...Girls with crayola colored hair that makes them so damn hot?

I mean really.

Seriously.

I now have a reliable press and I have an order for 100 shirts that I can pick up Friday.

My shirt-shop will be open within the next two weeks. I have to register myself as a business and then I can start actually selling


Also, look at this!

I learned something important today. Don't overexpose your screen. I had to trash two designs which I'll have to redo tomorrow. This is a serious learning process and I'm always happiest when I'm learning. I now have a workable screen for "Aw, Kitty!" I have to redo the screens for "Motherhood" (for which I already have an order. Not taking orders yet so it's weird.) and "Mornings."

I am to place an order for t-shirts soon. They're more expensive than I'd like, which sucks 'cuz it means it'll take me longer to move to a bigger workshop and get a better distributor.

Anyway, I'm looking at setting up a store, and all that entails, this weekend, and I should have it set up soon. Once that happens, I'll let slip the shirts of war and have at it.

Thanks for the general air of support. You guys are the best friends/cohorts/supporters I could hope for.

OMG! LOOK AT THIS NOW!!

I know it's old, but I find it humorous.

So, did my first three shirts and I'm not entirely happy with them all. I'm happy considering they're my first three ever, but I see room for improvement and I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to stuff like that.

Anyway, for anyone who doesn't watch Draggo or UniversalLord, I'm still around, just very busy.

Check this out.

And this too. I know you go to a depth of one layer clickthough.

I'll post something sometime when I... Oh, shut up.

Did anybody see the Daily Show last night(may 24, 2007)?

Al Gore was on and he basically said this.

I don't get it. When I start sounding like a politician, a man voted president, no less, there's something very wrong with the world.

Do me a favor. Go outside and look around. Do you see huge cracks with demons pouring out of them in the ground, or great sundering rents being torn in the sky with hosts of angels rushing out?

...Everything's fine here... now... How're you?

Seriously, problem solved, as you can probably already see.

I can't submit a new file. I keep getting told that it failed to write to disk. I tried to report it in the forums, it won't recognize my password so I reset and then the forum system locks me out.

Is FA having some hiccups or is someone out to get me?

you make the call.

My designs you've come to know and love are soon going to be made available as an on demand service. I want to make you guys happy with the shirts you want.

Here's how:

I now am the proud owner and operator of a small screen printing kit.

I'm thinking $20 a shirt, plus shipping.

Tell your friends!

They're in my gallery and soon I'll have a page where you can see them all.

Note me and we'll talk about details.

Thanks!!

I just finally got final word about my t-shirt design stuff. Apparently, I was fishing in too big a pond with this site.

I may just have to learn how to do this screen printing shit myself.

I've been thinking a lot since my last journal.

I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. I watch them every day and I just realized something. That old axiom from the Talmud (Jewish text. Read it sometime.) "Who shall bring redemption if not the jester?" really applies. Everyone has something to lose in life by telling the truth openly except those for whom such truths are their bread and butter. Comedians can say what they want with relative impunity because everyone expects them to be funny by making truth apparent in a harsh light.

Maybe Keats had a point about how "Truth is beauty, beauty truth." Maybe the only beauty left is in comedy. Maybe the beauty he spoke of was freedom. Maybe the freedom is the ability to do and say what needs to be said and done.

It's no great insight, but if the only ones who can freely speak are those of us who are funny, maybe we will inherit the Earth?

...And to a lesser extent, the entire media world.

Hi, Media Machine. Can I call you Media? No? Okay.

You keep giving me steaming heaps of fresh horse-shi-- I mean news. Unfortunately, this news all seems to deal with Anna Nicole Smith, Brittney Spears, The American Idol contestants (That's some sort of game show, isn't it?), the various rapper gripes, what certain celebrities are wearing, doing with their money or sleeping with, the state of what's hot and what's not (Fire hot, ice not, am I right?) and various other entertainment news. Thank you so much!

I used to see the entertainment news only as a five minute blurb, on a slow news day, at the end of the news. Now thanks to your benevolent gaze and an oversaturation of Pop Culture Studies degrees, entertainment news is inundating the North American 24 hour news channels. This prevents me from seeing any news that will ever make me think about anything or consider the possibility that celebrity isn't everything. Obviously I was deluded for the majority of my life to this point, in thinking that entertainment news was not actually news but beneath the contemptible heading of "Tabloid Television." Thank you for opening my eyes to the truth that the state of affairs in world politics is secondary to who Brad Pitt is boinking this week, or how fucking insane Tom Cruise is now, or even what whorey thing Paris Hilton is doing in public at the moment. Don't forget Lindsey Lohan. She's drunk! She's Skinny! She's rehabbed and reformed!

Damn, that's some good news. It makes me totally forget that a religious fundamentalist nutter is in the White House, waging war with other religious fundamentalist (Ever notice 'mentalist' seems to be the root word there?) nutters without the consent of Congress. It makes me forget that there is another war going on between pro- and anti- environment nutters with no real solution in sight. It makes me forget that racist sentiments are more and more powerful in racially diverse areas world-wide and law enforcement and governments, the world over, don't know who the enemy is. It makes me forget that there are people who despise the western hemisphere of the Earth, in general, who are tinkering around with the fundamental nuclear building blocks of the universe. Oh, thank you, for telling me that I should be terrified about the state of affairs in the world and in the next breath, telling me that celebrities that don't give two shits about me are more important than I will ever be.

Thank you and thanks to whatever god you hold holy, American Media Machine, that those celebrities will be safe when the real news items of the world kill me and the other unimportant scumfuckers like me.

Thanks.

I look forward to more of the horse-shit you blind me with so I am totally unaware of world affairs. This way, I will be so blinded and deafened by the steaming piles of "news" you feed me that I won't see the totalitarian regime rise and stamp out freedom world-wide. I will, instead, sink to the bottom of the new inland oceans chained to my TV.

Thank you, so much.

Pyro

P.S. You never call. You never write.

I saw it Friday.

I have mixed feelings about it. I don't want to say anything bad about it but I see a lot of things I didn't like. I developed a massive headache about halfway through the movie, so I'm not sure about my negative impressions. Here goes.

I don't do spoilers, so the thing I have to say about the movie primarily is this: The parts that were good were great. The parts that were not good were mediocre, which, in my opinion, is worse than bad. If the bad parts were terrible, it would evoke a stronger response from me and I could love or hate the movie. As it stands, I got the distinct feeling that Sam Raimi (who has already said that this was his last Spider-Man movie) wanted to make some sort of political statement about the state of world affairs as his last outing with the Spidey property.

Bright spots: The action was amazing. It was the most Spider-Man of all the movies in the action. It was hyper and imperfect and beautiful. Bryce Dallas Howard (Gwen Stacy) was gorgeous and her acting was spot on on the first go. I found myself wishing, more than once, that she'd been cast as Mary Jane from the beginning. The Venom (and black costume and goopy alien thing) animations are not what I expected, but are very well done. The casting was spot on with Thomas Hayden Church (the Sandman) and he executed very well. I've always liked his acting, anyway, but he plays the part well in this and you leave with the impression that he really understood the character. Bruce Campbell. What more can I say on that front?

Low points: The story progression gives the impression that two scripts (at least) were amalgamated and both stories suffered from the hybridization process. The performance by Kirsten Dunst (Mary Jane Watson), as usual in the Spidey flicks, was subpar, which is sad. She's capable of so much in so many other roles. (Remember Interview with the Vampire? When she was a fetus?!) The overriding theme of the movie was delivered again and again with the cinematic repeated blunt force trauma of an After School Special about the evils of bullying. I won't spoil the movie for you by revealing what that theme is. You'll get it pretty early on and if you don't, they'll beat you over the head with it for the next two hours or so.

I won't say I hate or even dislike the movie. It's a Spider-Man movie that doesn't suck, like so many Marvel Entertainment movies have (Ghost Rider anyone?) and that means it's good. Maybe it was the terrible headache that threw the less than stellar points of the movie into stark relief, maybe not. It's a better movie than it could have been, but it's simultaneously my favorite and my least favorite of the three.

Go see it and judge for yourself.

Okay, I know I just made a journal entry.

I have a curiosity issue here. Another artist I watch, here on Fur Affinity, recently made a journal post about art books, sketch books and other collected, printed artworks which she wished to sell. Well, I'm curious, would anyone be interested in this type of thing from me? If was to make an art book, would anyone be interested in buying it? If I were to collaborate with the other Fur Affinity artists to make a printed collection of art in book form would anyone be interested in purchasing that?

There has been some discussion to this end, and I figured the more promotion we artists put into this, the more people might become interested in the process, if not the product.



So, if anyone has any feedback, I'd like to hear it.

So here in Montréal, we've recently had some subway renovations. Our subway's called the Metro, because people here like to believe that we live in Paris.

I had to take the Metro somewhere I was going this weekend, and it seemed to be a long but uneventful trip in the offing. As I was approaching the fifth or sixth from last station that I needed to go to, halfway between one metro station in the next there's a loud bang and particles of something rain down on my face at some high rate of speed. It was like tiny pieces of shrapnel, albeit shrapnel of joy, striking me in the face. Anyway, the train continued to speed along the track to the next station. When we got to the next station, keep in mind I was in the first car, the driver steps out, frantically but quietly talking into the handset of his radio. He goes back into his compartment, after a few minutes of freaking the hell out, and the train leaves the station. But now, my composure is shot. I'm absolutely convinced that some major retaining bolts or other equally important piece of mechanical daring do, has come loose and is poised to be launched through my spine. The car begins to shake and rattle, and occasional metal on metal grating sounds, which may or may not be normal sounds for the Metro, I don't normally fear for my life enough to pay attention, are heard from around me. My wife and daughter were with me on this trip. A few minutes after the initial impact, I looked to my wife, myself in a mild state of panic, and I ask, "you have any idea what that was?" She looks at me placidly, like the cow doesn't know it's about to become a burger, and responds, "it was probably just concrete falling from the tunnel."

As you can probably imagine, this did very little to calm my nerves. In fact, I kept staring lovingly at my wife and daughter, quite certain that this was the last time that I would ever see them again alive. Well, whatever. We made it where we were going intact.

The saddest thing about this story, if you remember the beginning where I said that there were renovations going on in the Metro system, is that the renovations in the system were not anywhere near where the concrete was falling in large enough pieces and enough profusion to make the poor driver, of this specific train, shit himself, not to mention me, was not even in the same line and only vaguely in the same general area of the city as those renovations.

I dunno. I'm sure other things happened this weekend, but a single event that makes me so thoroughly fill my pants tends to blot out the memory of all situations and circumstances surrounding it.

If anybody else has any similar stories about their public transit system or, hell, the Montréal public transit system, I would like to hear them. I would hate to believe that I am alone in the amount of unpleasantness which filled my pants this weekend.

...that I canceled my account with World of Warcraft tonight. I have too many characters and not enough time. I don't have enough time to play often enough to make any headway. I feel guilty, constantly, for paying a fee for an account I haven't logged into in about a month and a half. I almost feel like I've abandoned my characters, virtual representations of me that I have poured some small part of myself into and yet, a game experience isn't supposed to feel like work, is it?

Then, when I finally canceled, I find on the "Cancel Account" page, there are graphics of orc peons and human... something or others, crying and begging me not to leave. There's even a paragraph about, "Now look what you did. You made the peon cry. Are you happy with yourself?" If I hadn't been about to cancel my account, that would've clinched it.

I dislike the fact that they tried to guilt me into paying them for a service I'm not using any longer. There are members of my family that I stopped dealing with because they can only communicate in terms of guilt or obligation. I hate that shit and, even though my wife is still enamored of the WoW experience, I am considering trying to get her to quit the game too, over that bullshit maneuver. Anyway, that's one monkey off my back. I also quit Pepsi this week. I'm so addicted to that crap. I am trying to clear the baggage. Next, I'm gonna go back to the gym and start working out again.

I'm meandering. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, "Fuck off, Blizzard." I shouldn't be rewarded for years of loyalty to your company's products, and the World of Azeroth, by being kicked in the emotional crotch when I decide I just don't have room in my life for a life devouring MMO.

...my SEVEN SAMURAI!!! courtesy of  universallord! If you're diggin' on the coolness of my most recent commissions I'm posting, thank him.

I dunno. I feel really lonely and depressed today. Things just have that surreal feeling they used to when I was a kid and the summer was almost over and your friends are all in swimming lessons or out of town on vacation and you could go out and do something but, why? Nobody's there anyway.

It's that sad combination of bored and depressed and I've already done what I had planned for today and there seems like there should be more. There isn't. Anyway, wanted to tell someone and you're someone, right?

I hit two thousand page views last night while I slept. Funny story: My wife got back from Houston last night and I actually slept.

Anyway, a two-thousand view thank you pic is on its way.

I have an idea but here's your chance to make suggestions.

The only requirement is that the number 2000 gets worked into the image.

Should I collect my brief tutorial into a single file? A PDF or something?

Does it suck as bad as I think it does?

I went in-line skating today for the first time in years. It felt great. I am sore as hell, already. Not looking forward to getting up in the morning. Even though I was never great at it, I seem to have retained much of what I knew. It felt really good to skate really fast.

Anyone else have any cool inline stories?

CONTEST OVER!

The winner, aka, the guy you all envy now is  universallord!!

He'll be collecting the prizes soon. Watch my gallery closely for the commissiony goodness!


Here's the deal:

You like good ol' Pyromancy commissions, right?

Here's the deal. I will award two full color, up to two character, commissions for anyone who can get me this.

Rule #1: It must be a legal copy, no bit torrent download and burns please.
Rule #2: I can afford to pay shipping.
Rule #3: I like chocolate milk.

This is a longshot and all but there ya go. My edition of the movie was recently rendered unplayable by a freak dvd player accident and when Pyro doesn't get his samurai goodness, PYRO SMASH!!

Have at it people. YOU GO NOW!!

I just realized I was once good at inking and have left it alone for far too long. I am doing what I can to learn how to ink in photoshop. It's nice to find out how much easier inking can be with a built in undo. Anybody with any suggestions about technique or anything should let me know if they have any time.

...at least for us artist types.

Any of you who is a fan of webcomics probably already knows about Todd Goldman's plagiaristic ways.

This is a perfect example of what the fuck is wrong with America. A guy works hard to hone his craft and another, richer guy, steals guy#1's idea and there is no recourse. In America, equal protection under the law, apparently, means equal protection for those who can hire equally expensive lawyers. This sickens me. Todd Goldman has an abundance of ideas. They mostly suck or are stolen form someone, but he also has an abundance of money. He could buy ideas from people for peanuts or hire clever developers to perfect his art or feed him flashes of brilliance to sign his name to, as I've seen several successful artists do. Instead, he steals from a talented, well-known and famous-in-his-own-right, and relatively broke artist, who can't legally defend himself.

Dave Kelley, the originator of the idea and the comic in question, has no recourse but perhaps to make the guy take it down. He can't afford legal action strong enough to really damage the guy in any way.

Meanwhile, the RIAA and the MPAA are suing people for sharing movies, music and what have you online, totally abusing the ideas upon which copyright law is founded.

I've said this here before: Copyright law is in place to keep people from profiting off of your work or works that you have rights to. It isn't in place to make sure rich people stay rich and poor talented people suck it up and bend over to take it up the flush pipe at every whim of some rich prick with a creativity void.

People call the U.S. "the land of opportunity." This is no longer applicable. It is now the place where rich fuckers get rich and poor people can fuck off under the law. The first step at fixing this problem is to disallow people above a certain income level from running for public office. That way, rich people can't be involved in politics so money can't be the prime motivator on legistlation. The second step is to make lawyers suffer the same consequences as their clients. The client loses, and goes broke as a result, so does the lawyer. That way, all lawyers will fight really fucking hard for what they believe in, instead of going home and letting their client twist in the wind.

For the sake of sanity, people. Things have to change and they have to change soon. People who know nothing about politics shouldn't be allowed to vote. Campaigning needs to be made illegal. Lawyers need to be reminded, every now and again that they, too are people.

Even more than that, Todd Goldman and every fucker like him who pisses on the little guy, needs to be afraid for his livelihood, like us poor fuckers are. This won't be solved civilly. Sometimes, people need to learn fear, the good, old fashioned way.

For those of you not into web comics, please disregard.

I've been questioning myself on this for a while. I tend to follow a basic guideline that reads as follows. I thank people who are not watching me for faves and watches, if they add them. I don't thank the people who are watching me for faves, because, essentially, I don't want to clutter up everybody's frontpage with multiple 'thank you's every time I post a few things a couple days apart.

Should I reward faves equally or stick to my current policy?

Does not thanking people make me a dick, or am I a dick for other reasons?