Rants

At the very core of my being, I think I'm more of an engineer than an artist. I love designing and building things. I tinker and assemble stuff, and I have a deep appreciation for science and all things technical. I possess an analytical mind that's allowed me to learn multiple programming languages more or less self taught, with the occasional tutorial from friends and a day class here and there paid for by work.

The one thing I really, really hate though, is debugging. Debugging makes me fucking crazy. Debugging makes me want to throw my keyboard at a wall, snap a DVD-ROM in half, and use the jagged edges to slash my jugular so I can bleed out into the hateful gaping chasm that is the open case of my dysfunctional PC.

...ok, that might be a little extreme, but you get the point.

I think part of the problem with being self taught is that I have these odd spotty gaps in my knowledge; in particular good debugging techniques. I'm a hell of a lot better now than I used to be, but that's only through hours and hours of painful swearing and tears.

As much as I love tinkering, I have a very short fuse when it comes to machines or programs that are misbehaving. See, I expect people to piss me off, so I have a pretty long fuse when it comes to dealing with other homo sapiens. Machines, however, should bend to my will as a superior tool using mammal.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

As far as actual updates go (rather than whining and ranting), I'm nearly done building the new Steamvolt website. I still need some new graphics and minor tweaking, but I did manage to build this massive PHP script that should ensure that the only thing I'll ever need to do when I add a new comic page is to add the page number and chapter number, and the code will build all the rest. The debugging sucked, as it usually does, but at the end of the day I got the sucker working.

Kind of makes me want to pick up a wrench, jump on top of it, and roar in victory like a frenzied howler monkey.

A few things going on. For starters, page 3 is overdue on Steamvolt, because I'm an intense procrastinator. Fortunately, this wasn't due to complete laziness, but from a combination of my neurotic need to finish up the Elf with the guns there, and a bit of a blockage on how to do a certain city-scape panel that's now been resolved.

On other random thoughts that have popped into my head, people who use Facebook or Twitter to spout their fringe political beliefs are, to put it mildly, raging shitheads.

Seriously. Facebook is just the place where a handful of your current friends and a whole lot of people you vaguely knew in high school can keep tabs on stuff in a creepy voyeuristic fashion; getting on your soapbox and linking all sorts of political stuff to acquaintances you haven't talked to in ten or fifteen years is an absolute indicator that you are, in fact, a clueless douchebag. No one wants to read about why you're a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Green/Whig/Anarchist/Schmuck. Keep it to yourself, please.

Other exciting things include the fact that this rather well proportioned Elf actually made my wife jealous, which I found odd and frankly god damn funny at the same time. Her exact quote was:

"Those tits look a little too good... what the hell have you been doing? Studying the things?? Who's tits have you been looking at?!?".

to which I replied:

Ok, first, I know my target audience, and second, I'm a rather average frustrated straight male. I've been studying breasts for nearly twenty years now. The only thing shocking about this is that you're shocked by it."

That shut her up, more or less ^___^

So far I've actually been rather quiet about politics this election season. I suppose part of it is my attempt to be a bit more professional, less partisan, more appealing to visitors once I get some content built.

But today, I must speak.

I watched the debates last night, between John McCain and Barrack Obama. Especially the part about health care. You see, I used to work in the insurance industry, so I know at least a little itty bit about it. And this is what I found:

John McCain’s health-care plan for our nation is, quite literally, the worst idea mankind has ever given birth to. It is a festering, necrotic abortion of reason, and an affront to all thinking non-HMO CEO creatures on the planet.

...

I’m still trying to figure out if the idea to green-light a movie like Gigli was a worse decision than this health care plan or not, and I’m actually having a tough time deciding, that’s how unfathomably bad it is.

Of course, if you want to see the downfall of America, this is a good start. Bush has destroyed our economy, I figure McCain can annihilate healthcare, and then the next Republican after him could, perhaps, destroy agriculture. It seems like a logical progression to me.

...

Ok, getting down from my soapbox now.

Perhaps, once I calm down, I will explain in detail why it is such a heinous thing, but there are plenty of sources out there that do a better job than I.

So I've been getting way into this whole Paizo/Pathfinder D&D 3.75 thing. It's fun, and interesting, because they're asking fans to come up with ideas and do brain storming to help them develop and re-work the 3.x D&D rule set.

Back in the early days of the internet, there was much talk of the new found freedom of and access to information. People would be given the opportunity to learn and read about things that they might never have the chance to find out about in some local library or bookstore or hear about on the radio or see on TV.

The Information Age, when all humankind would become more enlightened and aware and knowledgeable, where the consciousness of the species would raise and cultural exchanges and deeper understanding woud be possible.

So what do we find today, now that the internet is so common and so many people are using it to communicate and share ideas?

First, there's an incredible abundance of porn on the internet. But that's not what this is about.

The big revelation, as it turns out, is that there are some seriously stupid motherfuckers out there.

Really, this shouldn't have ever come as a surprise to anyone. When you get down to it, and no matter how fervently people wish to deny it, we're all just angry, horny apes with oversized brains. Now, the porn thing has been discussed to death. It's a boring topic, really. The really interesting thing is the stupid shit.

We're all capable of doing, saying, and thinking dumb things. Humans suck at logic and making rational arguments, especially to ourselves. But now, with the internet, all of this stupid can be accessed by anyone at any time with no delays.

Young Earth Creationists, Religious Extremists, Conspiracy Theorists, New-age loons, Political extremists, Creepy perverts, EMO teenagers, Racists, Sexists, Furries, Anti-vaccine freaks, and everyone who's got fingers and can at least hunt and peck letters on a keyboard has suddenly gained a forum, an outlet for their absurd notions, where they can share their shitty irrational ideas and infect other irrational monkies with absurdities.

Is this a bad thing? Hell. No. This is fucking great. :thumbs:

This gives me the chance to make fun of every stupid retarded idea that our species comes up with. I mean, sure, sure, maybe we'll all become more enlightened and tolerant and better able to appreciate different cultures and solve the world problems and all that, but in the mean time, there is so much stupidity to be made fun of that it makes me giddy just thinking about it.

I've come across plenty of excellent stupidity just this month alone! My fellow primates have been in fine form!

...

Once again, it's black History month, and the bleating of the poor oppressed caucasian has yet again cried out with "Why is there no white history month? Why are the Darkies so special???"

Young Earth Creationists are still at it, vociferously defending a world view straight out of the bronze ages with 21st century computer and internet technology. Even the Republican candidate Huckabee has expressed his disbelief in modern science and biology, and he might have a shot at the white house.

Scientologists are still at it too! Tom Cruise in particular has now been shown to be one of the kookiest sons of bitches in America. At the same time, Jerry O'Connell proves that he's one funny motherfucker. Ok, so that last one isn't stupid, but it shows how awesome the power of the internet is for finding and goofing on idiocy in all it's forms.

Conservatives argue about whether one of their possible candidates is really conservative or just another dirty liberal. The words liberal and conservative and how they're defined become so muddled that they lose all possible meaning and the total collapse of the english language ensues.

Even better, police toss cripples out of wheelchairs! I mean, seriously, you can't even make up stuff this insane and moronic!

...

In the past we'd have to trawl through newspapers or listen to the nightly news and rely on spotty reporting to pick up on this stuff. Now? Shit, every dumb thing anyone ever does can now be caught on tape and put up on youtube. It's awesome. It's glorious. There is just so much more material to poke fun of now than ever before. There's so much stupid, and it burns like the heat of a thousand suns.

:yay:

Hmm, well, it seems like people really like this picture, so what the hell, now you can buy Stupid Burning Stuff! YAY!

So Wizards of the Coast, the current owners of the Dungeons and Dragons game line, has just put out a new book. This book is called Wizards Presents: Races and Classes. This book costs about twenty bucks. It has no rules. It has no actual game info.

Well, the illustration and title here ought to be pretty self explanatory. At the time, as I flailed about like a baby giraffe and muttered "FUCKSHITFUCKSHITFUCKSHIT!!!" and did graceful little pirouettes at the cusp of my doom, it didn't seem so funny.

As it turns out, my wallet is full of an absurd amount of miscellaneous useless crap:

See that? That's my old wallet. Seriously, it's just about two inches thick. No, I do (did) not keep it in my back pocket. It simply would not fit. The thing was so clunky that I could barely get it out of my pocket at the drive through of a fast food joint: I had to prepare ahead of time to retrieve the damn thing.

Yes, the image here is a bit incongruous with the topic, but that's fine.

There are things that annoy me today, and on this day I will whine about them, because I can.