S e n t e n t i o l a

Hi!  I feel like it was recent but I’m not sure… anyway I hope you enjoy!

(For everyone else’s benefit, I sent Tchy a link to the current storyline at the webcomic Bad machinery, which features a selkie in addition to the usual delightful stuff.)

Image is the Bad machinery comic strip from 8 April 2011 (click it to go to the web-page).  In the first panel we see the exterior of a modern-looking building.  A speech-bubble emerges from a window saying, ‘Look chief, look!  If Colm was in Mingis, he couldn’t have started the barn fire.’  In the next panel we’re looking between two arms — a pink-skinned arm with a short blue sleeve and a brown-skinned arm with a short red sleeve — at a person seated behind a desk who has short grey hair, a bushy moustache, and a police uniform.  On the wall behind the desk is a certificate that may say something like ‘Police chief of the year award’.  This is, of course, the surprisingly patient police chief that regular readers remember from 9 February. The chief is saying, ‘Boys, there’s a whole chain of evidence to go through, and…’  Next we see two schoolboys, Linton (who is taller and black with short woolly hair and wearing a red t-shirt with some kind of cross-shaped design) and Sonny (who is shorter and white with slightly mop-like blond hair and wearing a light blue polo shirt with a white collar).  Sonny is looking uncertainly at Linton while Linton frowns and says, ‘You haven’t… even… clicked on it.’  In the next panel we’re looking over the chief’s shoulder as Sonny leans on the desk and Linton drapes his arm over the back of the chief’s chair.  The chief is handling a computer-mouse, and we see the computer-screen.  The chief says, ‘It… it says that Windows Media Player is unable to open this file.’  The following panel shows the chief leaning back in the chair, hand off the mouse, while both Linton and Sonny lean on the desk.  Linton says, ‘Agggh you have to use Quicktime to open it.  Don’t you have Quicktime?’  Sonny says, ‘He might be missing a codec.’  The next panel shows the chief looking rather nervous as Linton scowls and says, ‘OPEN QUICKTIME.’  In the final panel the chief is slumped despondently, arms dangling between their knees, while Linton and Sonny have moved around between the chief and the desk and are operating the computer.  Sonny is saying, ‘Look at all these pop-ups!  I think you have a virus!’  Linton is saying, ‘Wow.  Do you save every single file you make on the desktop?’

· • ·

People, you would not believe the amount of time wasted in the British criminal courts because the CCTV is in the wrong format for the court equipment.

A comic strip.  Colour scheme very beige and gold with elements of brown and red.  In the first, large, panel a brown-haired person in a reddish cloak and a feathered hat stands with their back to us in what seems to be a throne-room.  Beyond the cloaked figure we see a bearded person wearing a fur-lined cloak and a spiky gold crown.  For reasons that will become apparent, I’m going to take the small liberty of calling this character Minos.  Beside the throne stands a short-haired masculine-looking person in a long plain tunic, who for similar reasons I’ll call Daedalus.  The cloaked person is holding upright a massive wheel of cheese that comes up to their ear.  They say, ‘ALLOW ME TO PRESENT YOU THIS ENORMOUS CHEESE.’  Daedalus says, ‘SIRE, I WILL BUILD A LABYRINTH TO HOUSE THE CHEESE!’  In the next panel we see a head-and-shoulders shot of Minos holding up a dismissive hand to Daedalus and saying, with an irritated expression, ‘NO!  THE KITCHEN WILL DO FINE!’  Now a slim panel in which the feathered-hat person says cheerfully, ‘MY MASTER ALSO SENDS HIS REGARDS.’  In the next panel an animated Daedalus gestures with his hands and says, ‘SIRE!  I WILL BUILD A LABYRINTH TO HOUSE THE REGARDS!’  Now we go to down to the second row of panels, in the first of which Minos looks askance at Daedalus and asks, ‘WHAT IS IT WITH YOU AND THIS LABYRINTH?’  An excited Daedalus says, ‘LABYRINTHS ARE AWESOME!’  A panel of Minos looking unimpressed, with eyes narrowed and mouth small and down-turned.  In the next panel a blood-spattered person in a cap and apron yanks aside the red curtain in the doorway and announces in alarm, ‘SIRE!  THE QUEEN HAS GIVEN BIRTH TO A MONSTER!’  In the next panel we see Minos and Daedalus both looking blankly stunned.  The final panel is identically composed, with Minos still wearing his stunned expression, but now Daedalus’ eyes and smile are implausibly wide with joy.

The original poster seems to have forgotten to link to the source of the comic, but a watermark in the first panel says OGLAF.COM, and here is the original.  I haven’t encountered this comic before but a quick flick through shows that it may well be NSFW.

wotcher-harry:

The literary nerd in me just died laughing. 

Ace.

(Source: cuuunts, via thatfeministwithglasses)

nothinginlifeisperfect:

[img: 10 panel Hark! A Vagrant comic. Panel 1: Text, “Ooh, Mr. Darcy: A Fan Fiction.” Panel 2: Picturing Mr. Darcy, saying “Elizabeth, I am home now” (with sound effect: “smoulder!”). Panel 3: Mr. Darcy, now with open shirt, saying “And I am looking so handsome, and also my shirt opened?”. Panel 4: Elizabeth swooning, “Ooh, Mr. Darcy, ooh!”. Panel 5: The two holding each other, saying “Let’s do it!” and “Yes!”. Panel 6: Mr. Darcy says “And I will leave my cravat on.” Elizabeth gazes at him. Panel 7: Text, “Meanwhile in a 20 mile radius of this event.” Panel 8: A woman, saying “Mister Darcy!” whose bodice rips open with text “Bodices ripping!”. Panel 9: A man, saying “Mister Darcy!” with text “Men turning gay!”. Panel 10: Text, “It was amazing. The end.]

Yeah, no, but, you see, the thing about a cravat is that you really need something to tuck it into.  Which is one good practical reason why people don’t wear them much: they basically require a waistcoat or something similar.  I sometimes cheat it by wrapping one around my bare neck rather than around the outside of my collar and then tucking down inside the front of a collared shirt that’s undone to the second or third button, but even so.

Also bear in mind that depending on the length of the cravat and how formally you’re wearing it you may well have a pin in it.  Because if you don’t (and actually even if you do) it’s likely to get skewiff quite quickly.  Especially if it isn’t tucked in.  And especially especially if you’re moving vigorously and / or at angles other than the vertical.

And without a shirt or waistcoat to tuck it into it’s going to be dangling.  Which, depending on the circumstances, could be okay, but will quite likely tickle somebody and could well get in their eyes and just be annoying.  Plus potential for getting caught and a bit strangled (which, of course, may be what you’re going for, but may not).

Disclaimer: I haven’t actually tried it.  Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic.  But honestly, Darcy, I just don’t think you’ve thought this through.

(Source: rollingforaye)

Image is a three-panel black-and-white line-drawn comic strip in a very simple cartoony style.  It’s from the webcomic Mark doesn’t understand animals.  In the first panel a round-headed, round-eyed person wearing a headband or a beanie hat.  They’re reading from a piece of paper, saying ‘Yes hello class animals is my favourite’.

In the next panel the person says ‘It goes like this’ and holds out their right arm.  It has a happy-looking frog sitting on it.

In the third panel the person has thrown both their arms out to the sides and up in the air.  The frog is on their head.  They say ‘And then you just animals!’

It is impossibly cute.

thisbodysfabric:

And then I just animals forever.

Why is this so amazing?

(via novazembla)

emilyswash:

[image: single panel comic. two dudes are sitting at a table together. one has his back to us and the other is gesturing in explanation and saying, “you get two football clubs. they football at each other. then, whoever footballs hardest is the king of football.” caption reads: “fun dating activity: trick a nerd into claiming he likes a sport, then ask him to explain the rules.”]

[Edited to add:  Some criticism here.]

(via nuditea)

Image is a three-panel black-and-white comic.  In the first panel we see as if through the eyes of a character who holds their hand out towards a bespectacled shirt-and-tie-wearing white man.  The latter is sitting at a computer.  In the former’s hand is a bunch of sheets of paper.  The former says ‘We need a headline on this puff piece.  It’s about Garrett Hedlund defending his decision to skip college to pursue acting.’  In the second panel we see the tie-wearing man dramatically from below, thinking, ‘My entire editorial career has led to this moment.’  In the third panel we see a part of a newspaper with the headline ‘NEW TRON STAR NOT DENSE’.

dinokitten:

rosalarian:

shouri:

Oh god I didn’t even remembered I had saved this one.

It was only because of the astronomy pun BUT NOW IT HAS MORE MEANING TO ME.

Yeah I had no idea what TRON or *sigh* who Garrett Hedlund was.

From awesome threepanelsoul.com

Oh my god! I love making headlines like this! I suggest these to the people at work, and they do not listen. Why? Why don’t they listen?

OH MY GOODNESS THIS IS JUST. I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN.

People who enjoyed this and also have a passing knowledge of British 80s synth-pop will also appreciate this genuine headline from a local newspaper.

(via cumbersuffix-deactivated2011062)

I love this idea.  Game-pieces migrating into other games.  It’s the sort of idea you think would be an amazing premise for a story but it wouldn’t.  That would never be as good as just having the idea without thinking through what it would actually involve.

The thing is, Tumblr, I think I need to be nosier.

For some reason I have a real block on asking people what’s going on with their lives except in the broadest and most general terms.  (Yes, this is going to be yet another post in which I worry that I am not a very good friend.  Why, can you think of something that’s more worth worrying about?  No, I didn’t think so.)  I sometimes sell myself the idea that this is just being respectful, and that if people want to confide in me they will, and if they don’t then it’s because they don’t want to and I shouldn’t mind about that.  And if I were the sort of person who asks questions about everything then there might be some merit in telling myself that.  But I’m not, and it’s just a way to avoid facing a problem.

Sometimes people want to be asked.  I ought to know, because I’m one of those people.  If someone says ‘How are you?’ I’ll try to answer truthfully but vaguely, and if it’s an answer that isn’t wholly positive I’ll instinctively try to down-play it or obscure it in case it’s a conventional ‘How are you’ that isn’t actually meant to start a conversation about how I am.  Even if the other person inquires further I’ll usually be a bit cautious.  But often I would actually quite like to talk about it to someone I feel comfortable with.

So why don’t I ask these questions?  ‘Hey, you seem a bit down.  Is there anything wrong?  No, seriously, if you feel like talking about it, I want to know.’  ‘So you and X seem quite cosy — is this a thing?  Would you like it to be a thing?’  ‘Z told me about that thing that happened to you, but I don’t really know the details.  What happened?  How are you feeling?’  These are things friends should say to each other, isn’t it?  And if they don’t want to talk about it, they can say so, can’t they?

And even when I do find myself having these conversations — which is actually not that rare, because a few people have somehow figured out, without any clues from me, that despite being a very bad asker I am quite a good listener — why do I so often have them in code?  I once managed to talk to have a half-hour conversation with a friend about our love-lives that was conducted entirely through some elaborate metaphor involving theatres and cinemas and team sports.  It was fun, and it made some sense in that context to do it that way because there were other people around, but I do this kind of thing far too often.  Why not just say ‘Okay, are we talking about W?  And what actually happened with you and W anyway?’

I don’t know what stops me.  Maybe it’s something that’s trickled down from my Kennedy relatives, who have a grand tradition of not talking about things.  Maybe it’s because I’m a boy and grew up with society telling me that gossip and feelings are for girls and that the nearest I should be getting to these conversations is ‘Hey I totally scored last night!’  ‘Awesome, high five!’  ‘So did you see the footie?’  Maybe it’s a facet of the thing I picked up somewhere along the line that makes me afraid of people thinking I don’t know something.  Maybe it’s something I picked up from the first of my school-friends who ever actually had a love-life to gossip about and who insisted on doing it in cryptic allusions (which was, in turn, maybe because we still live in a culture where there’s plenty of sex in advertising and in fiction but HEAVEN FORBID WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT OURSELVES OR EACH OTHER DOING IT OMG).  Maybe it’s because I’m never drunk.  I don’t know.  It doesn’t matter.  I need to kick it.

And I think it will be good for me too.  I rather suspect that if I were asking these questions people would feel more comfortable about asking them back.  You can’t expect to get care without giving it.  So I guess this is a sort of resolution.  More nosiness.  More personal questions.  More reaching out.  More follow-up when I hear news about people.  More dragging people into cupboards to interrogate them about their crushes.

You have been warned.

Photograph shows a page from Giant days, a webcomic about new students at a British university, currently running in the gap between two arcs of the equally fabulish Bad machinery.  The page is monochrome in blue and white.  We see Esther, a thin European-looking girl with straight dark hair wearing a collared shirt, tie, jacket, backpack, and tutu.  She is walking alongside Daisy, another thin European-looking girl with big bushy blonde hair, a turtle-neck jumper, a shoulder-bag, and a big folding map.  They are outdoors among buildings.  Esther says, ‘Archaeology Daisy?  Really?’  ‘I’ve always been interested in it!’ replied Daisy.  We see Esther looking unenthusiastic.  She says, ‘Well I hope the other archaeologists are er… borderline normal.’  Now they are outside a glass building and Esther is smiling, while Daisy turns away and speaks to Esther over her shoulder.  Esther says, ‘This is the Dick Bruna building, this is me!  See you later!’  Daisy says, ‘Bye Esther!’

Esther is sitting on a bench beneath a noticeboard.  We see she’s wearing tights with broad horizontal stripes and reading a book.  She looks up from it frowningly at a thin figure in jeans and a spiral-pattern hoodie with shaggy dark hair.  ‘Hello, are you here for English Literature?’  Esther replies, ‘Yes I am.’  They shake hands.  ‘I’m Ed Gemmell,’ says Ed; ‘Esther,’ says Esther.  We see Ed’s face for the first time, with rectangular glasses and a slightly nervous expression.  Esther, from off-panel, says, ‘You can sit down, but you can’t ask me what I did for my A-Levels.’  He sits down next to her, his body-language a bit closed, slightly turned away from Esther, not looking at her.  She sits straight, the book in her lap, hands at her sides, tilting her head to look at him.  ‘I’ve answered that question 200 times this week,’ she says, ‘It’s the ice breaker du jour.’  ‘What if our answers are lies?’ says Ed.  Esther now reaches down to adjust her boot, while Ed leans back against the noticeboard, closing his eyes and holding his elbows.  ‘Yes.  OK,’ says Esther.  ‘I did Jazz Dance, Tunnel Studies and Poisons.’  Ed replies, ‘I did Fighting, Further Fighting, and History (Of Fights).  It’s left me quite tired.’

· • ·

I have a massive crush on whoever makes this comic.  I don’t want to know anything about them because I’d almost certainly be disappointed.

emilyswash:

[image: two columns.

“a+

• what mussolini would’ve gotten in psychology.
• what hitler would’ve gotten in speech.
• what kaczynski would’ve gotten in mechanical engineering.
• what madoff would’ve gotten in economics.
• what most politicians would’ve gotten in acting.

f-

• what picasso would’ve gotten in fine art.
• what jobs would’ve gotten in business.
• what dylan would’ve gotten in music.
• what gandhi would’ve gotten in foreign policy.
• what either armstrong would’ve gotten in statistics.”

text at the bottom reads: “lesson of the day? / it doesn’t matter what you get in class… only how you use it.”]

Guess what?  I’m going to be a pedant!  What a surprise!  But just to mix things up I’m not going to be a language pedant; today I’m going to be an art pedant.

Because Picasso, folks, was a really flaming skillful and technically accomplished draughtsman.  He could draw and paint naturalistically if he felt like it.  These are all by Picasso:

Doghouse Diaries, you are frequently amusing and sometimes thought-provoking, and on this particular occasion your over-all message may be right, but what you’ve done here is

• you’ve made a basic factual error
• that tells me you don’t know about at least one of the subjects you’re talking about
• and that you haven’t done any research
• and by this error you’ve partaken of, participated in, and perpetuated the widespread assumption that non-naturalistic and non-representational visual artists lack technical skill

and as far as I’m concerned this fatally undermines the point you were trying to make.

I don’t even especially like Picasso’s work.  But he would not have got an F in art.

Lesson of the day?  Check your facts before you base an argument on them.

(And then possibly also check out the bum in that last picture.  I mean, I’m pretty hetero, but blimey.)

(Source: thedoghousediaries.com, via nuditea)

Latest from Ryan Pequin at Three Word Phrase.  (Click through for more.)

(Picture is a three-panel comic-strip in simple black lines on a white background.  In the first panel we see a short-haired person in a shirt and jumper and a long-haired person in a low-cut top, probably a man and a woman.  They’re at a table and each has a glass of red wine.  Their other hands lie on the table in front of them.  The man says, ‘And then there is the kind that has armrests.  The armrests can go up or down.  You can choose if you want them to be up or down.  It is up to you.’  The woman says, ‘Well.’  In the second panel the man says, ‘I think that’s all the kinds of buses that there are.’  The woman says ‘There are a lot of kinds.’  The man’s free hand has moved towards the woman, the and woman has laid her hand on top of his.  In the third panel we see them in bed having sex and smiling at each other.)

Updates & portraits

Hi Tumblr.  So I went to the bookshop and Awesome Bookshop Lady was there and we had a nice chat.  I still don’t entirely know what’s going on with her phone but I think it’s just the way she rolls, which is fine.

For no good reason (especially since it isn’t Wednesday) this post will be illustrated with grainy built-in-camera pictures of me.

Hello!

(Photograph shows me, a youngish clean-shaven werman with a northern European sort of complexion and dark hair, wearing glasses, a blue shirt under a dark jackety thing, and a dark scarf-like thing around my neck with silver bits on it.  Behind me is a book-case.  If you’re a classicist you probably recognize the spines of a number of the books as the distinctive small red bilingual Loeb editions of ancient Latin texts.  I am smiling and waving.)

I told you I was experimenting with scarves.  Success / not that great?

I’ve also remembered some of the other things I was going to say.  Do you remember this from a few weeks ago?  (If the answer is ‘no’, then you are not reading KinokoFry frequently enough.)  I liked it so much I ordered an original print.  I had a look, thinking they were going to cost zillions of pounds, and actually no, so I couldn’t resist.  And it arrived a few days ago.  Yay!

(Photograph shows me holding up a framed copy of the comic strip linked to above and grinning.  I’ll describe the strip itself since I don’t think there’s a transcript or anything on the site.  The first panel on the top row is an open-sided panel in beige and dark brown on white, showing an old-fashioned cobwebbed grandfather clock standing by a window; the curtain is billowing and outside the window we see lightning striking.  In the second panel in the top row, done in the same colours, we see a lavishly furnished sitting-room with seven lightly anthropomorphic birds sitting around wearing various old-fashioned hats.  In the centre of the room, picked out in a sort of light teal colour, a man in a long coat and a deer-stalker hat paces in front of the fire, with heavy eyebrows and a moustache, smoking a pipe.  In the second row, the first panel shows the man up closer, looking serious, saying, ‘I have called you all here tonight…’.  The next panel shows him looking forlornly downwards, his hands now behind his back, saying, ‘because I was lonely’.  A speech-bubble from off the page says, ‘Aww.’  At the bottom of the page another open-sided panel with a sketchy oval background shows the man sitting around a round table with the birds playing a game of cards.  On the table is a bowl of nibbles and various steaming mugs.  The man is smiling.  At the bottom right in large art-deco letters are the words ‘THE END’ and below them in smaller letters the signature ‘Rebecca Clements 2010’.)

It’s so lovely.  ‘Aww’ indeed.

(Photograph shows me pointing at the ‘Aww’ speech-bubble and looking sad / sympathetic.)

Also I’ve finished reading Antigone’s claim, which I mentioned before.  It was… pretty hard.  There were times when I understood what Butler was saying and it was really interesting.  There were more times when I had a sort of idea what she might be talking about but not really what she was saying about it, and that was interesting but frustrating.  There were some times when I had no idea what was going on.  Those times usually involved mention of Lacan.

(Photograph shows me reading Antigone’s claim by Judith Butler and looking frowny and puzzled.)

I’m hoping that if I read more of Butler I’ll get better at interpreting her style.  Or I might just get more confused.  We’ll see.  I’m also still reading Tristram Shandy.  It’s still very entertaining, but it’s starting to feel a bit samey, and the disadvantage of its having no real plot is that there’s nothing much making me want to pick it up again after I put it down.  If I’m reading it I enjoy it, but if I’m not reading it I don’t miss it.

Well, I’d better get some sleep, because tomorrow is the first day of my new job!  Although actually there won’t be any work involved until the afternoon at the earliest, because the morning is all orientation and being told stuff.  There’s even a timetable.

(Photograph shows me holding up a timetable and making some kind of silly raised-eyebrows expression.  I’m really not sure what that was meant to convey.)

I couldn’t pick up my suits from the dry cleaners today because the electric company had shut down the power to that part of the street and the cleaners had evidently decided it wasn’t worth opening for business.  I should have collected them yesterday, mind you, but I didn’t have time.  That’ll teach me to leave things until the last minute.  Well, my other suit is wearable, so I’ll wear that.  I suspect actually that I won’t need to wear a suit to work most days, because when I went in for lunch the other day I saw people in the office wearing not-suits, but I’ll wear one tomorrow just in case, and also because I wasn’t really able to gaugue what level of not-formal people were wearing.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

sheresists:

so-treu:

ewwwitzjojo:

wordsandsteel:

transartorialism:

Hyperbole and a Half: Four Levels of Social Entrapment

this picture + the link = my life.

haha, definitely me at various times.

I always feel kind of bad laughing at Hyperbole and a half because it feels like enjoying someone else’s pain, but I laugh anyway because Allie Brosh is a comic genius and can make me laugh even when I don’t want to.

"Pro tip: if you are eating popcorn, you are enjoying your story properly. If you are wielding a pitchfork, please reconsider the choices you have made that have led you to this moment."

Jonathan Rosenberg, commenting on his Scenes from a multiverse strip yesterday.