Comics Kingdom

An open letter to King Features Syndicate

Just read your "One Year of Comics Kingdom" email and I'm stunned at the audacity of your claims. You've "enhanced the look and feel of the newsletter"? Are you serious? They look like garbage now. Supposedly this was to make them look better on mobiles, but I don't read my emails on my phone, so to me it's a clear downgrade.

The biggest crock though is where you claim that the Comics Kingdom website is "quick-loading" and "responsive". I've got to wonder if you've even seen the site. It's slow, inconvenient and just generally awful. I cannot understand how anyone could claim that Comic Kingdom is in any way an improvement over DailyINK. From my perspective it's worse in every way.

And as for its mobile-friendliness, the site takes so long to load on my PC I wouldn't even consider trying it out on a mobile, especially if I were using 3G rather than wifi. Having archives access has become mostly pointless (even as you've expanded the availability) as it takes so long to load each strip that reading through old ones is more of a chore than a pleasure.

And this is not a new problem, nor can you claim ignorance of it as I've complained about it on several occasions. Your site is arse and your constant claims that it is somehow improved over the old one are salt in the wound. You've had a year to get this working. Fix your damn site.

The Worst Detective

Justified (A Madison Knight Novel), by Carolyn Arnold, is unbelievably bad. I don't mean that hyperbolically; I kept reading all the way to the end because I really couldn't believe it could actually be that bad.

Darkmoon

A guy on the radio today talking about the "blood moon" tonight reminded me of the video game Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon and I thought I'd download it and see if it's crazy hard as I remember it being or if I was just too young to be able to play it well.

Turns out it is crazy hard.

I Went For a Walk

I had to go to Centrelink today to sort some stuff out (which was, as always, massive pain), but on my way back I happened to see the above sign. It caught my attention. It seems like such an odd mix of things. So I stopped to have a look. Another couple of signs in the window also caught my attention.

Horse Vet

Here's a thing I wrote about what it would be like if Dave was a horse vet.

David Thorne: Horse Vet

Have you ever punched a horse to death? I have. My name is David Thorne.

She'd said the horse was behaving oddly. Show me a horse that isn't. They're mad creatures. But there was always the chance that it would have to be put down, and I'd enjoy that, so I agreed to come and take a look at it.

"Your horse needs to be put down." I said.
She seemed dubious. "You haven't seen it yet."
"You've heard of the horse whisperer? That film was actually based on me. Of course, in real life it's more like horse shouting. But I don't need to actually see a particular horse to know what to do with it."
"Are you sure you're a real vet?" she asked.
"Fine, I'll look at the damn horse."

A Simple Recipe

This is a quick and simple recipe to make for yourself for dinner when you're at home by yourself for the evening.

Lectures are shit

God I hate lectures.

Someone... talking.... really slowly... and with weird... pauses and EMPHASIS... and... while talking... really slowly... they repeat... that is, they REPEAT themselves... over and over... and say exactly what's written on the slide... even though you can read it on the slide... and they almost never... never seem to have planned (or rehearsed)... so they repeat... themselves... or explain something... out of context... or that isn't part of the... isn't supposed to be in the lecture... or they get out of sync with the slideshow... and repeat themselves when the right slide comes up... or they explain things... in the wrong ORDER.

Youth, Respect and Power

Today's modern industrialised societies are often said to have a “cult of youth”, a worship of the idea of being young. This could be linked to our consumerist culture and the constant search for new products and experiences. The “seductive power [of objects of consumption] lies mostly in their not having been experienced before [and] the young, by definition, fit the bill … as objects of consumption” (Bauman 2007: 59). This positions youth as desirable but not respected, a thing to be possessed but not admired.

Masculinity and Femininity

“Masculinity” and “femininity” are terms which encompass broad categories of behaviour deemed appropriate for and typical of those categorised as male and female respectively. These definitions are somewhat recursive as masculinity is defined as behaviour typical of males (or more specifically, men) and men are then expected to behave in masculine ways. The terms are also defined in opposition to each other, in that masculinity is whatever femininity is not, and therefore men are expected to behave in “not-feminine” ways. But neither exists as an objective standard outside of society and “vary across cultures and change over time” (Cameron 2007: 23); “Manhood does not bubble up to consciousness from our biological makeup; it is created in culture” (Kimmel 2001: 267).

Copyright in the 21st century

In 1557 the guild of stationers was granted a royal charter and became the Stationers' Company, leading to the creation of the stationers' copyright, which was a private agreement “granted by a group of businessmen who agreed to allow one of them the exclusive right to publish a specific work in perpetuity” (Patterson & Lindberg, 1991, p22) rather than an actual law. This copyright was created for two purposes; to protect the publishers of works and to aid the government in its attempts at censorship. (Patterson & Lindberg, 1991, p25) Modern copyright differs in its goals and execution, but is in some ways based on that first version.

Maggie's farm?

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I wake in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

God, what an arsehole. "I'm too special to clean things." Wanker.

I ate some spam

I've often wondered what spam is like, and I've seen it in supermarkets plenty of times. I've always been put off by its reputation, but it's in every supermarket so obviously some people like it. It can't be selling solely by the power of morbid curiosity. So today, I decided, was the day. I would eat some spam.