Waffle

$ 1.32 and rising. Well the Euro's price's rising higher and higher Soon our exports won't have no buyer Looks like them Russkies will fuel the fire, $ 1.32 and rising.

We don't do Thanksgiving around these here parts, but what the hell, I'll join in. I'm thankful that I'm not working for a boss, or commuting two hours a day. Even on a bad day when I temporarily hate the path I've chosen, I can always remind myself of what that was like. I'm thankful to have people reading my comics, and reading this blog - and that those of you who came to the blog through the comics page put up with me. I'm thankful for social democracy, whose safety nets made quitting my job possible. I'm thankful for entrepreneurs like Joey Manley, because people like him will enable me to go on with this career. I'm thankful for the Koga Miyata, which is a joy to ride even on my short nighttime commute. I'm especially thankful for its functional lights whose cables are mounted securely into the frame, because having those helped me avoid a € 25 fine the other day (as well as keeping me safe on treacherous roads). I'm thankful that my 63-year-old mom knows what "LOL" means, but more thankful that she doesn't overuse it. (I'll update this if I can think of more)

Well, it looks like Ursula Vernon is in a new comic magazine, Quixotica. I'm certainly excited by it, and have already placed my order. - It looks to be really good!

... when I first started reading about American politics, I had to have the concept of pork barrel spending explained to me. I'm sure what Ed Brayton proposes - to change the legislative process so that a law can address one issue and one issue only - is how it's done, uhm, everywhere.

Reader Mithandir pointed this out to me. I've been looking at the rise of the Euro against the US dollar, which should give Americans and Europeans alike the willies for different reasons. But the Euro is actually losing value against the Canadian dollar — the graph is almost a mirror image of that pitting the Euro against the USD. (saved images below the cut, in case something changes)

(more...)

Clickburg is the website of a new comics convention to be held in Tilburg, the Netherlands. I can't find the date for the convention on the website yet, but Ren? van Densen who occasionally comments here is one of the organisers so he'll undoubtedly tell me. What makes this convention special is that it's a European convention dedicated to webcomics - Dutch ones specifically, although that may change eventually (I rather hope it does, to include Belgian/German/Scandinavian web artists as well, because I think the focus on Dutch work is too narrow. But these guys may prove me wrong on that). I've been thinking about reorienting myself to the European market these past few months, because I've been less than succesful at getting money out of American readers, and the money that I do make is devaluing by the week. I needs me some hard Euros! So it's important to have my eyes open to events like this one, which may help me reintroduce myself to the creative community and readers on the home front. I'll be there, unless they plan it on a completely impossible day. Update: Serves me right for not checking the stripped-down URL. I had found the site because an internal page linked to rocr.net. I've now changed the URL to an internal welcome page that at least shows you the forum and placeholder links for the other stuff they want to incorporate. Update to the update: In the comments, Ren? asks me to link to the splash page again, because the site is still very much in development. I won't do that, because this whole entry wouldn't make any sense if I did, but I will note that all contents may change and the link I do use may stop working. For what it's worth, I found the site through ROCR.net's referrals, so people are already reading it.

$ 1.31 and rising. And some people are getting a wee bit pessimistic. (link via Atrios)

Electing a president named Bush is bad for your country's financial health. (Hat tip: Danny)

Via Peteychap: Someone at Swarthmore University has created a batch of counter-disclaimer stickers to put in science textbooks.

This book discusses heliocentrism, that the earth orbits around a centrally located sun. Because astronomers still disagree over the details of the heliocentric model, this material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

They forgot to do stickers for gravity, Mendelian genetics and the germ theory of disease, though.

Working my way up to getting some proper writing done on this day of low productivity...

A while ago I noticed that having some good, nasty metal music on the discman helped me focus on my work better. To test that, I went to the library and rented four metal CDs. All of them were recorded after 1995, had promisingly tasteless cover art and had a name and reputation that I was familiar with. Unfortunately, that didn't stop them from being mostly awful, making this experiment a failure (that is, I still don't know if metal is better at keeping me focused on my work than other genres because I found listening to them too much of a chore to play the records repeatedly while working).

Beyond the Veil by Tristania is weepy Goth-metal mixing grunted male vocals with an operatic female soprano. There wouldn't be much wrong with that if the group, like many other weepy Goth-metal groups, hadn't forgotten to write coherent, comprehensible songs and resorted to stringing together riffs and fragments of music. I don't expect John Hiatt-level songwriting in a metal record, but I do have some minimal standards. Bleah.

Stratovarius, who had been recommended to me in the past, do have coherent songs, but that didn't make Elements pt.2 any less of a chore to listen to. If I'm in the mood to put on a metal album, the last thing I want to hear is life-affirming, optimistic lyrics. I want anger, hate and agression; get with the lootin', pillagin' and settin' fire to churches already! Seriously, Stratovarius' sub-Helloween Happy Metal got on my nerves. A lot. So did the guitar solos. I'd have enjoyed this one when I was 14 years old, but now it just sounds empty and air-headed.

Pro-bot by Dave Grohl and guests, is better. It's a tribute to the underground heavy metal of the 1980s with a wide range of vocalists from that era providing lyrics and vocals to music that Grohl wrote especially for them. It does emulate the pedestrian playing and indifferent production quality that I remember from 1980s underground metal, and some of the guest contributors are reduced to schtick — Lemmy from Motörhead in particular sounds like a shadow of his former self in "Shake Your Blood". Even Lemmy's bass playing sounds thin and distant. But it has some memorable songs, particularly "Ice Cold Man" with Napalm Death's Lee Dorrian guesting. It sounds more like Soundgarden than Napalm Death, but that's a good thing. In all, a decent effort that I could bear to play again.

Finally, Godless Savage Garden by Dimmu Borgir is an odd one. It's got a couple of re-recorded songs from a previous album, some live stuff and a ridiculous cover version of Accept's "Metal Heart". The live tracks are a blinding racket, worth listening to only for the opportunity to hear the "singer" pronounce the band's name. The studio tracks, however, are more disciplined and worth listening to. In fact, they energised me rather nicely and came closest to realising my aim of having some music to keep me awake and focused while working. That Accept cover is really really silly, though, especially the interpolation of one of the most appalling pieces of kitch found in the classical canon: Für Elise. I wonder if that was in the original. It's kept from going over the thin line between the clever and the stupid by the sheer apblomb with which it's delivered. I should probably have picked a later Dimmu Borgir album (indeed, I've got one album in MP3 format courtesy of head-banging buddy Danny), but the first five tracks on this one were quite enjoyable.