I hadn't visited A Softer World in awhile. You probably haven't either.

I had something that resembled a blog slightly more than it did primitive cave paintings at one time. It was actually updated less frequently than this blog. There was no blogging buzz and the tubes weren't getting too slowed down, but every now and then I would post when I wasn't destroying CDNow's bottom line with web coupons and different e-mail accounts. And now they're gone and I miss them and it's all my fault. Not to say I wouldn't have done things the same way. You had to save a buck here and there. Was Napster around yet? I don't recall.

Anyhoo, I found a link to The Blair Family Circus Project in my archives and thought I'd share, since amazingly it's still up. I didn't know the Brunching Shuttlecocks had the stamina.

When I read this strip from Running in the Halls, I knew I wanted to post about it. I am that strange breed of adult that confounds the younger folk with video game knowledge. And it's really not so strange, my generation grew up with video games, and for the most part they are certainly more geared for adults than they were years ago. But I don't think it's the adult thing that stops many from continuing playing. It's the time thing.

I really just like this Running in the Halls strip. I'm not certain how I feel about this post. If this post was an action movie, some car chase scene with lots of explosions would try to save it. But it's not a movie. And car chase scenes don't save a piece of shit movie.

Not that I feel this way about this post. I'm actually starting to feel a bit better about it.

The lone blogger clicks save and rides off into the sunset.

Apparently the folks at Dueling Analogs do, as well.

I'm trying to find this other web comic I thought I bookmarked the other day. It's starting to irritate me, bookmarking is easy. I'm having doubts about my level of competence if I can't bookmark. Must be a software issue.

At least it lead me to Dueling Analogs. And perhaps I will check it out again before I forgot that it exists anymore like I do with most webcomics. Maybe I really don't know how to bookmark.

But I kow how to link. I will link to my other post about Beyond Good & Evil. It worked, didn't it?

Grand.

(I've never used grand like that before, but figured it was fair use of the word in a way it's no longer used in the common vernacular, or may never have been.)

Perhaps I do.

I sudoku.

Amazing Joy Buzzards was good fun. This new project from Dan Hipp may be as well. It looks less on the fun tip, and more on the good, if you know what I mean. If you don't, then you don't, that's fine, sometimes I don't know what I mean either. Look no further than the filing cabinet post.

Does it make any sense to trackback your own posts? I do it, when I link to myself. Does it matter? I don't know for sure.

Happy Halloween. In the spirit of the holiday, I link to Diesel Sweeties, and the beginning of this year's Halloween related strips.

I knew nothing about The Fountain when I picked it up at the public library, about three months ago. But I knew that when it was done, it needed to be mentioned here.

I read a lot. Blogs, books, newspapers, e-mails, comics, web sites, professional journals, magazine, and sometimes even the pile of novels that I can't keep up with. And, of course, graphic novels. Now sometimes a graphic novel is a collection of individual comic books bound together under one cover. Well, I'm not sure if The Fountain appeared that way, but I am certain that it is one of the best representations I've ever seen of a graphic novel. This is why people should read graphic novels, and get over the fact that it's a story that has pictures, and there's nothing wrong with that. (Although, I'm sure most of the people that read this blog don't have a problem with it.)

Darren Aronofsky (you know, one "A", like Elvis), wrote this as a movie. The movie was cancelled originally, but was eventually made. But I am not looking forward to seeing it. I don't care who's playing the characters, or how its filmed, or how much is spent on effects.

It's a good story. And the graphic novel medium suits it fine. This may not have been Aronofsky's original intention. But combined with Kent Williams gorgeous illustration, I'm convinced the story as told the way it needed to be.

There's three intricately weaved storylines here, but it's all one story that takes place at different points in history. Despite the battles fought in South America and the travels through the universe, where The Fountain truly hits home is as a story about love, life, and death. Simple, huh?

Isn't every story about that, one may ask? Every story may involve that, but every story may no reflect upon it or encourage introspection on these matters.

I don't want to give a synopsis, but I know when the book was over, I was moved. I shook, I shed a tear.

Maybe I'm a big baby. There's always that possibility. It's not so much that it's sad, but there's something beautiful about The Fountain.

Today I was attempting to catch up with some work, but then my short-attention span kicked in, like 30 or 40 times, and now I don't know why I'm here, but I don't get paid for blogging, yet I'm still here, for some reason or another.

Anyway, getting back to work I was going to stream some tunes from The Hype Machine. If there were only 10 web sites left on the Internet, this would need to be one of them. Small problem, with that theory though. The Hype Machine is like an mp3 blog aggregator. (Ed: Dropping the like from the previous sentence would still result in a true statement with a slightly less conversational tone.) (Ed: That means Editor right, well there's no editor, just me. Don't get the impression that this blog is actually proofread.) Although if you've read it before it's probably become quite clear to you that it's not.

What was I saying about my attention span, again?

Oh yeah, 10 sites left on the Internet. The Hype Machine being one.

Well, it would be completely useless if the other 9 weren't mp3 blogs. And that's highly unlikely. Because the other 9 sites left would probably just be porn anyway.

I hope the Internet is never reduced to 10 web sites. Kind of like I hope the Vice President never comes to my house and shoots me. But if he came to my house he probably wouldn't. He'd probably just raise my thermostat to about 94 degrees. Because somehow him and his friends will make more money that way.

Ok...I was trying to find The Hype Machine site today, and I accidentally stumbled upon their blog. And through that blog I found A Softer World. I was greatly amused. Joey Comeau makes the funny captions and I suppose takes the pictures they accompany. (Ed: WRONG! Emily takes the pictures.) But I cannot confirm or deny that part.

When I read Overqualified, also by Joey Comeau, I was also amused. I also used also twice in that sentence. And look I just did so again. I was again amused, but not as greatly. Remember how I was mentioning that short attention span. When the words are many and the pictures are few, that tends to kick in.

Words + pictures = amusement.

Words - pictures = amusement - 1.

So I guess I need to stick a picture somewhere in this posting, huh?

I've been sleeping on Strong Bad's latest creation at Homestar Runner.

Teen Girl Squad. No description necessary. Watch and laugh.

Thanks, Ted Leo. I've been sleeping on Homestar Runner for awhile. Now I can lose some sleep and catch up.

Ellis has got another good title on his hands. Damn if that chain-smoking, cane-swinging bastard doesn't have a knack for caustic characters with memorable one-liners. If comic books were movies, Warren Ellis would have a few lines, right up there with anything from "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw" to "One time in band camp...". "If you're gonna shoot porno, don't clog the drains" appears in the second panel. For a change the supporting characters are more caustic (because an adjective for that escapes me right now) than the hero (anti-hero...no, scratch that, actually maybe not, it's one of those things people write but never actually say, like "gal-pal"). Ben Templesmith makes with the bleak yet rich panels, and is apparently happy there's no vampires.

Warren Ellis is reaching out to the poeple with this one. These single issues contain an entire story each for $1.99. So I can get the baby formula, and afford a comic book this week, instead of just buying the book and shoving a binky in the kid's mouth. (That's not even funny, is it? I'm such a dad.)

Plus if you like the prose, there's some more of it sans pictures to extend the reading life, and it kind of acts as the DVD bonus material concept applied to a comic book. Ellis still hasn't added me to his myspace, but why should I care, since I still don't know why I have a myspace account, I'm finding plenty of music elsewhere on the net these days.

A Paul Pope solo exhibit will be at the Diesel Denim Gallery, 68 Greene Street, (Btwn Spring and Broome), New York, NY 10012, (212) 966-5593, through October 30. I got into the city recently but couldn't make it to the gallery before they closed, but I've got a little over a month to try again.

And read Heavy Liquid if you haven't already. Great stuff. I'm not kidding, and if you've read it already read it again, or stare at the pictures for awhile.

Lots of nice artwork at his web site to check out.

And if you go to amazon.com to search for Paul Pope books, use the titles, or else you'll have pages of books by/about Pope John Paul II.

If you haven't read Brian Wood before, read Channel Zero.

Then check out Demo (the Becky Cloonan art is gorgeous) the new stuff like DMZ looks interesting too. I also enjoyed Couriers and Cous Cous Express.

My second in a series of lazy posts not formatted because the text was pulled directly from my e-mail. Was this necessary? Maybe not, but people like to make clicky-clicky, without messy pasting of URLs in the northern region of browser windows.

Kind of like Joanie Loves Chachi, except with Alien and Predator. This amuses me greatly.