more minis

I have more darling little hand made comic books. Actually, I may have ordered practically everything Matt Wiegle has done and is available plus one he just drew most of the artwork for.



They even came with a piece of original art!

The three along the bottom are all adapted from old tales which are all a little off as such tales tend to be. These haven't been Disneyfied yet.

Murder, in the middle of the top, was written by someone else and most the stories are drawn by Matt. I saw a review on it somewhere, which I think may have been the trigger to remember I wanted to devour all the other books I could get but hadn't yet.

At the corners are lovely little nonsense books like Your Karate Vacation was. These are little gems that should be shared at every opportunity.

The last piece in the middle is the original art on the back of a Partyka postcard. Now I just feel special.

I'd never ordered minis so I twitched for the two weeks hearing nothing trying to remember that this is just spare time stuff until the envelope popped up in the mailbox. And then I twitched for the rest of the day knowing that I should be working, not opening up envelopes full of minis. Okay, they may not have lasted the whole day, but testing computer programs can have down moments that are perfect for reading mini comics during.

pull out

There's something deeply disturbing about the pull quote "India's answer to The Lord of the Rings" on a book called Ramayan 3392 AD.

Project: Telstar

It must be said that the folks at AdHouse love books, although as a "boutique juggernaut" that's not many people. I still wish they'd print a few more, or perhaps that's reprint a few. Still, I have gotten hold of the book that inspired my previous rant (Project: Telstar) for only somewhat above cover price. I also got hold of another of the set (Project: Romantic) for my regular discount. I will not be getting the last of the set (Project: Superior) unless it is reprinted. At $50 for a library copy (ooh, it's come down), I'll just have to be happy with my free comic with part of it from a few years ago. It's the Joel Priddy part anyway.

So I hold in my hands a copy of Project: Telstar, which is A Spacial Robotic Anthology. The detail that has gone into this is just delightful. There's a busy little scene of robots and workers bustling about on the cover. Over the subtitle, little ones and zeros are printed in clear, a reminder for those who look of what makes a robot tick. Cute rounded corners, but heavier than it looks because it's actually printed on good paper. It all gives a good feeling, and so you open it up.

And there's more art on the end pages. In fact, it turns out that the front cover was the first page of a wordless story contained on the covers and end pages of the book. The book itself is printed in two colors, traditional black and a metallic blue. It's a choice that just makes sense.

The various authors utilized the two colors to varying degrees. There is some wonderful work in this taking advantage of ink. I do particularly like the work by Jay Geldof and Rob Ullman. There's also a few that would have been better off to have the colors printed in the opposite order.

There's almost nothing I didn't like in this. There's three portfolios contained in the book, which I didn't care for although I felt my heart softening for the third one. Still, they're not stories! Meanwhile, lots of wonderful, creative robot stories.

shirt of Tee

I have found the greatest tee shirt offered by the internet. So many are offered here and there, but so many aren't very good. There are a few good ones, like xkcd has some nice ones in the store.

Ah, the regular expressions shirt... except that the whole swinging in heroically to apply them rather made the comic. And I don't really use them enough so any time I really want to do something fun with them, I seem to have to look up bits.

Ooh, the sudo shirt... even though it always felt like a joke I'd tried before. Odd thing is, the systems I might try it on rarely have the command installed and even fewer seem to have given me sudo permission on the particular command in question.

Hum, the one titled "stand back (science)" is getting there...

This is the greatest tee-shirt on the net. It has a wonderful mix of alienness and childishness and simplicity. Also fun is the related web comic.

Forbidden Kingdom

I went to see a pointless movie meant to be mainly (kung-fu) action film stars you thought were retired already doing what they do best. There is a subtle difference between the movies Jackie Chan and Jet Li can be found in, so they'd never actually been in the same movie until Forbidden Kingdom. It's fun to see the drunken whatnot that seemed to be what made Jackie Chan famous (at least here) again. They really managed to make the two actors from different kinds of movies work without making their style change.

Meanwhile, someone had the bright idea of actually adding in something like a plot to this whole thing. They wrapped it around a whiny, weak willed teenager (well, I think he was supposed to be about that old) who thought that knowing the names of flashy movie kung-fu made him knowledgeable about the actual thing. He gets pulled back in time to an age of myth where he's got to go on a quest. He is the stick holder while everyone else works. He also sort of gets to learn, um, well, movie kung-fu but we're to believe it's real even though he still seems to be a weak willed and whiny sort-of-like-a-teenager. If you beat him up enough at the end, he'll at least eventually remember he could try not to be so weak.

But it was a meaningless and fun romp so long as you ignore the main character. A silly monkey with a wild bit of wire work (and his... fur) and an absurd drunken fellow who always seems to be in the right place already get up to much joyous fighting. Though it could be a little faster.

Where the stunt bloopers at the end at?

Eminently Domineering

There's another election coming very soon. It seems we have the rest of the primary to get done. How much did splitting up the primary cost? That was money well spent. We also have a couple of eminent domain laws to choose yea or nay on.

It seems that the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can take away your property and hand it over to some private developer to develop a private business so long that it is public in the sense that the public uses it, not in the sense that the public owns it, so long as it is "for the public good," which has an equally open definition. So malls and similar are better for the public (as a whole) than homes and can be built using eminent domain. What? Where's an honest strict constructionist when you need one?

So here we are finally trying to fix this one for the state. We've got two "fixes" to choose from, the one that doesn't really do enough and the one that gets in a sound blow to the chin renters in many places.

First there's prop 98. It does all sorts of things to protect property owners of any sort of property, but it also removes any rent control measures that have been enacted by local governments. The interesting supporter for this one is a guy who claims to be part of a "Protect Prop. 13 Committee." Prop 13 is, for the percentage of my four readers who does not actually live in California, the law that makes is so you pay taxes based on the value of the property when you bought it, not on the current value. It was designed to keep little old ladies on a fixed income from losing their homes just because their neighborhood became fashionable and the value of their home skyrocketed.

Most rent controls, on the other hand, are much like the ones in my area. They prevent the landlord from raising the rents far in excess of inflation until the tenant moves out. He wants to remove any very soft protections renters have against homelessness because the cost of their home raises to sharply while supporting much stronger protections that property owners have against the same thing.

And the rebuttal... Oh, but current renters continue to have the same rent controls until they move out! Renters are supposed to be placated because so long as they never, ever move, they will still have protections? Some people actually do care about their as yet unknown new next door neighbor. Some people actually do end up moving.

Second is prop 99 which just seems to protect owner-occupied residences. Again, renters are not protected, but at least this time it is through being ignored instead of malicious intent. The people arguing against it boohoo that such things as second homes are not protected. Well, second homes do not deserve the same protections as primary residences. It should extend to any dwelling legally used as a primary residence, but it is a start.

Hum... such an extension would leave a big loophole to protect your second home, just hire a live in grounds keeper. That's a loophole I could live with, though.

First rule, do no harm. The first purports to fix a harm, but does so by actions that could, in the long run, inflict greater harm. I've only noted the most immediately egregious problem with it, but it takes away all sorts of housing programs and laws along with the rent controls. The second quite possibly does too little, but it is a step in the right direction without adding a leap in the wrong direction.

*Sniff* There is no Mushishi 4 for me. Even if I didn't believe it would really be out just 3 months after the last that took so long, it really was edited and printed and sent out on time. It seems the weak link in this chain is the distributor who sent out a grand total of one to the comic shop instead of what they actually ordered. And since they're a veritable monopoly, they don't seem to feel like fixing it as soon as possible like a normal business would. By next Wednesday. Hopefully.

Instead I got to look at "the world's longest comic" because the locals were out hawking their wares. Okay, it isn't what comes up if you search on that phrase even though it does have a web page. Still, it is quite impressive sitting there with its wild aspect ratio at 17 inches long and only 2.5 inches high. It's also very cute on the inside.

Here it is, Frank and Frank. It's a delight in the wild. More Frank and Frank here.