I'd never given much attention to Tracy White's Traced comics. But today i read this one and really appreciated it a lot. I guess i'll be going through the archives quite a lot in the next few days.
(another webcomic i came across recently: Cigarro&Cerveja. Of course, what attracted me to this nice comic about friendship was the title.)
Ok, time to reveal one of the reasons things have been so bad lately.
I got back from Naples, and a nice little letter was waiting for me at home.
The letter was from the [Neofascist] Italian Government, kindly forcing me to join the [ultrafascist] Italian Army.
Yes, we still have the draft in this medieval country. Even the USA are more civilized, which goes to show quite a lot.
So basically, my condition is this: if by early february i haven't found either a job with an 18-month contract or someplace i can "work" as an underpaid civil servant, it's the big guns for me. Which in my case, would probably mean, well, i don't really want to think about it. Let me just say i'm really, really, really worried.
I only actually started looking for information about how to avoid all this from happening something like 2 hours ago. The rest of the week i had just spent cowering in a dim-lit corner of my room, worrying my balls off and listening to Track 19 from disc 2 of Civilization, Phaze III.
And posting tons of escapist garbage on the blog.
Ok...so...if there's anybody out there knows of places i can be a civil servant, obviously not affiliated to any religious group, or knows of anybody who can offer me an 18-month job contract, well, let's just say any help is more than appreciated.
Oh, while we're at it, the other reason i was not really at the top of my self these days is that in my absence, a partition of my PC busted up, thus causing the loss of some vaguely important data. Stuff like: all my drawings, all my poems, and my thesis.
Lucky i had print copies of the thesis.
Lucky i can scan my drawings back in anytime i like.
...
...
...Pity about the poems.
Went out with Fred last night, came home reasonably tipsy(i.e. not much, but satisfied nonetheless), had a really good time.
Seeing him made me realize that people from the college will be coming back soon, and also how little i feel like seeing people around duino again. I guess there are only two, maybe three people i feel like spending some time with when they're back. Maybe i should start my old campaign again, the one where i tried to convince the other animals to kick all members of the homo sapiens species out of Duino. It should work better, now that i've discovered that Duino has frogs. No, really, there are frogs here, too. I've only seen one in twenty years, but hey - it's proof!
Watching that X-Men 2 movie over the holidays has kind of influenced the view i have of my presence in this place.
(please note: the following will be comprehensible only to those who have seen the movie, or at least read the comic book once in a while)
So i see myself as a Wolverine-like character, complete with funny hairstyle, walking into a dayroom kitchen at two o'clock in the morning...
Me:(opens fridge) "Don't you guys have any beer around here?"
Passing student: "in case you hadn't noticed, this is a school."
Me:"Oh. Right. Forgot."
Later, in the Prof's lab...
Me: "Yo, Chuck, i need you to read my mind again. I gotta find out what i did this weekend."
Prof. X: "All right, Logan. But first, you must photocopy these CIA files about us for me. 200 copies, back to back. In blue."
And this is more or less when i wake up in bed screaming...
(Please note, once more: i don't really see myself as a wolverine-type character. He's cool, i'm just a nerd with a blog)
Imagine how powerful Japan would be today if they hadn't recieved so much damage from Godzilla, Gamera, Mothra and all those other giant monsters of the fifties. Sure, they got the best out of the Korean War, supplying bases and doing trades, watching their income go up 300% in five years and all that. But if the giant monsters hadn't been attacking them all the time, Japan would probably be ruling the world by now!
I've been looking for data on this on all my history books(like this one), but not a single mention is made of Godzilla. I don't get it. Must be some old cold-war plot, or something to do with secret CIA documents, etc.
Bah.
really, proof here.
This was a music appreciation public service. Litter-ally. (ouch!)
My Favourite Living Movie Director was in Naples on the same days as i was, and all i got was this lousy link.
Why didn't i hear about this earlier? Please, somebody come over with a dirty big knife and slit my throat.
Little thing: Gilliam's Assistant Director for Brothers Grimm is Michele Soavi, who already directed the cult sleeper-hit Dellamorte Dellamore. Believe me, if you're french you already know and love this surreal horror movie scripted by that lovable Post-Buzzatian Tiziano Sclavi. If you're italian you'll just say "huh?".
But it's a good movie. The french were already right about Hitchcock, after all.
And about the last post: a little bit of trivia for our italian readers! Which early Elio E Le Storie Tese song incorporated parts of the (italian) Barbapapa Cartoon Theme? Answers tomorrow!
So some weeks ago i was hanging out in my local comic shop, intent on choosing which new Alan Moore release would've come home with me (the choice was between The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong and The Birth Caul. I don't remember which one i chose, probably just some old x-men comics), when my Comic Book Pusher pulled out an old-looking box and announced to his trusty clientelle: "Hey, wanna see the first ever manga published in Italy?" Of course, everybody did.
Horrored and surprised faces were what resulted of the discovery that the first ever manga published in Italy was... Barbapapa.
I took this personally. Very personally.
I immediately tried to confute the theses presented to me: "Hey! wasn't Barbapapa french, or belgian, or something like that?" After all, I should know, for I owned the booklets back when i was a tiny tot in Glasgow.
"Well," he answered, "they were only published by those countries. They were actually ghost-written and ghost-drawn by unnamed japanese workers. Which makes them the first manga to reach Italy. 1976, to be precise."
"You mean... they're like Nike footballs?"
"Yes. Just like Nike footballs. Third world workmanship." [i know, Japan is no third world country, but i was too shocked in that moment to point that out. It was probably just comic-book-selling-person poetic justice]
And then he added something ominous.
"They were done in Japan by the same people who did the Barbapapa cartoon. And who also did that Vicky The Viking cartoon."
Blam.
Two of my most beloved childhood experiences destroyed in five minutes.
Er...i guess this whole post just goes to show how much of a nerd i actually am.
Actually, i'll use it to tie in to a topic i pulled out some time ago. But later.
First, i have to point out some internet wierdness. After all, that's what i'm here for, isn't it? Isn't it?
Action figures! Action figures! Holy Sigmund Freud!
It's Superman Meets The Quik Bunny!
One of the best pixel comics *ever*.
(and from that site, enjoy this party! coolest thing on the net in the last five minutes!)
Almost haven't updated at all since i got back from naples.
That's because things here at home have just gotten worse and worse, let's just say that my karma bounced back from the fun i had over new year's - with a vengeance. So most of the time these days the urge to blog has been extremely scarce. Don't worry, i ain't stoppin'. I'm just going through some tough days.
In the meantime, while we're all waiting for some content to return to this blog, here's an interview to a guy that managed to give me a couple of good laughs. And after the interview - just watch those nerds react! Anthropology at its lowest levels, my dearest sirs.
From the site of Kieron Dwyer, who is an illustrator and satirist who has drawn everything from high-profile Superman comics to Ed McMahon taking a crap on an old woman’s bed. (job definition from tmcm.com) This one had already been around some time ago, but it felt right to pull it out again over here.
We love email!
Here's one from Mitko!
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So I have a bookmark to Robin's blog and I visit it often...
Procrastination with suitable justification... Anyway, so one day I
click on it and instead of Won't Go Down this weird arabic site comes
up (see attachment). I had to wait 5 mins and refresh several times
before I got what I was after... It wouldn't be that weird if it
wasn't for the way this other site looked. For a sec I thought it's a
joke by Robin :) Enjoy.
And have a great New year's
Mitko
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ALL IS WELL
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And the attachment in question contained this site.
I'm as puzzled as you are!
We love email!
Some stuff has been happening in the past few days. But first, i promised i'd post this up!
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30/12/03-0346-Won’t go down
(Textual homage to evaristo)
“If only I could hunt the hunter,
if only I could make the maker,
if only I could kill the killer.”
(Alanis Morrisette)
Ok, I had way too many psycoactive substance and swallowed way too much alcool to do this properly, but I feel I am up to it….i can still type. Won’t go down, as evaristo says.
Life is quite disrupted, I have to say, and is not as it once was and as, I hope, it will be.
But in less than 48 hours I’ll meet in napoli (ok, in a village around napoli, it’s all the same to me, I came from puglia!) with my roomo and with evaristo for a good self-destruction party, so I have no problem tonight.
Tonight…this text is just an account of tonight.
Boring, but it’s interesting, trust me. Nothing special, just a night that an (ex)college student enjoyed a lot. Life, and you could have done just the same tonight.
It all started with the invitation to a punk-jazz concerto from my dad. Now, what the hell is punk-jazz? Now, I don’t read rumore, neither I have a huge musical culture. But I like punk, and I try to listen to as much punk I can. I like punk-rock, I find hard-punk difficult and I love punk-ska. But punk-jazz, I never heard of it. Anyway, why not giving it a try.
As punk is punk, and I don’t drink alone, I had to make a smoking-preparation. Just starting, and a friend of mine calls up. With company it’s always better. Some deftones and pink floyd, and we can go.
We got there, just to see [name withdrawn to avoid Eternal Damnation] sending some rain as a sign of his approval for punk-jazz, and we bought some beer. I mean, it’s punk.
Well, the concert was ok. When you go to punk concerts in a place than once was an illegal storage facility for drug smugglers, you can’t have too many expectations. A punk band (band…bah) that I know expelled the drummer on the ground that he was too good with the drums. So, I had my usual low musical expectations. Beer and people trying to phisically hurt and maim you make up for the music. That anyway is punk , so fun.
And the music was great. Don’t know where the jazz side ended, but the punk one was great. Enjoyable music, good lirics, danced a lot.
Ended up listening to a friend I knew when I was 10 telling me, after offering me an evil bottle of wine, as if you pass a special sigarett (those with taste) to the left is for the goddes cali, and if to the right is for shiva. Now, I like Cali more. We are talking about a bue woman with eight arms that kills her enemies with a sword and drinks the blood before it touches the ground. A cool typ, so I like her more. Obviously, I passed to the right. I never do what I decide to do. Self contraddiction. Simpson sindrome.
After meeting a lot of people I did not talk to for two years, the concert was over. We decided to go home. Only to end up in the mud with the car. I mean really in the mud. The car got stuck. Now, this is usually not such a big problem. But when when the person that drives the car proposes to get it out with a rope that is back home, and is really determined to do it, it gets problematic. And if it’s 0230, and you are drunk, it is even worse.
Anyway, the rope somehow came out. I was taking pictures with my digital camera.
Got out of the mud, we went back home happy for a cost free concert. Apart when I got into the discussion on wheter burned cds means not supporting the bands I like. But sorry, after a bastard stole in the library my cd case with all my 44 cds, I don’t manage to buy originals cds anymore. It’s not the same anymore.
Got home, we went to the pub. THE pub. The only pub, I would add.
A beer, since I know the bar girl and I have to buy something. Anyway, she does not offer.
After the beer, I meet a friend I see once every year. But when I was a child, he always gave me food and presents (he is some 10 years older), so I still adore him.
Of course, he was going to drink rum. A shot of rum should be no deal, but I was having problems standing. Too much punk, that was the reason, you know.
But the college taught me to drink vodka, but it did not teach me when to stop. So I had my shot of rum. Had a sigarett with the bargirl, then noticed I was talking about something I had (and still have) no idea about (not that I knew nothing about it, I did not know what was I talking about), so finally agreed with my liver and brain that it was time to go to sleep. Came here, met a norvegian friend that told me to download something from opeth, and so I did. Have’nt listened to it yet, is still downloading some songs. Do you know opeth? It must be good music, I trust her.
And then I ended up in fron of my laptop writing this.
It’s not my fault, it’s all because of some people (evaristo among them) that turned me into this…blame them.
Good night
janos
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