I may be away a few days so here is some non threatening, seasonally appropriate content by Kemineko.

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Suburban Banshee's most recent post is titled "Another Translated Book By Me!" Which indicates that she has done this before. Anyway, it seems that she has translated an academic lecture, by a Dominican Friar given in Spain in the 1500s. And I gather she did this for the hell of it.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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This fan film is making the rounds and deservedly so. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:50 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I blundered into this piece of fan-art the other day and tracked it down to Zenith Lee* who seems to rather like K-ON! as it has consumed a bit of his art of late. (links NSFW)

Is anyone familiar enough with the 4-Koma to know if the new girl is indeed a Trekkie?

UPDATE: So...um...well...yes indeedee....totally missed that reference. I was thinking more along the lines of a reference to "This is Spinal Tap"..and coming up blank...
UPDATE 2: Oh wait...every panel of the picture is a......
Well....golly...Probably should...ummm...take that off the front page then.
(Facepalm)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:24 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I live in southeastern Virginia. This area was, some years ago rather more rural in character than it is now. The neighborhood where my folks live in Portsmouth was surrounded by farms when they moved there and when I moved into my mobile home in Newport News  it was walking distance from a working dairy. The area is all suburbs and congestion now but I occasionally encounter people with no concept of rural life complaining (or boasting) that they live in the sticks...Hampton Roads is not the sticks...it is the oldest continuously populated urban areas in North America.

Many years ago, I used to live in Zuni in Isle of Wight County which is still somewhat rural (but not really). When we lived there, aside from the main state routes,  we didn't have paved roads...which sucked when the weather was bad....and we depended on wells for water. Before we got a deep well I had to change the filter under the house daily. Aside from the general store/Citgo station and a lawn and garden place, there wasn't any shopping closer than 40 minutes away.  There was a nudist colony about 10 miles away....which took advantage of the isolated nature of the area.  I never went there but I know it was on the Ivor side if the county line, in the vicinity of the insane asylum. The  little town was (and still is) dominated by the grim visage of a ruined grain elevator ...the explosion of which had cracked windows in Smithfield, some 20 miles away. There were also a few (2?) wild  kangaroos...but they are probably all dead now. Even then we were only 40 minutes from a hospital and less than an hour from downtown Norfolk. It wasn't really the wilderness.
 In recent years the area was devastated by the freak disaster that was Floyd and since then the side  roads have been paved (which is a big improvement).
It has also had many of the peanut fields filled with exburbs. These in turn are filled with people who boast of living in the country and how genuine this makes them. At one time I delivered the area (except Zuni) for UPS and at one point, while taking lunch in Windsor, I was told about a local political stink involving those roads. 
When the roads were paved many of the inhabitants of the new exburbs had tried to get the county to NOT pave the roads that did not lead to their little enclaves. They argued that the gravel (and sometimes dirt) roads made the area more authentic and picturesque. This did not sit well with people who had much experience with what it meant to deal with mucky roads in the winter and the terrible dust in the summer. Accourding to the gentleman who told me this, these people had the chutspah to claim that paved roads would encourage more people to miove into the area....just like they had...and they even sued to get the road paving stopped on environmental grounds arguing that the roads for others...(but not for them of course...but then that was a fait acompli) was an environmental problem. When they failed at that they did demand curbside garbage pickup...since it sucks to take ones garbage down to one of the county dumpster stations in ones Prius (these people are so edgy and authentic they can live in the country without a pickup truck). So no...even out in Isle of Wight County...its not the sticks...If someone claims it is cock your eybrow at them.

Why this programming detour?
Well its a tail of country living and all the cool kids are doing it...
At least this cool kid.
 Go read her tale of rural life now....no really she's a professional writer.
It's a 10.0.
It is win. 
Read the whole thing... her writing brings all the boys to the yard.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:50 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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..according to John C Wright.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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For some time, I've had a partially written review of the Coyote Ragtime Show floating in the ether of blog purgatory. A combination of school, and other distractions as well as a severe case of Apathy towards the show have kept it there.

Now Ubu Roi has forced the issue with a long thoughtful and justifiably merciless disquetation on The Coyote Ragtime Show.

The show is an animated 70s action flick containing all the absurdities that implies and rife with with elements from American, Japanese and Hong Kong flavors of that particular dish. The show is almost a stream of consciousness of random encounters and complications. Of course, many of the impossibilities (long conversations during a 6 story fall) are anime tropes as well, that they are noticed as such is a testament to the shows failure to engage the audience after the first episode...

And the first episode IS good.

Tough as nails detective Angelica Barnes has been given a license by the president of...the...er...galaxy or something...to bring back the super criminal known as MISTER. She has arrived on a backwater planet to check out a lead in the local maximum security prison.

She is met by Chelsea Muir (superbly voiced in the dub by Monica Rial) who is arguably the most likable character in the show. Ostensibly a detective, Chelsea was almost certainly either an affirmative action hire or was given a commission in the vain hope of a quid pro quo involving her ample bosom, for Chelsea is barely literate and exceedingly scatterbrained. She is not dumb, however. It is strongly implied in the English version that she is dyslexic. She is a brilliant mechanic and has an eidetic memory. Her knowledge base and skillets are eclectic and unsystematic but what she is good at she is very good at. She is also idealistic and principled, which on this corrupt world would likely have gotten her fired or worse if Angelica Barnes opinion of her hadn't shifted from contempt to admiration. (By the end of episode 1 she signs on as Barnes assistant...gopher...something).

The two arrive at the prison to investigate the possibility that MISTER is incarcerated there, for a DUI of all things, when..

Suddenly....loligoth paratroopers...12 of them!

 Ah yes, Madame Marciano's 12 sisters, ruthless female android (?) assassins, each equipped with a different example of 20th century gunpr0n and dressed in costumes exhibiting varying flavors of gothieness ranging from debutantes, to maids to punkers to.....chimney sweeps....

Yes boys and girls by combining gunpr0n and cosplay with murderous maidens of mayhem the producers were able to cover bases on at least 30 different fetishes in one villain team!

This should have been the best series ever!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:48 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Chelsea is the ONLY reason I lasted as long as I did with the show.

I lasted 2-1/2 episodes.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Sun Dec 2 03:19:44 2007 (AW3EJ)

2 I blame Aug for ten episodes of my stupidity.

Posted by: ubu at Thu Dec 13 20:06:26 2007 (i3HGQ)

3 Perhaps a bit late now... But I stumbled across this looking for a picture of the sisters, and, well...

While I agree that the show was cheap, cliche fare (which I actually found very fun because I expected it to be cheesy and bad from the first episode) I disagree that Angelica's love for Mister was a sudden plot twist thrown in at the end. Maybe my judgement is skewed by a few lucky guesses from the first episode, but I saw that coming by episode two and she showed signs long before the finale that she had another motive than just justice for finding Mister.

That doesn't save it from being a fluff-fest filled to the brim with cheese, but I just can't hold that plot element against it.

Posted by: Koko at Thu Jul 24 12:03:33 2008 (33o/I)

4 Koko!

Wow!

We got visited by Koko!

Such August company! How are Betty, Bimbo and Fitz?

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Jul 26 19:10:32 2008 (V5zw/)

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The lovely and talented Katie De Sousa whose art has graced the pages of this blog before, has updated her site and opened both an Artblog and a DA-Prints account.

...Go check her out  Go check out her art! 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Dr Helen reports on a new study that suggests that girls constantly talking about their problems and commiserating each others misery could be...
....co-ruminating...(?)


A researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed.

_{( 'co-ruminating' sounds like something forbidden in Leviticus...which gives me a hankering  for shrimp)}

I assume they are talking about extreme cases but I have observed this sort of thing in female acquaintances.
 
OTOH from my limited observations of female behavior, in it's moderate form it's perfectly natural.

Get some girls who've had something bad occur...they'll talk in circles about it for hours one of 2 things will normally happen...
A: They'll transfer misery between them in ever increasing amounts until  POW!  critical mass is achieved and they have a good cry and thereby make themselves feel better.
...or...
 B: 1 or more little goth girls will be born. *


Read the whole post, which, being written by a well adjusted female clinical Psychologist is notably free of the silly-ass snarking of a lonely bitter man.



* regards B....Note that if something goes horribly wrong...then an Emo kid might be born...which, of course, requires an intervention...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:37 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Colleen Doran is serious about self publishing....no middleman for her...she nails every aspect of production at the source.

Not pictured:

The cages where she raises the Siberian squirrels she uses for her brushes and  her annual ink harvest of Humbolt squid off Peru.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Political cartoonist John Cox now has a blog.

Hat Tip: Colleen Doran

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 Well, I don't know what to say.

No, I have no Idea who made the General Osaka .gif...it showed up on a message board where it was most out of place.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:27 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1

Ready for an unbelievably geeky nitpick? Whoever made the GIF doesn't know anything about American rank insignia. We don't use 5 stars any longer.

But when we did (in the 1940's and 1950's), the five were arranged in a pentagon, not in a line.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wed May 16 12:56:56 2007 (+rSRq)

2 Oh, and they're supposed to be gold, not silver.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wed May 16 12:57:15 2007 (+rSRq)

3 She's just an abstract representation of a general. It's like complaining about the Tiger in the infamous Azugirls-the-tank-crew picture not being historically accurate.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed May 16 20:32:26 2007 (9imyF)

4 Many catgirls died this day....

Posted by: Brickmuppet at Wed May 16 20:35:29 2007 (V5zw/)

5 I just assumed that Gen. Osaka was a takeoff of "Baghdad Bob" (or whatever his name was), the bombastic Iraqi info minister.  Seems like that job would fit her to a T.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri May 18 00:52:56 2007 (FgNgv)

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