EXCLAMATION POINTS

Hmm, I don't know why pictures aren't working anymore on this thing ... Not that I had any pictures from the show.

Alright, here's how it went down, son. There was a dude dressed in some kind of all blue wrestler getup, mask and everything, walking back and forth low to the ground outside Captain Nemo's handing out flyers for the PEELANDER Z show about to SMASH San Luis into the ground.

"HEY! Come to the show, Kim Thayil!!" He said as he handed me a flyer, patted me on the shoulder, and continued walked around the building. (Click for reference)

"Yeah!" I said in a tone that meant, "Of course that's where I'm going, man! There is no other place on this earth I could possibly be going." - but not in an indignant dismissive tone that that might sound like reading it. "Thanks!"

Alright, so we head out back behind Cheap Thrills' little concert shack and sit there while the band walked around inside testing their equipment and doing whatever it is bands do before a show to ensure the show doesn't start when they say it will.

"Oh, so glad you could make it, Kim Thayil from Soundgarden!" The wrestler guy in blue says as he scurries around, posing, and talking to people.

Eventually we see this balding Japanese guy dressed in BRIGHT YELLOW walking towards us with an innocent smile on his face. He says, "Hi," and we see he's trying to get to the van right behind us. We make way for the stupendous YELLOW member of Peelander Z. They get some stuff out of the back of the van and start bringing stuff in. YELLOW stands in the middle of the crowd with his guitar and raises his hands in the air, making the motion that he wants everyone to follow him in. YES! FINALLY!

The rest can only be described as magic. Everyone jumping around, the music blaring, everyone with huge smiles on their face, the blue wrestler guy dancing around the room. At one point they were handing out tambourines and encouraging everyone to really get into it. I don't know, you really had to be there. There isn't really a good way of conveying the experience through a blog entry.

Some highlights:

Band members running out into the crowd, still wailing on their guitars.

RED, the bassist, pointing at someone and putting his hands out in front of him, face up, fingers crossed to give him a boost up. RED climbs up onto the ceiling and hangs upside down and continues playing! RED surfing the crowd on his back, back to the stage. All while still playing.

GIANT SQUID!!!!!

GIANT SQUID WRESTLING! Almost. There wasn't a lot of room so they just settled for a spin and an Irish whip across the room.

CONGA LINE! They all got off the stage and formed a conga line and walked out of the building and back in. Still playing!

At one point the drummer, GREEN got off the stage and just decided to set up base in the center of the room. RED joined him.

Broken English!!!! SAN-O LUIS-OBIS-U-PO!!!!!

SO MANY MIKE!!!

MAD-O TIGAH!

GET-A CLOSAH TO THE STAGE! I'M GOING TO BITE YOU! MAD-O TIGAH!!!!

ME-A SUPAH HAND-O-SOME. *point at random person* YOU-A UGRY!

UG-UH-LY (point) UGLY (point) UGLY (point) UGURY UGRY UGRY! HHAAANDSSOOOME!!!!! (point at another random person. repeat)

Then they explain that they want the audience to pick their next song. They hold up three signs with letters. A? *cheer* B? *CHEER* C? *CHEEEEEER!!!*
Okay! One more time! B? *CHEER!* C? *EXPLOSION*
They turn over C .... S.T.E.A.K.!!! STEAK!!!! The crowd goes wild!
Then they turn over the rest one by one. S.T.E.A.K. S.T.E.A.K. S.T.E.A.K.!!!!! ALL STEAK!
Time for the STEAK song.
"HEY! I HAVE QUESTION FOR YOU! HOW WOULD YOU LIKE COOK-A YOU-A STEAK????"
...
MMMEEEEDIUMMM RRRARRRRRREE!!!! *heavy guitar riff*






Easily the most fun I've ever had. I hope they come back sometime! You HAVE to see them next time. It is not a choice. It is an obligation.

PEELANDER Z TIME!!!!!!!!

Comic Punk Rock sensation PEELANDER Z WILL BE PUNCHING YOU ALL IN THE NECK WITH A FISTFUL OF AWESOME tonight at Cheap Thrills. I'm going.

This is the medication you need. This is the medication you've been searching all your life to make yourself feel more like the brick you know yourself to be deep down inside your heart.



YES. That WAS a power glove.

If someone told you that a bunch of crazy dudes from Japan wearing bright costumes, dancing around, and rocking out were right around your corner and asked if you'd like to see them for free, WHO IN THE WORLD WOULD SAY NO?

Maybe people with things to do, I guess. Well, I'm going and I think it's going to be awesome!

Paranormal Pancake Parlor 2000

Are your pants hiked up to proper ghost hunting standards today? Did you go to the Mattress Outlet and pick up the most absorbent mattress you could find? Good! Now lodge it in your throat and wait for our specialists to come to you!

Today's Paranormal spooky Internet thing comes from Brydenman. Check this video out!
Urban Legends Series: Spiricom
The video doesn't pause so make sure you don't make the same mistake I did. We've since sealed off the room and set it ablaze in a golden, purifying, eternal flame. I'm sorry, Ms. Johnson. Your children didn't make it out.

Didja watch it, yet? Pretty cool video, I thought. My initial thoughts were, "Pfft. Communicate with ghosts. Right." Then I was like, "hmm ... maybe ..." It has pictures and appears to have some attempt at documenting evidence. Dates, names, photos, audio. That means it's real, right? It's very different from the usual, "You don't even know what my life is like, man. It's filled with immeasurable darkness the likes of which you'll never know. I wear all black, am plastered in tacky makeup, gaudy jewelery, am 300 lbs. and covered in a fine sheen of my own personal grease.
I -
can talk to dead people.


Anyone who doesn't believe is just a big jealous meanie. So there."
-that is par for the course for this sort of thing. Whether it was real or not, it was different. I was intrigued. So I did some research.

LOOKATTHIS
At about this time, things started to look a little sillier and a couple thoughts came to mind. If this thing really worked with this amount of accuracy, why haven't I, someone who spends a lot of time reading about this kind of spooky paranormal ghost stuff on the internet, ever heard of this. You'd think there would be a half-hour special covering this whole thing on the Discovery channel or something instead of the handful of "Most haunted places" shows recorded in the early 2000s that they've been rerunning for so many years.

You'd think there'd be more development on this sort of thing. You'd think they'd try using something like this on a show like Ghost Hunters or one of their contemporaries (Ghost Adventures and their MOST SCIENTIFIC device, the ghost-talky-machine doesn't count).

But nope. It's just like, "Hey, there was a machine once that could let this dude talk to ghosts. He used it a couple times and it was spooky. The End. Hey, guys. Let's go try to talk to ghosts. Too bad nobody knows how :("

Okay, so that's one thing. Just conjecture, I know. Then there's the pictures.



Really? Your ghost machine spit this out? The spooky dead people from the other side painted you a movie poster-like image. Lucy Fieldohair and Jake "The Steak" Luger star in DOUBLE THE STAKES II: Discount Memories.

I don't know about you, but for me any credibility this story had went down the tubes. I'd be far less skeptical if these ridiculous easily faked pictures weren't also captured from the same people. DID YOU SEE THE SPIRIT OF JOHN DENVER!? AMAZEEEEENG!

Then I found this on Coast to Coast:
The two men allegedly contacted the spirit of deceased NASA scientist Dr. George Mueller, but Rorke believes there was some fraud at play.

As evidence, he revealed that O'Neil, the sole operator of the Spiricom device, was a schizophrenic ventriloquist, who may have used his voice-throwing skills, along with an electrolarynx, to create the voice of Dr. Mueller. The Spiricom recordings "sound exactly like" the modulations produced by an artificial larynx, Rorke pointed out. In addition, O'Neil's only source of income was from the Metascience Foundation, and they paid him more money for results, Rorke added. Rorke also presented some newly discovered Metascience audio, noting that there is never any overlap between O'Neil and the Spiricom voice.

Here's an interview with Dr. Rorke. (click)

More troubling. Also read this from Wikipedia:

In 1980, William O'Neil constructed an electronic audio device called "The Spiricom." O'Neil claimed the device was built to specifications which he received psychically from George Mueller, a scientist who had died six years previously.
^{And that was the precise moment this story completely slumped over and died for me.}

At a Washington D.C., press conference on April 6, 1982, O'Neil stated that he was able to hold two-way conversations with spirits through the Spiricom device, and provided the design specifications to researchers for free. However, nobody is known to have replicated O'Neil's results using their own Spiricom devices. O'Neil's partner, retired industrialist George Meek, attributed O'Neil's success, and the inability of others to replicate it, to O'Neil's mediumistic abilities forming part of the loop that made the system work. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the recordings of conversations were falsified by O'Neil, specifically with an electrolarynx. The clearly audible vocal fricatives in the recordings, along with the fact that during the hours of recordings O'Neil's and Mueller's voices never overlap (as would happen in normal conversation), support this theory

Now my text is underlined and I have no idea why or how to disable it. Wonderful. Well, I'll (HEY, it stopped underlining!) leave it at that. I'm making no claims to my professionalism in researching these sorts of things. I just went to Google, looked at a few links, and made my decision. Not the most scientific way of going about things, but enough for me. I deem the spiricom to be nothing paranormal. But it was fun to read about anyway.

Let me know if you find more hideous ghost things from the internet.

Attention Porters and Creaths

I've mentioned this once a while back. I'm writing a collection of short spooky, terrifying, or otherwise bizarre stories accompanied by jittery spider-handed drawings (for I have spiders-for-hands, you see) of wispy ghost things and gigantic jelly-pigs.

Like these books from my childhood. - Only without all the stories simply being, "Once upon a time there was a dude all by himself. He was all, 'boy, I sure am by myself!' Suddenly he heard a noise.

BLIZZOOblABBA!

'What was that?' he asked. 'Who's there?'

BLIZZOOBLIZZOOBLABBA!

'Wha-'

BLIZZARGEBABLOOBY

'EH?'

BLEEAEEEEEEAAAARGHHHBLUH!

IT WAS GHOSTPERSONMANS!

THE END."

Now, as a Porter, I'm sure you know I've procrastinated and put this thing off as hard as my meaty little arms could. I, however, don't wish to do that anymore. I'm going to get this thing done and I want YOUR help!

This is a call to arms for any and all Porters/Creaths. You know who you are. The offer stands for my creative non-PorterCreath friends as well, but I don't imagine any would be interested. What is the offer, you ask?

I need to add more meat to my story book! You guys can all write better than me! Why not make this a family venture and put all our incredibly thick heads together to form some kind of humongous failure of a Voltron with four marzipan legs and no head.

I'd like anything you guys feel like writing. Length and subject matter are of no concern. They can be dead serious or completely goofy. They can even be something you've written and posted somewhere else already. Anything!

And then when we get enough stories together, I'd like to publish this thing through this site (click for link to lulu.com) unless any of you have any better ideas. Then we'll split all five dollars we gain from this amongst ourselves and wish we spent our time more wisely. Let me know if you want in!


UPDATE: In the comments Tony suggested a stream of consciousness Choose Your Own Adventure thing. Whether he was joking or not, I actually like that idea, too. Charlie and I were planning on making one in the near future anyway.

I'm not sure how we'd all do that, though. Maybe we all take turns writing different pages and scenarios. Maybe we can do that after my first idea. Maybe we can do both at the same time? Maybe we ignore the first and do the Choose Your Own Adventure? MAYBE we ignore ALL of those options and opt to write a series of disturbing fan-mail to various breakfast products. "I want you to know, Mini-Wheats, that I'm bringing you with me when I die."

Idunno!

Paranormal Pancake Parlor

Yeah. That thing again for those of you who were reading the old blog.

Let's look at some ghost videos and get down with da spooky.

VID E. OH 1

I'm gonna take poorly lit footage of my dogs sitting on a bed, set the camera down, LEAVE IT ON, and OOoooOOOooOoOOOOooOooo SPOOKY GHOST RECTANGLES LIVE IN MY HOUSE AND THE PICTURE FRAME GOES ALL "slight turn". This man's house is straight up ghosts, son. Werd.

Note the definite horizontal edge the "ghost" has before it goes into the room. You can see it against the white doorway for a few frames.

HEY LOOKAT DIS ONE

I took some blurry low-quality footage of people walking around in the woods. You believe in the spookees right, kid? NOW PLEASE VISIT MY GHOST TAVERN FORUM AND DONATE MONEYS.
Taken at their word, that these were in fact ghostly forms walking around in the woods, this could be an interesting video.

You are to keep this video a secret from your father

Because we all know that security surveillance cameras are known for the sharpness and clarity. Anything blurry and splotchy looking must be a ghost no matter how fly-shaped it is.

GoOOooosts!

If I were a ghost sitting around while these strange people from the future went running around bumping their shins on everything and shouting questions in the dark, and they had these strange unfamiliar devices on them, the first thing I would do is go, "YEP. I KNOW THE PROCEDURE. I have seen it on TV before. I will ghost-interface with this machine built to find wiring behind walls (author's note: I don't actually know what the exact device is in the video). You learn this kind of high-tech gadgets and gizmos stuff being a ghost, you see."

Later in the video we see Jasper, the World's Lamest Ghost doing something really boring and, as his name would suggest, lame. Feathery mist. woo. After that, there's some really garbled audio that's warped to the point that it'd be hard not to hear what could be words in it.

Cut to the 90s where the intro to the X-Files happens for a few seconds and we finally see all characters in this play put on their best "cool" face cuz this ghost stuff is serious biz, bro. Great job!

Know any particularly cool/lame ghost videos? Let me know. I'll pretend I'm entertaining people while I secretly only entertain my magnificent self in another blog post.

SOUNDEY comx!

Not really, this week. I think I can summarize all of these with a huge groan. They're all terrible and their terribleness is painfully self-evident.

That and my computer is out of commission (thanks, Bryden. My computer was running fine until I downloaded Vanguard Princess. Now I have some kinda virus or something) and it's not really fun to draw on a laptop. It's alright. I've been on a reading binge this week anyway.

Let's see if I can squeeze any amount of life from these dried, withered corpses.

Rooster Teeth
All this one deserves is a sharp shrug of the shoulders combined with a sudden 90 degree turn to mug at the camera. WAH WAH WAAAAAAH.

Action Trip

Really? 500 years (in Internet time) after Portal comes out and this is all they could come up with?
HEY MAN. What if I just made a portal LIKE THE VIDAMAGAIMS PORTAL from my desk to THE TOILET. AAAAAAHHHHKHAHAHAKAAHKKKGHGHGF! - or whatever wheezing air sounds that constitute the writer's laugh.
OMAGAWD, broSSSEFF! I'M 'UNNA DRAW AN ART O' DAT BLOOP BLOOP RAHT NOW 'N UPLOADER IT DO 2 INETERNET!


BLOOP BLOOP!
It's even worse if you scroll down to read the comments.
Among them:
Hilarious!
It's funny because it's true XD
hahaaaa! Nice!
Simply genius, inspiring.
This is my favorite AT comic ever!


ugh.
God, why couldn't these creatures live on their own brick-for-heads-planet in some especially dark corner of space while the rest of us with something actually going on between our ears can go do what really matters; tying all the world's ducks together and using their raft-like buoyancy to bridge our continents together once and for all. With the power of nature as GOD intended.

NEXT:

GU Comics push their radical anti-Moscow agenda once again. The writer wrote:
I just thought that it would be funny if the protagonist went through a checklist of nasty without issue, but scoffed at the simplest thing.

Yeah, he THOUGHT. Here's another joke with almost the same premise but done infinitely better. See, things progress, there's a list of things, and then OKAY it's not the same thing. But it's awesome and will take the horrible aftertaste of these failures out of your mouth.

Temporarily.

The rest posted on Kotaku aren't particularly awful enough to share with the world (but that doesn't mean I derived any amount of joy from them, either) or I'm not exactly sure what's going on in them. Like this one.

Is this supposed to be like the movie starring Denzel Washington, The Fallen, where they show the ending first and then the rest of the story happens and he shoots John Goodman in the face? Seriously, that Big Daddy is already drilling into the girl's head in the first panel.

Ugh. The end. See you next week.

Can't Unsee

Invader Zim is one of my favorite cartoons of all time. You all know I'm an insufferable curmudgeon. It takes quite a bit to get into my magical "favorite" bag and Zim is in that bag.


To see something like THIS is completely heartbreaking. Soul crushing. I don't know how, but make sure Mr. Vasquez never sees this. Were I him, I'd probably kill myself.

Fan fiction - the answer is always no (Unless you're Peter Chimaera. Look it up).

It looks like they watched Zim and took this from it: Zim is an angry and power hungry ALIEM. Dib am hero. Use the word "doom" and refer to pigs and/or monkeys. BAM! I'm gonna make a comic! This is a good use of my time!

Look, if that sort of thing is really in your heart, I'm not going to stop you. Do whatever you want. I would however, plea that you change your mind. There's obviously some kind of talent behind their work. The art and coloring is nice! It really is a shame to see that go to waste. If you really want to honor someone else's work, be inspired by it and create something completely new because of it. To an artist, I don't think there's anything more flattering than that.

Fan-fiction to an artist, though; I don't think there's much more insulting than that. Artists like to see things evolve. Not sit around dwelling in one place.

Quick Nothings

HEY, this is a quick note to ALL webcomic artist/writers out there.

Just a few minutes ago, I had a quick interaction with my brother. He was getting a bag of chicken nuggets out of the freezer. He saw a picture on the back showing a plate full of both chicken nuggets and grapes. On the same plate. Touching. He showed it to me and pointed out that it was a little weird. I said in reply, "Yeah, 'cause I think about those two together all the time." I mean, let's face it, chicken nuggets and grapes together isn't the most appetizing thing in the world.

HOWEVER. This was otherwise a rather mundane observation. Note that I did NOT make a comic about it because that would be FREAKING STUPID and a WASTE OF EVERYONE'S TIME. I'd say that nobody wants to read comics about your HIGH-LARIOUS everyday interactions and comments on mundane things in the sad, empty, quivering meat tubes you call your lives, but I've read the feedback given to you from the sycophants you surround yourselves with. We know you have nothing to contribute to society this week, you don't have to shout if from your roof.

Your friend saw something a little strange. You or someone else made a remark. The end. Move on with your life. Stop polluting the earth.


Thank you.

SONDEE COMICS

IT'S ABOUT THAT TIME AGAIN, SWEATER-SHACK.

We're about to go through some pretty high level stuff right now ARE YOU READY TO BLOW YOUR MIND?

I know these Sunday gamer webcomics are pretty complex, so I today I'm going to dumb them all down to something even incredibly worse so our plebeian brains can understand. Make sure to turn on the right side of you are BRANS, MORAN.

Penny Arcade starts things off with one to tell your parents about tonight at the dinner table.

comic

Whoa, slow down there, College. I will attempt to dumb this down (click for bigger):




NEXT


Oh, Snoopy. What ever are we going to do with you?

NEX- OH GOD. UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS!

NO. WHAT HAVE I DONE. I HAVE LET IT OUT.

NEXT: CARL ART DEEP




NEXT: ROOSTER TEETH

An ATM got Valve gaims before THE PS3!!!! OOOAAAUAUUAUAUAUAHGHGH1110010100010100100100111100

Jokes of the internets to you, good sir. Well played. Golf claps. Something someone with a monocle would say thrusting his elbows back and forth across his torso while his mustache slides around his face.

A NEW REFRESHING HALO JOKEj

I like the part where Biff rams into a truck full of manure and he goes, "I hate manure."

NEXT




A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SUPER MARIO BRO, CPT. DEELISHUS.

THE END.

Streamlining

Finally found something that does this sort of thing.



I'm going to be creating these sorts of pages for all the Fun Drome's "comic" content from now on. This will make it much easier on everyone. Less of a nightmare to navigate. No more waiting on me to upload everyone's comics. Deelishus, Bryden, and Shmelnick can put their work up when they want to, and it won't be a big complicated mess in order for them to do it (like it has been for me all this time).

You guys just have to log in, upload your comic, put the file name in this format: "YYYY-MM-DD-comic-name.jpg" or whatever. (Y/M/D = year, month, day) Only use letters and dashes on the "comic-name" part.

I'll go over it in more detail with you guys individually. I'll send you a PM on the forum or something. But for now, you can check out my comic page for "FLEE."



EDIT: All your pages are up. Everything is in your hands, now. Check your messages on the forum. Let me know if you need any help.

TWILIGHT FANART

behold


(click)

IMPAR LOSES AGAIN

Headline news, everyone! As I may have told some of you, I entered my webcomic idea into THE ESCAPIST WEBCOMIC CONTEST type thing. And it lost. Hard. Not even an honorable mention :(. But I'm pretty proud of it! What I submitted to them is posted up on their site along with all 350 (more or less) entries (I'll put a link at the bottom). I haven't looked at the other entries yet (except for the winning one. Congrats to them!) so I can't really tell you whether they're any good or not.

Free-hand MS paint loses to fancy photoshop again :(
I'd use a fancier program to do my work in, but it takes me forever when I do. My brain thinks of new things faster than I can draw, so I tend to lose interest in my work really quickly. MS paint is the quickest way.

Here's a link to my comic on their site. Scroll down and click on the cool one, "FLEE."
It's got a brief description of what I was doing with my comic. I was trying to do something that sort of spit in the face of conventional gaming comics (like the ones I've been making fun of on this blog) and dealt with "gaming" as more of a means to "escape," Hence the name, "FLEE." I tried to be "out there" but not too "out there."
I used MST3k as inspiration for the story. You know; average joe gets kidnapped into space and is forced to go through these horrible experiments to somehow benefit his dark overlords in a way he'd never quite understand. That sort of thing. FLEE was going to have some minor story segments outside the video game "experiments" much like Joel/Mike and the bots did with their Invention Exchanges and little skits. The "experiments" themselves were going to be a mix of impressions of existing games/gaming trends - but poking fun in a more "right side of the brain" way.

Oh well. To be honest, I was relieved. I was almost frightened to death that I might win.
Click here to see the winning comic.
Click here for the "Honorable Mentions"

And here's mine in its entirety so far.




I think I'll probably continue this on the Fun Drome. I'll let you guys know if I do more.

The Truth

If only I knew how much in life I was missing. It took one magical film to show me the way to be a true sentient being - one with all that I can and cannot survey. If only the rest of the world would see this film and take heed to its lessons. I watched Ghost Dad today.