The suspense. Feel it.

As much an excuse to wedge The Girl from Ipanema into a future DCR soundtrack comp* as it is a natural pacing break in the story.

The next strip is The Most Important One Yet, so it's only fair there's some Waiting For An Elevator to even it out. And we'll be Waiting for awhile - I'm in the middle of the first Apocalypse I've been issued in quite awhile. Over the emo hump, on to the Getting Stuff Done bit. So this could be my last New Art for a few weeks.

Inks are a bit chunkier than I'd like, but I was operating under The Clock and on the phone with my Male Parental Unit at the same time. Inking is one of those things I can mostly disengage my brain from (ask a few people who've talked to me on the phone - "I'm inking" is my frequent answer to "So, what're you up to?"). Point of fact, several panels of The Dualist and DCR have gone from gray to black while phonering with the MPU. As such, quality is more a factor of yet another micron going south on me (and not having a spare in better condition) than it is technical laxness.

I should probably try a dip pen again at some point.

This is the first strip to be worked in multiple locations. Cleanup, strip assembly and shading (and posting) were done at the South Side Beehive, soft-proving one of DCR's incept guidelines - that being the ability to do the comic in any location on any hardware. And it is doable, if far from optimal - the strip would have been up last night if I'd remembered to toss my mouse in my cable bag, but I forgot. Again. Not this time, fortunately. In a previous life I was Down With The Trackpad, but after six or seven years of arting with mice, trackballs and tablets, using a trackpad is like trying to masturbate with my nipples instead of my left hand - comical, awkward, ineffectual... with a good deal of grunting.

Fine in private, but it does tend to make one feel a bit self conscious in a coffee shop.

* The Comps are Coming. Probably later this year, for The Dualist and DCR.1.

Andy Alm unleashes the awesome might of his accordion on Liberty Avenue. Excerpts filmed while waiting for a Deftones soundalike to open up for a The Cure cover band at Pegasus.

Andy Alm unleashes his accordion on Liberty Avenue:

Most of an Andy Alm cover of the "water world" music from the original Super Mario Brothers (!!):

This man - and his accordion - made my week. Maybe even my year. I gave his accordion case all of the coins in my pockets, took his name, and can't seem to manifest his Facebook profile. But he does seem to have a YouTube channel (linked above) and had no objection to his performance being YouTubed.

I've always had a fondness for street musicians. Street musicians who delve beyond the constraints of the acoustic guitar, that is. Those who embrace other, more alien means of expression. I've heard the violin, the saxaphone (always a favorite), the trombone, the gospel singer (heard but not seen and to great effect)... but never.... an ACCORDION?!

Wow.

Andy Alm exudes the best possible Awesome at the outer orbit of my greatest hour of need. There is no better omen.

00:06 <@solios> xeno: dude, I was waiting outside a GAY BAR to go see a COVER BAND. And this guy cut loose.
00:06 <@solios> it doesn't get awesomer.
00:06 <@solios> ever.
00:06 <@xeno> asdjklfasdjklf
00:06 <@xeno> you mean you saw that LIVE.
00:07 <@solios> I shot that video.
00:07 <@solios> see the account name? :)
00:07 <@xeno> @_@
00:07 * xeno falls right the fuck over
00:07 <@solios> i gave him all of my pocket change, took his name, shook his hand and thanked him for making my week.
00:07 <@xeno> fucking \m/
00:09 <@solios> :D

From io9 via Dark Roasted Blend (also via xeno, #loc's io9 content screener), a bunch of photos of the aftermath of Soyuz TMA-11's ballistic reentry.

A couple of my favorites:

Yes, the pod went THUD! back in April. Go, but carefully - this internet is slow.

Further proof that everything* is going according to A Plan:

- Decouple from Workstation -
Techno Animal - Monoscopic
- Leave Work -
Cabaret Voltaire - Sex, Money, Freaks (Long session 6 8 86)
Front 242 - Animal (Radio)
- Bus In Sight -
Motley Crue - In The Beginning
- Bus Arrives -
Chumbawumba - Mary, Mary (Stigmatic Mix)
Front Line Assembly - Reprobate (Lowlife Remixed By Greg Reely)
The Shizit - I Walk Through Walls
Head of David - 108
Head of David - Adrenecide
Front 242 - Never Lost Faust
Tears For Fears - Mad World
Godflesh - Slavestate
Optimus Rhyme - Reboot
Skinny Puppy - 200 Years
PISSPOWERASSCHRIST - Screwed
PISSPOWERASSCHRIST - Pisspower [V2.5 XopherTM Duncemix]
Godfleh - Monotremata
Crust Requiem - Leafeaters Anonymous
Birmingham 6 - Radicals
Tom Waits - Way Down In The Hole
-Bus Finally Crosses The Bridge -
Birmingham 6 - Summertime is Over

* See here and here.

Thanks to my coworker John V. :

Second Life Computer Remanufacturing apparently does pickup. I hope they do pickup, as I have untold hundreds of pounds of silicon that need to Go Away, and no easy way to make it disappear.

Furnish A Start will, according to John, come take away a bunch of the furniture lying around.

Vietnam Veterans of America (Clothingdonations.org) will apparently take almost everything else.

Any and all of which are better than dumping the entire contents of the house into a dumpster. A good chunk of said contents belongs in one, but the fact there's still stuff lying around that would be useable to somebody other than me has been rankling at me for awhile... and now I can Do Something About It.

Wednesday was the last day of a work, production, and recreation routine that began in 2003. A pattern of inertia I couldn't see any way clear of has been effectively obliterated.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

I've crossed out the Depression stage on the Kübler-Ross Model and should have some idea how effective Bargaining will be on Acceptance shortly.

(time passes)

The answer is "a bit, but not very." Which in the best of all possible worlds gives me a hell of a lot of time for solving the problems I've been effectively not dealing with - but could potentially leave me dangling in a bad way if things go badly on other fronts (read: moving).

As always, it's easier to deal with a change forced upon me than it is to force a change upon myself.

21:51 <@bda> http://www.2009atruestory.com/
21:58 < solios> smells lame
22:01 < solios> bda: that feels like somebody (a) thinks Year Zero is the best thing ever, and (b) thinks Cloverfield is the best movie ever made ever.
22:04 <@ejp> I *know* b is wrong. dunno wtf a is
22:04 < solios> Nine Inch Nails prog album / ARG that oozed barrels of "..."
22:05 <@ejp> ah
22:05 <@bda> solios: Yeah.
22:06 <@bda> (re: Year Zero)
22:06 <@bda> It's sort of ok? I guess?
22:06 < solios> my lamedar pegged with the flash splash.
22:07 < solios> but I'm Dystopian Near-Futured out.
22:07 <@bda> Ha.
22:07 < solios> the dystopian near-future is here. It's been here for years. It's just too massive, lame, and horrific for anyone to actually notice.
22:07 < solios> :|
22:08 <@bda> :|

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : 1918 - 2008.

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich being more meaningful to me than The Prisoner, on two points - my high school social activism with regards to said (being politically Retired from the reading list), and the content itself - which brings new meaning to the word cold.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words. (AS via thinkexist)

"The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.”
(ibid)

Left to right : Jason Bannister's Vaio, my Powerbook G4 12", and the original "phat" Nintendo DS, all in front of Nick McClay's ginormous Asus.

A big brick of headsorting, cut short by life stepping in to do some of it for me. Benefits of blogging from a coffee shop, etc.

If I can't find a roommate within the next week, I'll be moving in a month. And these monitors are too damned bulky to take with me. I upgraded to LCDs awhile back and always figured I'd find someone else to pass 'em off to. Turns out that 'someone else' will be either a craigslist user or a chunk of pavement on bulk night. If this initial craigslisting pans out, I'll probably be unloading similar items using the same method.

Point of clarity : These are both Apple monitors. That means they have the bulky 25 pin connector. I may have a couple of spare adapters, but they're first come, first serve.

Monitor One : Applevision 1710AV : 20$.

Bought this awhile back at Goodwill computer. It'll pull 1280x1024@60hz and various resolutions below with decent quality, and was my primary monitor before I acquired the Psychic TV. The color quality and brightness are quite good for its age. As for the rest of the Applevision "features," it's a road apple - don't expect the built-in speakers to work very well (or at all). If you have an old System 7 (or up through 9.2.2) mac with 25-pin video and an ADB port, then you'll be able to access all kinds of incredibly slick calibration options. If I still ran 9, I'd include screenshots. Trust me, it's neat. The monitor's a bit touchy (hence the price) and if you're using it with a VGA adapter you'll have to test for your preferred resolution through trial and error.

 

It's big, it's heavy, it's cheap. And it can be yours for one of those spiffy green portraits of Andrew Jackson. I'll even throw in a VGA to Mac adapter if I can dig up a spare.

Monitor Two : 20" Apple Trinitron (aka The Psychic TV) : 40$.

An enormous beast of a CRT. Base snacked on by Cookie Monster - it's missing a good-sized chunk but it doesn't impact stability and as far as I know the ADB passthrough built into the base still works. Can't confirm that, as I haven't used any ADB kit in a good long time. Display is a bit dim and the color is a bit flat, despite brightness and contrast being cranked to the max. But it's an old display, so that comes with the territory. Comes with free Psychic TV and Einstuerzende Neubauten stickers for your aesthetic enjoyment. Given the size and overall quality, would probably work best as a recreational video device attached to a Mac Mini or similar - I played most of Final Fantasy VIII with it, using a Beige G3 as the passthrough. The display is optimal at 1280x1024@60hz. It will do 70hz if you insist on it, but that refresh rate comes with a funky wub-wub-wub-wub effect in the lower righthand corner that you probably won't enjoy much.

 

I'd've included photos of the stickers (port and starboard) but they didn't come out. So it goes. Yours for forty george washingtons and the force you'll exert getting it to wherever you want it to be.

Pickup only - I'll carry to the front door and maybe to your vehicle if my arms don't explode. All sales are final. I can't refund your money and I'm definitely not liable if the equipment explodes or mutates into a giant Toyko-destroying hyperbeast.

12:06 <@ejp> wordy fuck, ain't ya?
12:06 <@ejp> my CL ads tend to be "17" CRT, has all cords. Works."
12:06 <@ejp> you want more? buy something more expensive than $20
12:10 < solios> yeah, well.

I have a ton of other Apple kit lying around that I still need to get rid of and may list later if this goes well. Or I may sell it to you at a reasonable per-pound rate at the time of sale of the above goods, if you're interested.

Carnegie Library Of Pittsburgh, Oakland branch, Lecture Hall entrance. AKA "around back." Defacement most likely occurred between 2200 last night and 0630 this morning. Or Sunday night, according to one of my coworkers.

  

Like most non-comic viz, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The time being one of those magical fun fluffy happy times in which your options have tunneled down to (a) Find Something To Do or (b) lapse into unconsciousness. I need the consciousness thing in a bit. So.

[im]perfect definitely sums things up.

20:58 <@xeno> Io++
20:59 <@solios> fagbot: jupiter?
20:59 <+fagbot> solios: do i look like the Encyclo-fucking-paedia Britannica to you?
20:59 <@solios> fagbot: jupiter is big. Clarke has a hardon for it.
20:59 <+fagbot> OK, solios.
21:01 <@xeno> wasn't rama set around it?
21:03 <@solios> no, 2010 was.
21:03 <@solios> 2001 was originally off to saturn but got retconned. o_o
21:03 <@solios> fagbot: rama?
21:03 <+fagbot> solios: no clue
21:04 <@xeno> ah
21:04 <@xeno> i just wikied it
21:04 <@xeno> i've never read it apparently
21:04 <@xeno> sounds good too
21:04 * xeno puts it on his To Read list
21:04 <@solios> fagbot: rama is god checking up on his creation. (now you don't have to waste your life getting to that HORRIBLE ENDING)
21:04 <+fagbot> OK, solios.
21:04 <@xeno> you're a goddamn assbag.
21:04 <@solios> that's the explanation in the last book.
21:05 <@solios> I didn't spoil the good one at all. :)
21:05 <@solios> the first one is ++
21:05 <@xeno> you need a fucking tattoo, right on your head, that says CAUTION: SPOILERS and then in wee text below it, "also, I'm an assbag"

Since the entry in question seems to suffer from the problems that plagued the previous version of the blog*, here's a bit my dad tried to insert as a comment:

Thought I'd go ahead and insert this one here for the benefit of DCR patrons. This is where Jen is at the moment....

As of 7-19-08.......

http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=38478

I'd already relayed this to various people via IRC - though not everyone who reads DCR is in the channels I'm in, and not everyone in those channels reads the backscroll. So.

* if this persists I'll consider DCR to be Unfixable and will then have to take other measures. Measures that'll probably be some kind of serious pain.

20:37 <@solios> boiled down to the basics, re: the election:
20:37 <@solios> Obama wants to [push back] mars and give religion more money.
20:37 <@solios> McCain claims he'd like to balance the budget.
20:37 <@solios> who would you vote for?
20:38 <@xeno> me.
20:38 <@solios> well, yeah.

I'm liking McCain more and more - he's slinging the same old shit dressed up as the same old shit. There's a certain understated honesty to the fact that his campaign is owned by special interests and up to its neck in the cronies of the Republican Sith Lords. I expected that. Obama promised hope, the (overwhelming) disenfranchised swallowed it, and now that he's got 'em, Obama's back to Business As Usual. His backflip on FISA, which would have lost me all together if I hadn't read about the Constellation and Faith Based Bullshit first, is another prime example.

The man has proven through action that he has no interest in fixing this country. At least he's had the decency to do it before the election.

Unlike some people.

After what Bush has done to the place, the next president needs to be a miracle worker. Not a standard issue Say-Anything-To-Get-Elected type.

Bleah.

Perian is a multi-codec package that enables Quicktime to play back a host of file formats that most people use VLC and MPlayer for.

Unlike current VLC and "current" MPlayer builds, the Perian package correctly downsamples the irritating 5.1 (or 3.1 in the case of the file that done pissed me off so much I had to find a solution for it) AC3 audio codec to something that actually gives me voice on stereo speakers.

Without - I hasten to add for those of you who'd otherwise be all "$App can do that! Just do this, that, edit this, use the CLI for that, etc" - an enormous amount of undue hassle.

As one who strongly believes that things should just work, this makes Perian pretty spiffy in my book.

The comments problem I'd been having? The one that triggered a semi-painful blog rebuild? Turns out it was all due to a <MTCloseComments> lurking in the Category archive template.

I figure in order to keep the whole mess worthwhile, I'll just leave that in the old blog as a nice clean demarkation between where comments Go and where they Don't.

I'm so fucking awesome it hurts.

Having skimmed the plugin documentation a bit more, it looks like it keys off of the number of days displayed in the default index. The thing is, this variable is set in the main blog config, and can be freely ignored by template implementation.

Oops.

13:33 * xeno orders "pizza"
13:33 <@_Lasar> round flat fat discs?
13:34 <@solios> with MEAT
13:34 <@ejp> YAY MEAT
13:34 -!- _Lasar changed the topic of #loc to: What could possibly go wrong? <solios> with MEAT
13:34 <@_Lasar> I must meat.
13:34 <@_Lasar> Meat is the mind-healer.
13:35 <@xeno> it's Domino's pizza :(
13:35 <@_Lasar> Meat is the little-birth that brings total satisfaction
13:35 <@ejp> ...
13:35 <@_Lasar> I will face my meat.
13:35 <@solios> sllhg
13:35 <@_Lasar> I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
13:35 <@_Lasar> And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
13:35 <@_Lasar> Where the meat has gone there will be nothing.
13:35 <@_Lasar> Only I will remain.
13:35 * xeno stares at _Lasar
13:36 <@solios> _Lasar++
13:36 <@_Lasar> The Litany of Meat.
13:36 <@xeno> asdfmasd
13:36 <@_Lasar> MEAT MUST FLOW

From The Chicagoist (found by xeno on io9):

A (now ex-) guard at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh has been charged with slashing a painting on loan to the museum from our very own Art Institute. Art Institute restorers are trying to see if the painting is salvageable, but police say it's damaged beyond repair. Neither museum will comment on how much the painting is worth, but reports say Vija Celmins's "Night Sky #2" is worth around $1.2 million. Well, it was.

A few points:

1. There is no "Carnegie Museum." There are four Carnegie Museums, plural. The Science Center, the Warhol, the Museum of Natural History (MNH), and the Museum of Art (MOA). The painting is (was) on display at the 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, not the "Carnegie Museum." MNH and MOA share one street address (4400 Forbes Avenue), so it's an easy mistake to make if you haven't spent any time in Pittsburgh. Most people haven't.

2. The guard, Timur Serebrykov, is, according to a source who's worked for both MOA and MNH, Russian. The artist is Latvian. This probably has far more to do with the defacing than the content itself.

3. This isn't the only thing that's been defaced, broken, or destroyed on the floor of 4400 Forbes over the past few months. It just happens to be the most expensive, and the most high profile.

Most writers I know, all over the world, do the best they can. They must. They have no choice in the matter. All artists are specialized cells in a single, huge organism, mankind. Those cells have to behave as they do, just as the cells in our hearts or our fingertips have to behave as they do.

We here are some of those specialized cells. Our purpose is to make mankind aware of itself, in all its complexity, and to dream its dreams. We have no choice in the matter.

And there is more to our situation than that. In privacy here, I think we can acknowledge to one another that we don't really write what we write. We don't write the best of what we write, at any rate. The best of our stuff draws information and energy and wholeness from outside ourselves. Sculptors feel this more strongly than we do, incidentally. Every sculptor I ever knew felt that some spook had taken possession of his hands.

Where do these external signals come from? I think they come from all the other specialized cells in the organism. Those other cells contribute to us energy and little bits of information, in order that we may increase the organism's awareness of itself - and dream its dreams.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Address to P.E.N. Conference in Stockholm, 1973
(published in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons)

16:35 <@xeno> we're going to the snake hunt saturday o_o
16:35 <@solios> o_o
16:35 <@xeno> MORRIS, BITCHES.
16:35 <@solios> \m/
16:35 <@xeno> i've never been to it
16:35 <@xeno> weird, that.
16:36 <@xeno> and it was the what brought my dad to the area, which is Even Weirder
16:36 <@solios> O_o
16:36 <@solios> I've been a few times.
16:36 <@solios> not the actual hunt but the fairthing.
16:36 <@solios> it's their Blockhouse Festival.
16:36 <@xeno> his dad knew a guy that went to it every year, and one time they came up to it, and soon the whole family was coming up, and then pap found the place there in liberty and bought it
16:36 <@xeno> in 69
16:37 <@solios> weird.

My sister called me about a half an hour ago, give or take. Maybe more. She's finished whatever the Navy calls MOS training down in Mississippi, and is now an E4. She will be managing stores for VFA-213, aka The Blacklions, an F/A-18 squadron out of NAS Oceana in Virginia. Before they were given F-18s, VFA-213 flew the F-14. Before that, the F-4 Phantom. At this moment she's passing through Pittsburgh en route to San Diego for something or other. I didn't catch it.

In a couple of months, VFA-213 - Jen included - will be deploying to the Persian Gulf aboard CVN-71, the Theodore Roosevelt.

She's excited.

Jen returns from her something-or-other in San Diego on the 18th, a Wednesday. She'll be in Pittsburgh for a couple of days, then back home for a couple of days, then back to the USN for considerably longer. She'll be here for my 29th birthday, a Thursday. She says this is "perfect!" and I agree. A band in the courtyard outside is playing jazz and things seem to be going pretty well for the both of us.

I'm excited.

Awhile back, I accidentally managed to totally blow up the ability to leave comments on the site after an entry's been up for a few days. I'm in the process of fixing this the easy way - by creating a new blog, the same as the old blog. Rather than import all of the old entries, I'm currently in the process of crosswiring everything so it Works and Looks The Same.

When I'm done, the site should look exactly as it did a few minutes ago. In theory.

19:05 : And in practice. Though my nice clean blog is now a horrific mess, and will continue to be one until I generate enough entries to scrub the busted blog entries off of the front page. The change in functionality won't be immediately obvious, and there's still a lot more cleanup work to do in order to effectively scrub out the chance of any future "errors" (read : trying to post a comment on old entries), but all things considered this is one web bug that's gone down easily.

So. Comments will work indefinitely on all new entries. A bit more maintenance for me, but hopefully it'll turn out to be worth it. Fusing old/new noise blogs together was a heck of a lot easier than gluing Chapters 0 and 1 of The Dualist together.

From NPR : French Families Adopt U.S. Graves in Normandy :

Eight years ago, a French couple founded an organization that adopts graves of American servicemen who died during the Normandy invasion of World War II. The volunteer group encourages French families to lay flowers on the graves when the Americans' own families can't do it.

src = xeno

If there is a more honorable overseas observance of the U.S. Memorial Day, I'm not aware of it.