Fri, 05 Sep 2008

Little Nemo In Slumberland

Winsor McCay's opus, Little Nemo did not enjoy great popular acclaim during its original run 1905-1913. However, there's a beauty about it that makes me suspect this was due to it being ahead of its time as opposed to any material defect.

Today the strip enjoys a prominent critical following, with Fantagraphics and Taschen issuing editions and it's influence has been seen in works such as Alan Moore's Promethea (definitely in my top 5), Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Maurice Sendak's In The Night Kitchen and even a work of erotica, Little Ego by Vittorio Giardino.

Little Nemo is beautifully drawn, intricate, whimsical, frightening, dreamlike and uplifting. It's also, at least for the original run, out of copyright. Do yourself a favor and take a look.

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Fri, 29 Aug 2008

"The Vioxx 'V' Squad: Reps From Another Universe"

An interesting rep training video from Merck. Keep in mind they eventually withdrew this product ("voluntarily") in 2004 because of cardio problems linked to long-term high dose use.

The weird "mission" style orientation, the jargon, the general bullshit level reminds me of nothing so much as internal Scientology videos.

Pharma marketing annoys the hell out of me, because patient outcomes are too important to stake on who has the glossier brochure, or in this example, the most ridiculous "The Matrix" inspired training program. That's big business for you though.

p.s. I! BU! PROFEN!

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Wed, 30 Jul 2008

Annoying Chinese Advertisement

Hengyuanxiang, a leading Chinese wool producer and clothing retailer, is a major sponsor of the Beijing Olympics. And this is not the first time the company has caused Olympic-related friction.

This year it was forced to pull a commercial described as "the most excruciatingly annoying ad on Chinese TV".

"When they first saw the ad, some people thought their TV sets were broken," The Wall Street Journal reported.

The 60-second commercial promoting the Olympic sponsorship deal featured what the newspaper described as a "squeaky girl's voice [that] chirps out a triplicate list of each of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, interspersed with repetitions of the company's slogan by an adult voice".

The newspaper said the ad was so bad that other advertisers using the same TV channel complained because viewers were changing stations as soon as the spot appeared.
  -- The Age

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Wed, 16 Jul 2008

Webcomic Pick of 2008 - Kate Beaton

Webcomics are hard. Writing is hard. Writing comedy is arguably harder, and intelligent comedy perhaps hardest yet. Drawing is also equally difficult.

I don't read a lot of webcomics anymore. There are a few that I'll put aside time for however - Achewood, Girl Genius, Erfworld (uneven), The Non-Adventures of Wonderella and Penny Arcade. There was a time when this list would have been about twenty comics long, and I'm very reluctant to add anything new to it.

That said, I recommend Kate Beaton's work, reminiscent in some ways of a beloved paper comic, without hesitation. It really is very good.

My only complaint is that I wish Kate would watermark her comics. It took me an awfully long time to figure out who she was after I saw her "George IV, You Are Too Fat To Be King" in a forum signature.

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Wed, 18 Jun 2008

Somethingawful Forums Differentiated

I don't think this will make sense to anyone not from S-A.

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Sun, 18 May 2008

MrBaliHai's guide to Psychotronic Movies on Archive.org

Christmas came early this year? A list of all the movies available freely on Archive.org that also feature in Michael J. Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.

How great is this! Especially after I tried and failed to talk Cassie into buying a copy of Hammer Films' awful The Satanic Rites of Dracula on DVD with me on Friday night.

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Sat, 10 May 2008

Some kind of Hong-Kong treasure house...

Your one stop shop for console bits and pieces... PSP service mode batteries... pig shaped flashlights... rifle scopes??? I'm not quite sure what the unifying factor is here, but they seem to have a lot of... stuff. A lot of it is quite interesting!

There are a few sites around like this, and it's always interesting to see wht the skunkworks of HK are churning up, often being produced side by side in the factories that provide the "name brand" good we buy in western stores. This one has free worldwide shipping and no minimum order quantities though, so I bought a pair of Triwing screwdrivers for $1.49. These are about $7 each from somewhere like Techstuff. Let's see if they turn up!

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Tue, 22 Apr 2008

Some nice new Tarot designs.

Despite having 'history of occultism' in my profile, I rarely get a chance to post about it. After someone posted some terribly mind-bending SHODAN/GlaDOS slash art, I poked around the rest of the artist's site, and found some nice new card designs.

Egypt Urnash - warning, contains breasts and Furries.

In particular, I like her Three of Cups (nsfw - breasts, serpent girls) which looks like something Josh Agle would paint after a night on the town with Alan Moore.

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Wed, 09 Apr 2008

WaffleImages Random

WaffleImages is an image hosting service for use with the Something Awful Forums. I recently noticed they have a random image page, which I will build a screensaver around soon. Fair warning - there is probably a fair bit of NSFW stuff inside.

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Sun, 06 Apr 2008

Beirut

I first heard about this band from posts on Ukulele Hunt, where Woodshed has transcribed the Uke parts for nearly their entire back catalogue. If you like Augie March, you will like this.

The instrument being played at the beginning is a Fluke ukulele. I will buy one for myself when I graduate.

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Sat, 15 Mar 2008

Ika I Rutan

WzDD and I have been marvelling at this young lady for some time now. This is a Swedish kids show from the late 1980s, and it seems to have that kind of weird offbeat / unsettling feel to it ( c.f. Sporticus from Leisuretown ) that I think makes it appealing to a certain kind of adult too.1

The opening reel is practically a goldmine of T-Shirt opportunities as well.

Youtube:

1 No, not pedophiles.

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