Kawaii not. For this week’s webcomic, a series which does not include a plot or a story-line, just a bunch of independent little strips that manage to turn cute on its head every time in four panels. And, if you haven’t guessed, kawaii means “cute” in Japanese.
The author is Meghan Murphy who can use her incredible talents to create things that aren’t punny or silly but sometimes just can’t help herself. Some things just need to be anthropomorphised (and if you don’t believe me, think again).
So there you are; enjoy. Not too much, though, because being that it is a short week you’ve probably still got some catching up to do.
I’m not much of a “sportsman.” I don’t hunt. I respect the rights of people who do (responsibly), and I think that responsible management of natural resources includes some measure of culling.
However, I’m not at all cool with irresponsible use of natural resources. I expect that for some people, hunting wolves and bears could be really fun. Presumably those are people who really enjoy a bear-meat sandwich or wolf steak. And I support the right of those people to do so. This country is big enough to set aside large areas of land where that can take place.
Somewhere in the realm of responsible management of natural resources, it becomes necessary to kill a few top predators to keep an ecosystem in balance. With that in mind, and in consideration of the fact that there are relatively few people to manage some very large swaths of land, aerial hunting might be useful. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what the Federal law allows.
But this is not, in my mind, hunting by any sporting definition. A hunter is already at a substantial advantage because they are using a gun. Chasing from the air also makes a hunter faster and from that angle the animals have no ability to hide. And without firing a shot you could chase an animal around for a little while (scaring the bejeesus out of it with a roaring motor) wait until he gets tired, then land. Walk right up to him an *pop* … bearskin rug.
But in Alaska, the issue keeps showing up on the ballot.
What makes this a controversial issue worthy of repeated public referendums? Because there are people who want to leave home bound for adventure in an exotic and far away country, send some postcards, and then return home with a bearskin rug and a story about the bear they shot. And some of those people would pay good money to do so in a way that assures them of making a kill. Sporting-ness be damned, they want to have the appearance of being a big game hunter. So there’s that. There’s also the fact that people will pay good money to hunt other big game, but top predators like wolves and bears keep the number of moose and caribou in an ecosystem down. Subtract some wolves and you can get more rich hunters to pour money into your state’s tourisim economy. That might not be okay if it didn’t require throwing the ecosystem out of balance to do it. It might also be okay if the people trying to do this sort of thing did not also keep trying to take away the ability of the public to control it.  Certainly that is a different issue, but it is related and creepy.
So, all of this might only be of passing interest if the governor of the state where all this is taking place were not nominated to be vice president.
To restate:Â I’ll support your right to have ridiculous firearms, I’ll support your right to hunt sportingly, but I will not support efforts to circumvent the political process or disrupt it with big money so you can exploit our shared natural resources and disturb a carefully managed environmental balance.
Today Google is launching Chrome, their take on the web browser. That’s pretty cool all by itself so I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.
The Google just made a browser.
Remember what they did to email? And searching? Yeah, this is pretty cool.
Well, anyway, they announced and described it with a comic book that their mailroom accidentally shipped out a bit early (oops). The comic, adapted by Scott McCloud is berry cute and does a damn fine job of conveying some pretty thick computer programming concepts visually such that practically anyone can understand ‘em.
So, if you want to understand what the hype is all about check out the comic. And when you’re done with that, check out the browser. Note: the browser is only available for the Windows platform, currently.
I was craving waffles. I asked around until I found a waffle maker. Next I needed some waffle batter so, I searched google for “waffle recipe.”  And wouldn’t ya know it, the first hit was waffle-recipe.com. (who does this?)
Add a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract to up the yumminess factor
It does NOT make “eight or nine” waffles. Four? maybe.
You’ve got to love the banner, too…
So the idea for a waffle party went off rather well. Everybody had an idea for what to bring that would improve things. Strawberries, orange juice, whipped cream, pomegranite juice, vegetarian sausage, bacon, and champagne (hey, mimosa!).
But really, today was a day to be outside. Well, it was here in the nation’s capital. Things are a little different down in Louisiana.
So while thinking about this, I realized that all that was really keeping me inside was the ability to plug the waffle iron in. It seemed that a waffle party in a park was really feasible with just a little thought and planning. And especially on sunny summer off-days, when everyone has plans, an outdoor brunch would be a great way to start things off before people disperse to go do their thing. But where can I find a publicly accessible power outlet in a park? (side note: plugging “dc park public power outlet access” returns a crazy set of results, none of them having relevance to my quest). Or how about I just use a power inverter to plug it into my car? I may have to alternate between the coffee maker and the waffle maker, but that’s a minor inconvenience compared with having hot waffles in warm sunshine with cold OJ and chill friends.
The outdoor waffle party is doable, folks. Today was just a warm up. It’s coming. Be prepared. Be very prepared.
At one time in my life I worked in a job where I had to wear a nametag and a tie to work for an hourly wage. After some time I inspected my world and decided that I would make it a goal to never work a job for which I was required to do those things again. Truth is, occasionally it is still necessary but not on a regular basis and if I do submit, I get a decent free lunch out of it.
Working retail is hard. Not heavy lifting hard (well, usually it isn’t), but having to deal with the general public on a regular basis while wearing a funny costume is a certain kind of hard. It isn’t designed to confound and confuse you and crush your soul, but it is designed to squeeze it until the sound of cracking ribs can be heard.
There is a vicious cycle which everyone who walks through the door of a retail establishment is involved with. You automatically have to assume that any employee falls into one of three categories: too stupid/lazy/stoned to work anywhere else and thus probably too stupid to provide any help beyond pointing me to the right aisle for the products I’m looking for. Then there is the slacking underachiever who is plenty smart but battles the spirit-crushing pressure with turtle-speed apathy. Finally, we have the first job-er who has yet to be completely beaten down and has yet to identify which of the two other groups s/he will eventually fall into.
A situation so familiar and so horrible is ripe for laughs and the comic strip Do You Work Here? delivers well. It is clever, it is simple, it isn’t fancy but it gets the point across well.
Another relatively new entrant into the webcomic race, DYWH has only been around since the beginning of the year, so the quantity is still fairly low. While you could argue about the quality of the drawing or site, or even dismiss it because the subject matter is so obvious and easy. But don’t, because the subject matter is so obvious and easy and nobody else, as far as I can tell, is doing it.
Just a few days ago when I was talking about how electronic music has finally broken out of stagnation for the better part of a decade, Mary Anne Hobbs (MAH) has put out a follow up to her sound-breaking Dubstep Warz program, Generation Bass.
MAH
I first experienced dubstep by downloading a recording of Dubstep Warz and, honestly, it didn’t leave the CD player in my car for weeks. It was new. It was nasty. It was funky. It was breaky. It was rump-ramblin’ low. It was intelligent and listenable, too. I knew the drought was over.
And, as usual, I was late to the party. I pulled that down in early ‘o8 and it was recorded in ‘o6. Now, last week to be exact, MAH has produced a follow-up program that has the dubstep world vibrating. Generation Bass follows a little different forum than Dubstep Warz. Where DW brought seven keystone dubstep producers to demonstrate dubstep for about 15 minutes each, GB brings those same now legendary producers back to the decks with some narrower rules: pick one new artist and showcase their work for a quick set. So here the musicians are far more important than the selectors, execpt in the amount of trust that is assumed to the selectors. No doubt that several of the producers picked artists from their own label stable, but somehow I’m not cynical about it. These new producers are largely unsigned and the label owners are looking to get new music for themselves and pick up skilled new folks to roll with them.
So, as I write this I am only halfway through the Generation Bass special and I have yet to form a complete opinion but I think that it is a notable event in the world of experimental, electronic music. And for anyone who loves their subwoofer. If you’ve got any curiosity and two hours, give it a rip. Be warned, though, the selectors tend to talk over the tracks big-up’ing them in that UK style, which doesn’t usually fly stateside (eg, with me).
It seems that things are going well for Mike and the team down in the Puerto Rico. The tropical storm largely missed them, just gave them some overcasty days. They are reporting 1.5 million coral babies and that the spawning and diving part of the trip is over for this year.
Check out the SECORE weblog for more information and photos and even a little quicktime movie of what spawning elkhorn look like. As an aside, I’d just like you to ponder what the egg collectors are doing: SCUBA diving is quite an adventure. Doing it at night you can lose spatial perception easily. Diving near coral, especially in the shallows, requires care that you don’t get scraped against the reef. Now, while doing all that, hold the camera still and take video. Nice.
Now that they’ve collected all this, the real fun work begins.
axel_f
This links directly to the file and your browser handles it in whatever way you have defined locally (likely a quicktime browser plugin). It is WordPress’ built-in method for handling audio files.
This, which requires a skosh more work on my part also links directly to the file, but allows you to continue to browse this page while you listen to the music. This option is handled by a plugin called audio player written by Martin Laine. Another advantage is that it does not show you the URL to where the file is stored, offering a modicum of protection to the composer.
Blip started at the beginning of this year and the story line is just starting to pick up steam. It is a little more comic-y than I normally go for. With sci-fi good v. evil and witches and all that, but it is adorable in its way (or maybe i’m slowly becoming a comic nerd). The characters are beautifully consistent in their, well, character. And the language is so very right now (if a little crass, but that’s the vernacular reality).
Important: you’re going to be very lost unless you start at the beginning. Don’t worry, there are only eighty something strips so far, so you should be able to get up to current in less than an hour. From there you could, maybe, do something productive despite it being Friday or just drop the ruse and take off early.
Happy short-week Friday (Americans).
Another relatively new entrant into the 
