.

Doctor: Oh, Susan. Your first regeneration. I'm so sorry.

Susan: It's alright Grandfather, My old body was wearing a bit thin, anyway.

Angry voices are now being raised about the danger that The Doctor's presence brings to Gallifrey. Political infighting begins. There is talk of having him arrested or eliminated as a threat to society.

With all this boiling around him, The Doctor decides life on Gallifrey will never be safe for him, or those close to him, so he does the only thing he can do. He steals his TARDIS and runs.

Doctor: (tiredly) Just one last thing left to do.

And the Doctor collapses to the floor in the console room and regenerates. Into Peter Capaldi.

And so the episode ends where it all began. The Doctor, and his granddaugher Susan are on the run from Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS.

And nobody knows where they will end up next.

---

There's your soft reboot. Enjoy.

Oh Look, Clara's not dead.

See my surprised face? This isn't it.

And she's basically immortal now.

And she's got her own TARDIS.

Moffatt's Mary Sue Forever. *gagging noises*


Anyway... how about that Console room, eh? Really goes to show that if the production team were just allowed to build it, we could have had something truly amazing. Instead of year after year of various takes on dirty, grimy, wacky and ugly.

And at the end, when Capaldi goes back into his TARDIS, and it's back to the dowdy old dustbin of a console room he's always had, it really does look that much worse for the comparison.

And now there's a perfectly good TARDIS set out there that isn't going to be used.

Tragic.

So, to sum up:

Brilliant console room.

Pity about the rest of it.

Yes, at last the moment is here. Commissions are open for December.

Let's get to the specifics:

PRIVATE MESSAGE me if you want to get on the list.

1 character per slot (if you want a commission containing 2 characters, that uses up 2 slots).

If you have a specific character in mind, HAVE REFERENCE IMAGES READY.

Speedy payment (via Paypal) is key; if you can't send payment within the day please don't ask for slots.

I won't draw: Cubpr0n, Scat, Gore, complex details or backgrounds.

A privacy fee ($20) applies if you do not want your commission uploaded to my gallery.

Also - These will be DIGITAL ONLY. I don't have a printer. However, I will be happy to send you the full-size file, if requested.

And please, keep the request short: just the specifics. A sentence or two would be just fine.

Here is the cost:

COST:

Inked:
$20 per character
EXAMPLES:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8553547/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8706249/

Color:
$25 per character
Examples:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8619283/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9457179/

First come, first serve...

1.  netreek - COLOR - PAID - DONE
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18657803/

2.  Serath - COLOR - PAID - DONE
3.  Serath
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18678518/

4.  Ian_R_Soulfox - COLOR - PAID - DONE
5.  Ian_R_Soulfox
6.  Ian_R_Soulfox
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18891153/

This is sort of an Update and Addendum to my previous Journal posting.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7207492/

I know that I said I'd be opening commissions early this week, and that obviously didn't happen. I didn't plan on the rigamaroll around Thanksgiving to so fully intrude upon my work time. We've had relatives staying over and I had to go do a lot of family related stuff that I otherwise could have avoided.

But, the holiday is over. The relatives have moved along home....I'm free, again.

So, here's how things stand on that front:

I have one more Patron commission to finish up tonight.

I would like to finish the next page of the comic I've been doing for my Patreon. Just three figures left to ink and color on that.

Monday will likely be Evil Twin day, once again.

So... After that I should be ready to open Commissions. Tuesday evening, Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully.

And on the commissions front.... I did some calculations. 100 Commission slots at an average of $20 a pop should net me most of the money I need for the scooter project. If I do ten slots a month, that means it should take ten months to do all of them.

So.. possibly by this time next year, I will have some new wheels. Maybe. We'll see.

Thanks for your patience, folks. And thanks again for being interested enough in what I do to pay me to keep doing it.

Cheers!

In 1998, I plunked down the money for my very first Brand New Car™ - a 1998 Chrysler Neon.

Over the years that I'd been driving, I'd been through a couple of hand-me down vehicles. The Ford LTD wagon that belonged to pretty much everybody in my family before it got to me, and a third-hand Chrylser LeBaron that I drove right up until the engine literally blew itself to bits, on the way to work one Friday.

And so, I got the Neon. Which I spent all of a day shopping for, and which I bought for three very important reasons:

1) One of the people I worked with owned one.

2) I needed a car by Monday, and nobody was open to sell me one on Sunday, so it was buy one Saturday or else.

3) It was blue.

And though it was a good car, and thought I fought like hell at times to make the payments on time, and though I eventually paid it off.... I'm afraid that it's time for it to go.

And I won't be replacing it with another one.

It's been 17 years since I made that first payment, and in those 17 years, the world has changed a lot.

For example, I no longer need a car to drive to a job at a building with a boss and a timeclock and people, just to keep the money happening. I can thank you folks for a large part of that - and the internet for a good chunk of it too.

I work on the internet. I get paid on the internet. Hell, I SHOP on the internet too. I don't need to go anywhere anymore, really.

Quite frankly, the only thing I need a body for is sex, and I mostly do that over the internet, too. if I could plunk my brain into a jar, and live on the internet for the rest of my life as a virtual avatar I'd be all over that. Sign me up for virtual sex with my favorite JPG fantasy. I'm there.

Meanwhile, the neon has basically sat out front, slowly going to pot.

It's been parked in front of our next door neighbor's house since last winter. It hasn't actually moved in over a year.

And the neighbor recently died. And instead of leaving the house to her kids, she left it to the Humane Society, who will probably be rolling in to claim it at some point.

Shortly after the neighbor's passing, my dad opened discussion with me about my car, and what we should do with it now that my parking space might be going away. And the fact that the car was starting to resemble a sandbar, complete with it's own ecosystem growing around it.

It's got a brand new battery in it, which is dead, because I never drove the car enough to keep a charge on it. It's got a speedometer that doesn't work half the time, two junkyard tires, and about half of it's original clearcoat. There's a nasty scar on the hood from where the new Jersey Highway Safety Van took a bite out of it that one time.

Still got all four hubcaps tho.

Oh, and my insurance rates just got hiked again. $255 quarterly. That's a lot of money to be paying every couple months, for an oversized paperweight.

So, it's time to let it go.

My dad suggested I take it to one of those places that buy junk cars. I'm not betting that they'll give me much, if anything for it. But it will mean I won't have those quarterly payments to deal with anymore. He said that I can use their cars anytime I need to drive anywhere. And while I appreciate the sentiment, it kinda leaves me a bit ill at ease. Ever since I moved home, I've been doing my best not to fall into the trap of becoming a mooch.

So, I want a vehicle of my own. Something I paid for, with my money.

But, what can that be?

This is where the revolution comes in.

I have an idea - something I can park in the garage, where I can easily keep a charge on the battery, by leaving the battery plugged into a wall charger.

I want a scooter.

They're incredible on gas, and the insurance on them is a pittance compared to what I have been paying.

And yes, while I can use my folks cars on days when it's raining or snowing, or otherwise inclement.... I'll still have my own wheels, and some relative independence.

It won't feel so much like I've just given up, if ya know what I mean.

So, yeah... It seems like a winner of an idea all around.

A local friend and I did some comparison shopping online over Thanksgiving. We looked at a great many makes and models. Yamaha, Honda, Kymco, even the mighty Vespa...

But I think I found my dream ride, right here:
http://genuinescooters.com/anniversary.html

Unfortunately, it's a limited edition, so I have no guarantee that it will still be available by the time I get some money together to buy one. I love the look of those whitewalls though. And that blue.

My fallback option is this:
http://genuinescooters.com/buddy125.html

...in blue, natch. Shame it doesn't come with whitewalls too.

But if I do go for this, it's going to mean that I'll need to do a couple things first.

Mainly, I'll need to get the cash together to buy one. These things are a couple of thousand bucks each - and although not having car insurance to pay should leave me with just about a thousand a year extra, it wouldn't be enough to get one in any kind of reasonable timetable.

So... what this means to you folks is, in the coming year I will probably end up doing regular commissions again, in an attempt to scrape scooter money together.

The other thing I'll need to do is get a motorcycle license. Which means taking, and passing a motorcycle training course.

I have to admit I'm a bit nervous about that.

....I haven't actually ridden anything with two wheels since my 80's BMX days.

I know they say that you never forget how to ride a bike, but I never had a bike with a throttle before.

This is all distant-future, planning for someday, pie in the sky stuff for right now.

I still need to get rid of my car first.

And right after I pay the car insurance on it, again.

Wotta world.

But hey, I have a plan now, at least.

And hey... I'll be helping to save the environment by not using so much of it.

So, I've just sat through the first episode of this new series.

After Daredevil, the first of the Netflix-only MARVEL TV series, I was looking forward to seeing this. I figured Daredevil was (apart from being really stupidly violent) quite good, so this should be just as good, right? Lots of action and excitement and really wild stuff.

However... ugh. Maybe it gets better the further you get in, but this first episode was absolutely dire.

Maybe it's brilliant if you're one of those folks who have read the comic books this is based on, and already know everything that there is to know about who these people are and about what's going on, but coming into this as a complete noob.... I spent most of the first episode completely lost, and not sure why I should care about anything that was happening. I toughed it out to the end credits primarily on intertia.

By the end of the episode I had finally gotten a grasp on what it was all about, which was made easy by the fact that in the last five minutes we finally hit the storyline, but... man. What an uphill climb.

This goes right back to my complaints about Man From U.N.C.L.E. - Directors!: stop being so damn stylish and just tell me what the hell is going on, ok? Knock off the tapdancing and get to the point!

And goddamn, was this first episode slow in getting to its point. So much padding. So few plot details. It just dragged and dragged.... It was five minutes of plot wrapped in 45 minutes of people looking artistically miserable.

Oh, and with a sex scene that also dragged.

No, really. Just when you think, ok. They wasted enough screen time on this - move along! it goes and continues. And when I start complaining that the sex scene is taking too long, the sex scene is taking too long. That is gospel. The pornographic teddybear has spoken.

When the episode finally does get to the point, the story ends up being revealed to be a "suddenly, years later" sequel to a story that we haven't seen. I'm thinking that instead of dropping me in the deep end and only grudgingly, and eventually telling me what this mess was all about, it would have been better to start there, and tell that story instead of this one. That might have at least placed all this in some context. I actually had to go and check that I was watching the first episode, and not one of the others by mistake.

Considering MARVEL's track record, from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which I enjoy) to Agent Carter (which is so good that I wish I had made it), to Daredevil (which I already touched upon) Jessica Jones has a lot to live up to.

I'm hoping that this is one of those series that will benefit from having the whole season dumped on the public all at once. because really, if I had to wait a week for the next one, I probably wouldn't bother. But since the next episode is just sitting there looking at me, I figure I might as well see if things improve.

I am holding onto a shred of hope that it goes uphill from here, as I dive back in.

Don't let me down MARVEL.

And you folks out there... Wish me luck.

Update: Just finished Episode 4, and yes it does get better.

Update 2: Seen all if it now.

I dunno... it wasn't bad, but it wasn't really that good. Daredevil was way better.

I think part of that was that after all the unapologetically comic bookish stuff we've had recently, not just from the MARVEL side of things, but also from DC by way of Flash and Arrow and all things connected to those.... This just felt like a step backwards. A regressive throwback to the days when comic book properties were just too embarrassed to admit they were comic book properties. Look ma! No supersuit! We're dark and grungy and real!

Daredevil kinda made Jessica Jones look and feel outdated, before it even aired. Hopefully if they do a second season, they'll d something to fix that.

Shortly after the good news broke that MST3K had made their two million dollar goal, which would enable them to begin the process of creating three new episodes, came additional good news:

Turkey Day is back - and it will be streaming live on the web on Thanksgiving day, starting 12noon EST/ 9am PST.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....posts/1420187/

That's a link to the post on their kickstarter page announcing it it.

Here's a list of where you can watch the show on Thanksgiving Day:

COMPUTER / WEB
• Right here at BringBackMST3K.com
• On Yahoo: https://screen.yahoo.com/mst3k

APPLE iOS DEVICES
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428: http://apple.co/1kHz6Mh
• Yahoo App: http://apple.co/1MoXzPv

ANDROID DEVICES
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428: http://bit.ly/google-plutotv
• Yahoo App: http://bit.ly/google-yahooTV

AMAZON DEVICES
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428: http://amzn.to/1HaTU98

AMAZON FIRE TV
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428
• Yahoo

APPLE TV
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428
• Yahoo

ANDROID TV
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428
• Yahoo

CHROMECAST
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428
• Yahoo

ROKU
• Pluto TV App, Channel 428
• Yahoo

SAMSUNG TV, SONY TV, TIVO, VIZIO
• Yahoo

XBOX 360, XBOX ONE:
• Yahoo

Joel and the bots are back!

Let the DEEP HURTING commence!

Oh, the things I could do if only I had my own television network...

Yes, I know - you're saying "A TV series of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide? it's been done."

Well, yes and no.

Yes, there was a TV series, and no, what I'm suggesting would be completely unlike it.

Every version of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide that has ever been released has stuck to essentially the same story - my intention is not to tell that same story, but instead to use it as source material for a much greater adventure.

Doing this, I believe would be not only correct, but something that Douglas Adams himself, were he still with us, would take great delight in. He once commented that he rather enjoyed the fact that no two adaptations of the property were the same. And this adaptation will be the most un-same of them all. Think of it as one of the many alternate versions of the Guide's universe that was briefly explored in Adam's final Hitchhiker's book.

And this all stems from the one major problem I've had with HHGTTG since I first encountered it.

It opens with a statement, which is a lie:

"This is the story of the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy, perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor."

Well, no. It isn't. The story that unfolds isn't about the book at all. It's about Zaphod and the Heart Of Gold, and Magrathea, and mice and how the Earth was a computer calculating the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.

The book barely got a guest role in what was supposed to be its own story.

The original radio series, which is the wellspring from whence all subsequent versions came, actually goes one better on being wrong:

"To tell the story of the book, it’s best to tell the story of some of the minds behind it. A human, from the planet Earth, was one of them"

No, he wasn't. At least not in any version of the story to see release.

Now, to be fair, this line got changed in every version of the story that followed after it, but as it forms the very opening of the very first version, I think it makes a nice jumping off point.

It will be the basis for our concept.

So here goes:

Megadodo Publications has created an electronic book called The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, which has achieved a manner of recognition almost unheard of for a simple travel guide: outselling The Celestial Homecare Omnibus, and knocking Oollon Colluphid's latest philosophical blockbuster off the top of the chart. In fact, it becomes such a big seller that it eventually supplants The Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge in the galaxy.

It is the book with all the answers.

One problem - most of those answers are wrong.

You see, it's not even remotely accurate. And when the publishers get hauled into court over the sheer volume of death and devastation which has been wrought by the book's inaccuracies, and subsequently fail to convince a jury that "Truth is beauty, therefore beauty is truth, and since our book is widely regarded as a beautiful piece of work, it is therefore true no matter how inaccurate it is" they are forced to slap a disclaimer on the back cover (Now 0.0005% Accurate!) and begin work on a revised edition that will be less lawsuit-prone.

Ford Prefect is a field researcher for the revised edition of The Guide, but when he visits Earth at the start of his new assignment he gets stranded there. He spends his days and nights researching the planet, writing entry data, and trying and failing to attract a passing spaceship, upon which to escape back to the stars. Along the way he meets and befriends Earth human Arthur Dent, and the two become close-ish chums.

So, when a spaceship finally does arrive, and Ford realizes it's the Vogons who have come to destroy the Earth, he decides to seize the opportunity to Escape the Earth before it is destroyed, and to take Arthur with him.

After the usual business about Arthur's house being knocked down, the two use Ford's electric thumb device to escape onto the Vogon ship. Ford then explains to Arthur exactly who he is and what he's about. He shows Arthur The Guide, and explains how it's not accurate. Arthur reads the entry for Earth which says nothing but "Mostly Harmless."

At this point, the story will diverge from the expected route. Ford and Arthur will not get thrown out of an airlock and find themselves on The Heart Of Gold. Instead they will discover that The Vogons believe that they are free to to destroy the Earth to make way for a Hyperspace bypass, because everybody believes the planet to be unoccupied.

As proof that the planet is unoccupied the Vogons present their copy of The Guide and point to Earth's entry which "doesn't say anything about anybody living on it."

Being hopelessly bureaucratic in nature, the Vogons were unwilling and unable to disobey their demolition orders unless they are presented with a statement, in writing, in person, by a resident the planet, that when they got there someone was at home.

Arthur quickly scribbles down a note on a scrap of paper stating that Earth is occupied, and Ford chimes in, saying that the humans are demanding squatter's rights. The Vogons, now legally unable to move forward with the destruction of the Earth, are forced to retreat.

Seeing that the Earth has just narrowly avoided being destroyed by The Guide's shoddy information, Arthur decides he's "Bloody well coming with you, Ford." He's going to see to it that this doesn't happen to anyone else, by helping to write the new edition, and making sure it's as accurate as can be.

Ford and Arthur blackmail the Vogons into delivering them to Ursa Minor Beta, the headquarters of Megadodo publications, by refusing to fill out some required paperwork unless they do so. They then Electronic Thumb their way down to the planet.

At Megadodo Publications Ford and Arthur discover that while Ford had been away, Megadodo had been forced to cut costs by downsizing their employees. In fact, they've cut so much cost that they've fired everyone who worked for the company except Ford. And the only reason they didn't fire Ford was because nobody knew how to reach him. He is now the sole employee of the company, apart from Zarniwoop, the man in charge.

Ford delivers all the entry information he had written about the Earth, they watch as Earth's entry is updated across the network, and the accuracy rating on the back cover is updated to reflect the new more accurate material which has been added, and then Ford officially hires Arthur on as his research assistant.

Together, the two set off to research and revise the Hitchhiker's Guide by hitch-hiking their way across the Galaxy - before the book's inaccuracies destroy what's left of it.

With Ford as a sort of Anti-Doctor Who, and Arthur as a sort of Anti-Doctor Who Assistant, every week the two visit a new planet, and get embroiled in a new adventure as they attempt to uncover the details that will allow them to write the most accurate Guide entry for that world that they can (and then hitch-hike to the next planet by hook or by crook.)

Along the way they will run into familiar faces and names. Zaphod and Trillian (who have just stolen the Heart Of Gold), Marvin the Paranoid Android, Eccentrica Gallumbits, the planet Bethselamin....

Anyway, that's the plan.

By not adhering to the usual story, we expand upon it, for a tale of much broader scope, which allows us to explore Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Universe in greater detail and with more depth than ever before. We see the planets, we meet the people, and we get wrapped up in the adventure of just getting through it all in one piece.

And this time Arthur actually gets to help write the book.

so.... Having said all that...

Anybody out there own a TV network?

Out New York way, there's a drink called an Egg Cream. This is basically chocolate milk with a shot of Seltzer in it to give it fizz.

I took that idea and ran with it - the end result is my go-to drink when I need a boot-to-the-head style energy infusion.

For this, you need a pint mug.

Take that pint mug, and pour a quarter inch of chocolate syrup in the bottom.

I use Hershey's but you can probably use Bosco too.

Open one can of Dr Pepper and pour it in. Mix it well - it will foam right up, but shouldn't overflow.

Mix it until the foam starts to dissipate.

Top the mug off with milk.

Add a straw, stir well and drink.

I call this a Dirty Coke, because the first few times I made it, I used Coca-Cola. And the end result looked something like the water in the local drainage canal. I've since made it with Cherry Coke, Dr pepper and Cherry Dr Pepper.

I think the regular Dr Pepper works best.

Give it a try sometime.

The following is a true tale of life in a minimum-wage hellhole.

Not sure if I should mention the name of the place, but it's a prominent burger chain.

One without a clown as a mascot, if that narrows things down a bit.

The restaurant building where all this happened is no longer there. The burger chain company gave the place a rather heavy makeover a few years back, which included halfway tearing it down and rebuilding it. But, there's still a franchise in essentially the same spot, with the same drive through and parking lot. The same front doors.

The same unfortunate location.

But, the building itself is mostly immaterial to the story.

It's the unfortunate location that is the key.

And this is why: This particular establishment is built at the edge of an airport in what's known as The Dead Zone. This is the area at the end of a runway which is supposed to be kept empty, since it's where airplanes are expected to crash if they fail to take off. But somehow (mostly thanks to our state's completely corrupt building commission), this Dead Zone not only contained this burger place, but also a rather large 4-lane highway crossroads. The runway lights actually extended out across our parking lot, into the road, and across all four lanes of traffic.

That's right. Our restaurant was built right under the runway. Directly in the flight path.

This wasn't usually a big problem, because this airport wasn't a major transit hub, and it didn't see much air traffic. I don't believe there were any commercial airlines using it. There's a National Guard base connected to it, and they'd fly out from time to time. But they always used the other runway, at the other end of the airport. Mostly it was small, privately owned Cessna size craft that went zooming over us. Until this one weekend, when a big flashy news story appeared in the local paper.

The Concorde was coming to town. And it was going to be landing on our runway.

As soon as the manager got wind of the news, she immediately decided to make an event out of it. Since the windows in our seating area looked out across the parking lot at the start of the asphalt runway strip itself, and since the plane would be passing directly over us, it was the ultimate front row seat and she marketed the hell out of that fact. WATCH CONCORDE LAND HERE went up on the sign. Flyers got printed up. A "No refills" sign went up on the soda machine. And when the day arrived, the place was packed wall to wall with eager onlookers.

If you've ever worked fast food, you know that nothing can induce the same level of giddy fright that someone shouting the word "BUS!!" can. Well this was like having a bus pull up, times ten. All the tables were crammed. The floor space was standing room only. We had people spilling out the side door into the parking lot, and people were camping out, tailgating in the lot like it was a rock concert. The drive-through was backed up. Kids were running around unsupervised. Teenagers were making out. A party atmosphere pervaded the place.

And the star attraction was headed our way.

A low, distant rumble heralded the arrival of the craft. And the rumble got louder. And it got louder.

Back in the kitchen, things started falling off shelves. The pile of junk atop the manager's desk collapsed, spilling out across the floor in an avalanche of paperwork and cheesy knick-knacks. Jet engine noise was blaring down the chimney, and the metal hood above the burger-cooking machine was acting like a resonant amplifier. Panicked by the rising scream of sound, the Kitchen staff tried to scatter, but there was literally no place for us to go. The kitchen door opened outwards, and with the restaurant as packed as it was, there simply wasn't room to get it open.

As the roar rose to deafening levels, evacuation was finally achieved when the staff scrambled in blind terror over the front counter and herded out the front doors, which looked out across the drive-through lane, and across the highway intersection.

And of course, we were looking right down the flight line towards Concorde when it came rocketing overhead.

When it passed over us, the noise was so loud you couldn't hear it. It was just this sort of pressure wave behind your eyes. Wash from the jet engines practically took us off our feet. It took an antenna off the roof that one of the managers had strung up there so she could watch her soap operas on a portable tv in the little managers cubicle.

And as it crossed the parking lot towards the airport fence and touchdown, one of the engines passed directly through the big leafy center of one of the many decorative trees that had been planted around the perimeter of the lot.

The manager's antenna came crashing down in the middle of the highway nearly landing atop a passing car. Tires screeched out on the highway as traffic was buffetted. The parking lot turned instantly into a whirlwind of whipping twigs, leaves, blown garbage and screaming customers.

And then, it was over.

The rumble faded into the distance once again as Concorde touched down inside the airport proper, and bedraggled customers slowly began picking themselves up off the ground. The parking lot looked like a scene from a disaster movie. Car windows were broken. Trash was everywhere. Branches and leaves were everywhere. People were staggering around like zombies with a multitude of bleeding cuts and scrapes. There was a stunned moment of silence, and then.... a cheer went up from inside the restaurant.

The crowd were absolutely delighted by the spectacle of it all.

Later, as we were cleaning up for closing, me and another employee were tasked with climbing up on the roof and putting the manager's antenna back up. In the process of doing so we discovered that Concorde had apparently snipped it off about six inches from the top of the ventilator chimney, which the manager had used as a mounting point.

And there was black rubber on the break.

Which means that six inches was probably all the distance which had come between a restaurant full of people cheering the destruction, or becoming part of it.

To this day, I still have a horrifying mental image in my head of Concorde's landing gear smacking into the chimney, snagging on it, tearing the ventilator through the roof, and causing the whole plane to lurch ground-ward, right into that parking lot full of people.

That was the one and only time Concorde ever landed there. It seems that the people who make such decisions decided after the fact that our runway wasn't capable of handling a plane that big. I suspect they probably made that decision based on the quantity of tree clinging to their engine intake. And possibly some severe tire damage.

And while sales were through the roof that weekend, we didn't host another special event for a good long time.

As part of the ongoing media circus surrounding the pre-show festivities which in turn are surrounding next year's Presidential election here in the United States, one of the Candidates - one John Ellis Bush, (or as he prefers to be known since it makes him sound less like a spoiled rich brat, and more like a Beverly Hillbilly, Jeb!) was asked if he would time travel back to the past and kill Baby Hitler.

Yes, this is a question that was actually asked of a man running for President of the United States.

And of course Jeb! said yes, because nobody wants their campaign platform to be "No, I would not kill Hitler!"

Well, I'm not running for President. So, let's talk about why I wouldn't do it.

In fact, let's talk about why doing it is isn't just impossible, it's a very bad idea.

Thought experiment:

Here I stand, outside the door of the Time Rotor, my time and space vehicle. It's big and shiny and can go anywhere in space and time, with the added bonus that Steven Moffatt has no say in the matter. And now, I'm showing it to you, and you ask me...

"Are we going to go kill Baby Hitler?"

To which I respond "Who?"

"Adolf Hitler," you say, "You know. Bad guy. Leader of the runners-up in World War Two. Did that whole Trying To Take Over The World bit. Ordered the murder of six million people for being Jewish, black, homosexual, drag queens, gypsies, or just generally because they looked at him funny. That guy. Are we going to go kill him before he can carry out his evil scheme and thereby prevent death and bloodshed on a historic scale?"

"Right," I say." Get in.

So, we go and we do it.

You and I.

Back in time.

Death To Baby Hitler.

And when Baby Hitler dies, history changes. Maybe World War Two still happens. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe those six million people live on and do something with their lives. Maybe something even worse happens to them. But that's all immaterial - it doesn't matter.

What does matter is this: through whatever twist of fate that unfolds, history continues to move forward with one year following the next, until finally this year arrives, and then today happens, and now, it is now, again.

...and we find ourselves standing here outside my Time Machine.

...and you say....?

Well, what you don't say is "Are we going to go kill Baby Hitler?" Because there never was a Hitler.

Because he died as a baby.

So he had no impact on history.

So you and I have never heard of him.

So... we don't go.

We don't do it.

We don't kill Baby Hitler.

Baby Hitler lives.

And just like that, we're right back to where we started.

Nazis. Gas Chambers. The Works.

So, now what?

Do we kill Baby Hitler?

Yes we do, and no we didn't.

In a situation worthy of an 80's slasher film villain, every time he is killed, he comes right back to life.

One result erases the next, as all of history changed, and changed again.

Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead.

Time is bent back and forth over and over and over.

And that outcome is one that I find somewhat terrifying.

Because, if you continue bending something back and forth...

...eventually it will break.

So...

It's today now.

Here I stand outside my Time Machine.

Think on this carefully...

What should we do?

So, this is a thing I've just watched.

The big budget movie version.

I didn't hate it. But it could have been so much better.

I've always been annoyed by directors who spend their time tap dancing, and doing backflips...Look at me! I'm directing the hell out of this film! Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Tah Daaah!...

...instead of just telling the damn story.

Far be it from me to complain when someone wants to show off a bit. That's basically my entire job description at the moment. But, you shouldn't do it to such an extreme measure that the work suffers for it. And this film suffers from being over-directed.

Too many backflips. Too much tap dancing. Just tell me the damn story!

When your directing deadens the impact of your carefully choreographed fight scene, you're doing it wrong.

And don't leave out half the details of a scene, just to make it confusing about what's happening so that five minutes later you can hit the rewind button, and go.. hah! Here's what I didn't tell you before! Now it all makes sense, right? Gosh I'm clever! Bet you never saw that coming, did you!?

Listen, you idiot - It should have made sense the first time! You set up, and you pay off. That's what makes a scene exciting... Knowing that something's about to happen and then watching it as it does. It's that little shiver of anticipation that you get right at the tipping point at the top of a roller coaster where you're looking right down the hill and knowing that in just a few seconds, you're going over that... So hang on tight. Because here it comes.

Deliberately trying to get the audience lost about what's happening in a scene by omitting the key details isn't how you keep an audience excited. The first time it was.. ok.. heh. clever. By the fourth time I was so ready to just fast-forward to the explanation for what was going on. Get on with it!

It started to feel like I was sitting there waiting for the punchline to a joke that has gone on for five times as long as any joke should, because the person telling it feels the need to keep backing up and changing the details. A priest, a nun and a rabbi are walking through Berlin..no, wait.. it was London. And it was three Bishops. That's right, there were these three Bishops and one was carrying a duck under his arm..or, no...wait, it was a terrier. Or was it a sheep? Oh, no.. not Bishops.. what's that other thing.. you know, without the hat.. And I think it might have actually been Paris....

JUST GET TO THE POINT!

I can sort of see why the one thing that I'd heard about the film before seeing it was.. Hey, how about that car chase scene at the beginning!

...and that's because it's at the beginning, so the movie hasn't yet started to bog down under its' own weight yet.

A slightly less heavy hand in the director's chair could have really made something of this film. And editing out all those points where the film rewinds to finally tell you what is going on would likely have cut the runtime back to normal movie length.

Some movies are extra long because they need to be. This is not one of those movies.

And don't be afraid to play some heroic music when the characters do something heroic.

This isn't a wine commercial for God's sake.

Still...

...it's a better movie than the Star Wars prequels. So it's got that going for it.

I've noticed that there are a few artists doing this thing where they ever so slightly misalign the R G and B channels of an image so that things end up with a weird, slightly rainbowy look to them, especially around any hard edges in the image.

What exactly is it all about? Is this a thing?

A few minutes ago I was riding in the passenger seat of a car belonging to a friend of mine. It was afternoonish and the sun was low and to the right, shining directly onto the right side of my face. So, of course I had my eyes closed.

When you close your eyes under direct sunlight, all you can see is red. So my entire right field of vision was lit up a bright tomato color.

As we drove onwards, we passed into an area with trees, and these began to block the light, resulting in a stroboscopic effect of dark/light/dark/light - which meant I was seeing red/green/red/green.

As we picked up speed, the strobing increased in frequency and suddenly, I was no longer seeing merely red or green. Instead I was seeing a checkerboard-like interference pattern of red and green blobs. And as we drove along, I started trying to figure out why I was seeing, what I was seeing.

The only thing I can think is that the photoreceptor cells in my eye were fighting to keep up with the rapid strobing, and some were running slower than others - so some were still showing green while others had lit up red. I was therefore seeing the mechanics of my own eye at work. The photoreceptors themselves.

I was seeing the inside of my own eyeball.

It kinda tripped me out. In a cool way.

On BBC1, on Saturday, October 31st, in the year 1992... all hell broke loose.

And in the process, what is possibly the greatest piece of televisual horror ever created was unleashed. A creeping, insidious horror that crippled an entire country in fear, because it broke one of the fundamental rules of television.

It lied to you.

What Orson Welles and his alien invasion did for radio, the BBC did for Television. The mass panic that resulted in the showing of the program buried the BBC with a tidal wave of complaints, and ended with the banning of the program from ever being shown again.

GHOSTWATCH.

Using the framework of Reality TV, it featured known British TV stars appearing as themselves, in what was presented as a live television special, broadcast from inside "the most haunted house in England." Michael Parkinson was in the studio, interviewing a psychic researcher. Craig Charles (Lister, from Red Dwarf) worked the crowd in the street outside the house, where the BBC production vans were set up, and children's TV host Sarah Greene was inside the house itself, with a camera team, talking to the family children who were at the center of the reported hauntings.

Of course, it was all fake. It had actually been recorded weeks earlier, and was entirely scripted.

But it was very easy to miss that this was the case. There was a cast list, and the program was listed as DRAMA in The Radio Times, but not everybody got The Radio Times. There was a semi-disclaimer before the program, but people tuning in after it had already commenced wouldn't have seen that. And there were credits at the end which listed writers and actors, but by the point that they appeared onscreen it was already too late.

When I said it was the greatest piece of televisual horror ever, I wasn't kidding. I really do think that this is the case. There are one or two cheap jumpscares, one of which is a cat. But those are deliberately placed so you, the viewer can shrug them off and go "hah, see? I knew it" right before they hit you with something that makes your skin try and crawl off of you.

What makes GHOSTWATCH so effective as horror is that it plays with your head. It doesn't try to hit you all at once. It's a slow burn, that constantly fakes you out as it builds.

The show is about ninety minutes long, and it is divided into basically three sections. These are the first quarter of the show, the last quarter of the show, and the bit in the middle.

During the first quarter, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happens. You are watching a completely normal, and even a little bit boring, reality program. They fill in a few tidbits of backstory, and set up what's to come, but everything is completely normal. It appears to be exactly what it is presented as - a reality show. And the reality is, there's just nothing happening.

But, at twenty minutes or so in, we hit the middle section,and this is where the show starts to screw with you. We're shown a drawing of the ghost "Pipes" that is supposedly haunting the house (drawn by one of the kids) and the ghost is physically described to the viewing audience.

And then, now that you know what the ghost looks like, it starts to make appearances.

But these appearances are subtle. Reflected briefly in a mirror in the background. Reflected in a glass door. Standing behind the crowd out front as the camera pans across the faces of the people waiting to be interviewed. These appearances are never acknowledged, and are just brief enough to be a "when you see it" moment.

But as things progress towards the final section of the show, the ghost stops being subtle.

And in the last quarter of the program, as we learn the truth of the horror that has occurred within, all hell breaks loose.

There's a lot more information at Wikipedia, here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwatch

But if you're feeling up to it, I'd invite you to watch the entire thing for yourself.



And remember.... it's only television.

Once upon a time there was a bright, clever child with magnificent loving parents. The sort of parents who spend their every moment doting on the child, and who exist in a sort of warm, orange-hued soft focus. Their lives together were a thing of pure beauty and filled with love. Because these were the child's real parents, and they were everything that parents should be.

But the child's real parents suddenly and tragically died, and the child was sent to live instead with horrible relatives, who weren't really their parents at all. These relatives were ugly, and sadistic and took great delight in abusing the child, calling the child lazy and good for nothing and generally using the child as nothing more than a slave. And they made the child eat things that barely qualified as food, and forced the child to live in a nasty little dungeon of a room, and they never let the child have any fun, because horrible old adults exist only to make life unbearable for bright, clever children.

But one night, after a particularly nasty bit of horribleness from the ugly old relatives, a mysterious stranger appeared, and spoke to the child of how this wasn't the life for them. The stranger spoke instead of magic and wonder, and escape.

And so the child escaped from their horrible relatives and went off on an amazing adventure, where they made new friends, defeated new enemies and were eventually acknowledged as the natural leader of all, the most bright, clever and wonderful person there is, and which anyone with any sense should have seen immediately.

The horrible old relatives then got what was coming to them, and from that moment forward, the child had fun forever after, and nobody ever got to tell them they had to do things they didn't want to do again.

The End.

A big, red-white-and-blue envelope arrived in the post today from the federal government. Tucked inside, between several layers of advertisements and other TSA propaganda, was my very first PASSPORT.

I am now a man of the world.

Ready and rarin' to zip willy-nilly around the globe on whatever mad quest I should choose.

I should get me a MacGyver jacket.

So fans, today is the big day. Welcome to 2015. Back To The Future Day...

...and Pepsi decided to cash in on this moment, by creating a limited run of Pepsi Perfect, the drink Marty buys in the "Cafe 80's" in BTTF2. They marketed the hell out of this fact all over social media.. PEPSI PERFECT IS NOW REAL! They put up a website, and the clock began ticking down to the big moment when it would finally be released.

All across the internet, eager fans sat parked at amazon's homepage, ready at keyboards for midnight to arrive.

Clicking refresh.

Waiting....

And as the moment came and went, something unexpected happened.

Pepsi Perfect did not arrive.

There was no splashy announcement on the frontpage.

Doing a search yielded only results for normal, everyday Pepsi.

Where was the Pepsi Perfect which had been promised? Where was the much advertised and much anticipated "love letter to the fans?"

It was already gone. Pepsi rolled the product out an hour before deadline, and it was sold out in under a minute.

As news of this fact started to spread out across the web, the jubilant throngs turned ugly.

I would like to have posted the URL here for amazon's sales page, where the one star reviews and customer backlash had all but wiped away the piddling little stack of positive reviews, but even that has gone now - erased by amazon, most likely in the hopes of stopping the bleeding.

But it doesn't change the central fact here: PEPSI has blown it, and blown it bad. As one customer stated "You had thirty years to plan for this, and you still couldn't get it right!" What was supposed to be a massive PR bonanza has turned into an instant black eye.

Now, during their history PEPSI has survived any number of major disasters, from setting Michael Jackson on fire, to the worst product label redesign in the history of fizzy drinks. It just remains to be seen how they will weather pissing off the entire Internet all in one go.

Welcome to 2015.

No flying cars.

No hoverboards.

and no Pepsi Perfect.

Makes you want to see the entire company crash into a manure truck, doesn't it?

As some of you folks know, especially those who have been regular readers of my journals, for some time now there has been a website out there which has been reposting content from furry Patreon pages. This website was also responsible for the rash of phony bot-driven pledges being made to Patreon pages, as this was the mechanism by which they scraped art off the site.

Create phony account at top pledge level, scrape all the content, repost it to this website...

Well, it seems that the party may be over.

Earlier this evening, I had someone sign up for my Patreon.

I have been keeping two bookmarks handy for moments when that happens. One for each of the pages on that website that display the stolen content from my two Patreon accounts. (Cobalt & Evil Twin)

It's become second nature to pop over there anytime someone pledges, to see if I've been scraped again. This was because a recent scraping was usually a good sign that the person who had just signed up was probably the pledgebot.

...what I discovered is that the website hosting the stolen art appears to be hosed.

Broken image icons where the stolen images would be. 404 errors when any attempt is made to access content. Nothing displays.

The entire archive of stolen art appears to be gone.

A quick trip to the frontpage of the site further reveals that the site hasn't actually been updated for almost two weeks.

I'm going to remain hesitantly optimistic... but this may be it.

This could be the end of both the pledgebot and the website it served - or it could just be a temporary thing (which is why, once again, I haven't provided the name of the site in question)

However It appears that it is, at least for now, DOA.

Someday, in the future there will come a day when artificial intelligence, CGI, and voice-print mapping have all matured to a point, that you can plug any TV show into a scanner program, that will then go through all the provided episodes, and work out who the characters are, what their personalities are, how they look, how they sound, how they react in any given situation, what the typical plot-line structure is, and what the standard style of content is for the show, what the incidental music is likely to sound like, and it will then generate entirely new episodes on the fly.

New episodes of any TV show, of any genre, even if the stars are long dead. And you won't be able to tell them apart from the real thing.

...and on that day I will finally have enough TV to keep me happy, without having to sit here wondering why the show I want to watch is on another goddamned hiatus.

Someday....