Why yes, my friends, our emo haircuts, and I do make a habit of scoping out men’s packages in our local used bookstores. Really. Yep. Sure.
For some reason, the “size matters” conversation has been coming up in multiple discussions with multiple friends lately, and it’s been driving me mad - because apparently I’m the only person on the face of the earth (and definitely the only man, gay or straight) who doesn’t think size matters. Call me fuckin’ loco, but I’ve got other things on my mind on a daily basis than the size of my dick, the size of your dick, and the size of the dick on that stranger I happened to pass in the grocery store.
Men are ridiculous size queens. We really are. We fixate on dick size and act as if it defines our worth as a person and our potential to succeed in society. I, frankly, don’t get it. As long as it stands up, lies down, functions properly, and feels good while doing it, then I don’t care if it’s two or twenty inches long as long as it works. That goes for mine, yours, his, and hers.
…well…uh…maybe not hers.
Although the size thing does get ridiculous when you’re catching instead of pitching. Here’s a news flash for those of you who don’t know about this little corner of reality: it. Hurts. And not in the good way. We’re talking in the “lasting physical damage” way. You ever read that horrible het fic where they talk about bumping a woman’s cervix with his massive love rod - and every woman within in a fifty mile radius closes her legs and screams “NO, DEAR GOD, NO!”? Yeah, well, we get that way, too. Show me a twelve-inch cock and I’ll show you a chastity belt with inch-thick steel plates over the ass. I’m very happy for you that you have a gargantuan schlong capable of clubbing baby seals to death. If you try to put that thing in me, I will promptly remove it from your person and give you a hands-on demonstration of exactly what that damn thing feels like.
I’d apologize for the crappy art on this one, make all kinds of excuses about one of those days where I have no hand-eye coordination and the pencil / stylus won’t cooperate, blah blah blah, but y’know, I’m just a mediocre artist, so let’s leave it at that. I have my good days and my bad days and my days in between. It gets the idea across.
What? You were expecting me to say something more? Go on, get outta here. Nothin’ to see here. I’ll snarl about something else tomorrow.
…stop looking at me like that. Seriously. I just saved a bunch of pictures from Undergear.com, not a single one of them naked, and I’ve been using them as references to draw various made-up characters based on the poses and body types. Not porn. I don’t look at porn.
…yeah, if you ever believe a man that tells you that, I’ve got some nice waterfront property in Arkansas for you to look at.
I’m working on getting used to drawing directly on screen like I’m drawing on paper again. So far I like the results, but after being so used to staring at the screen while drawing on the tablet separately, my standard hand-eye coordination is shot…and it shows in Red’s face. But I still think this came out better, smoother, than the old tablet drawings. It looks almost like pencil and ink, even though it was done in Photoshop (not even Manga Studio; there are issues with getting MS to recognize Wacom tablet drivers, and I’m tweaking it until it behaves properly). I really like being able to draw digitally but maintain some level of control; now I just need to work on retaining hand-eye coordination when doing comic art as opposed to realism. I trained myself and now I have to retrain myself. For the record, though, I was drawing this:
~grumbles~ Not porn. Character art from a story. Bah. My friends are assholes.
Moving on:
Caption Contest Winner
Wow, that caption contest kinda bombed, didn’t it? Not much participation. There were enough, though, to pick a winner; there were a few pretty funny ones in there (and man, Hikaru, you really wanted to win, didn’t you? Don’t I spend enough money on you already? Oh well, you’ve got a birthday coming up…), a few rather lame ones, and a few middle-grounders.
…okay, none of them were great, but out of the funny ones, the winner is Lala with “Hot legs, making your mark - Hot legs, keep my pencil sharp”. I’m sorry, but goofy Rod Stewart quotes are made of win (otherwise it wouldn’t be that funny - but c’mon, Rod Stewart?).
So Lala, shoot me an e-mail at adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net and tell me which e-mail address to send your Amazon gift card to.
I dunno if we’ll be doing a caption contest again. That was a last-ditch “oh crap, busy, need to update” thing. If we do, next time I’ll pick a better picture.
For now, though, I’m out. See you tomorrow with a regular post. I may even try reading the news, gasp.
No, no the Cintiq is not working yet. Yes, I am getting extremely pissed that they keep saying they’ll service the display, yes the display’s the problem, but hey, why don’t we send you a new VGA cable first even though we’re 100% sure the old one’s fine? Or you could, you know, walk to a school full of little children and say “Hi, I’m a strange adult male of unknown intentions, and I’d like to slip into one of your classrooms with all your impressionable young children to use one of your DVI-capable computers to test this thing?” Oh, we’ll fix the display eventually, maybe. Sort of. Only we say we will but then find a way around it. Say, you don’t mind paying to mail it back to us, do you?
Idiots. Wacom customer support needs to be strung up.
I’d say I have my vengeance in mocking them, but considering that I’m aping people that I’m likely distantly related to (you know, I could have written that in real Japanese; I just didn’t feel like it), I’m kind of mocking myself too. Some victory.
Speaking of customer support: in case you missed it, yesterday was the third Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, in which I ranted about my former work as a CSR (something any of you who’ve ever done that can probably completely understand) and said things that would make Don Imus keel over from shock but that George Carlin would probably think were weak, tame, and bland as dishwater. Either way, I have officially forfeited my right to ever be offended by anything anyone says, ever again.
It’s all for the sake of humor, right?
Anyway, if you care to listen and lose all respect for me (whether from my blatant disregard for political correctness or because the faster I start talking, the more I sound like my balls never dropped), follow the link up there. There’s an MP3 version of the webcast, and a log of the chat conversation.
That’s right, today marks one year that I’ve been writing for 451 Press - ever since this site was called “Pride and Opinions” (not my idea) until I said “oh hell no” and asked The Powers That Be at 451 Press to change the site name (even if they rather botched my intent, but no, we’re not going to go there…) It’s been fun, for the most part. Everything has its rocky points, and sometimes it was a pain in the arse, but I can’t ever really say it wasn’t worth it. Sure, it’s a lot of work for very little money, but I never did this for the money. I did this because I wanted to make a career out of something I love - writing - and I was happy to find even a small job that would let me do that. Since then I’ve moved on to much bigger things and become a full-time writer, but Darkside Rainbow is still something that I enjoy and that I’ll keep doing for as long as I can find something to say. In the past year the reader base here has grown; not by leaps and bounds, maybe, but by some pretty decent-sized bunny hops. Thanks to everyone who dropped by and decided to stick around.
Well. Sap out of the way, you’ll have to pardon that I didn’t bother hand-drawing this one. For some reason the computer is refusing to detect the pressure sensitivity on my old tablet (again, even after reinstalling the drivers and multiple reboots), and as far as the Cintiq…well, it’s currently a $1,000 paperweight sitting on the desk in my office while I wait for Wacom to “overnight” me a replacement converter box so we can test and see if that’s the faulty part. (They’ve been “overnighting” it since last bloody effin’ Tuesday, while I’ve been stuck waiting at home and unable to go to the library or bookstore to work - and although I keep asking them for the FedEx tracking number so I know what day it’ll come, they keep fencing around actually giving it to me. Adri is not happy.) Hopefully by next week the Cintiq will be working, and I’ll see about hand-drawing another comic.
…well, hand-drawing on screen.
Oh, you know what I mean.
Well, I’m out of things to say, so…see you tomorrow.
Yyyyeah, um…if you don’t get one, this boy ain’t gonna be the one to explain that particular fact of life. Just walk on.
You have no idea how close I came to either saying “screw it, I’ll do the comic late” or just doing one of the text-on-a-black-field lazy comics. My Cintiq 12WX is arriving tomorrow, and it entirely galled me to think of doing another comic on my cruddy old Adesso CyberTablet 12000. I think the only thing that saved it was the fact that I wanted to experiment with doing the line art in another program. I just acquired a copy of Manga Studio EX 3.0, and I think I’m in love. Manga Studio beats Photoshop for freestyle drawing by a landslide. It’s so bloody responsive that I almost forgot the hand-eye disconnection that comes from drawing on the tablet while looking at the screen; the way the different brushes respond to the tilt and pressure of the pen make them feel just like real art pens, sumi brushes, and pencils. It almost hurt to move back to Photoshop to do the color; Photoshop tends to drag my computer even with a dual-core 2.75Ghz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. Five quick strokes with the pressure sensitivity on and I have to stop and wait for Photoshop to catch up. To have Manga Studio be so light and clean, instantly responsive with no lag…holy hell. I can’t wait to see what I can do with it with the Cintiq, where I have a bit more fine control (but not necessarily more skill, there’s a limit to my talent).
Er…anyway. This isn’t a software review site (though amusingly, I reviewed two animation software packages for my other job over the weekend), so no more of that. But if you notice a subtle difference to the line art, that’s why. The ease of use even shaved an extra hour off my drawing time.
Moving on to something a bit more topical: I had a rather interesting experience in the store yesterday. I was in Wal-Mart picking up a DiGiorno for pizza night, and made the mistake of going at four in the afternoon on Easter Sunday. There I was stuck in the so-called “express” lane for 45 minutes, wanting nothing more than to pay for my beer and pizza and get out. (Yes, beer and pizza. Pick your jaw up off the floor. On the weekends I take my Captain Queer hat off and go about life as a normal guy. Now shhh, don’t give away my secret identity.) The checkout-rack tabloids and fashion magazines held my interest for roughly three milliseconds, if that, before I found myself people-watching. My eyes landed on a man one aisle over; he was about my age, maybe a few years older. I’d guess him to be six foot six or so, with somewhat swarthy skin that could have been Italian or Hispanic; the cast of his features made it hard to tell. He had long, dark brown hair, neatly pulled back in a tail; lovely dark eyes, and a handsome face that wore a beard well even though I normally don’t like facial hair. He was carrying a few extra pounds in the stomach, but he carried it well; he was casually dressed, but something about him, the cast of his features and his stance, caught my eye.
So I watched. I didn’t stare, but I did admire a little (Hikaru, get your hackles down, all I did was admire); I was bored, and not above surveying a little man-candy to pass the time. I didn’t think he noticed, since I looked away rather often or stared off elsewhere and zoned out. I figured from the Maxim he was reading that he wasn’t likely to take notice of another man paying undue attention to him, no matter how subtly (or unsubtly, as I soon found out).
He noticed.
We happened to leave our respective lines around the same time, and at the exit he ended up behind me in the interminable wait for one of the geriatric Wal-Mart greeters to check our receipts against the contents of our bags. By that point I’d stopped paying attention to him; I just wanted to get out the door and make the short walk home. So I wasn’t really expecting to hear a gritty, amused voice at my shoulder:
“You know, you might want to try being a bit more subtle about ogling a guy next time.”
I started in surprise and turned around to find him smiling at me rather dryly. I immediately blushed; I hadn’t thought I’d been that obvious, but several times I’d completely zoned out and might have done it while looking in his direction. “Sorry,” I said with a sheepish, apologetic smile. “It was either you or the irritated, bitter housewives. You were the better option.”
Despite answering with humor, I was expecting discomfort, scorn, any of the other typical reactions. Instead he laughed. “Well, just so you know, I’m straight. But I’m also flattered by the attention. Thank you.”
My jaw nearly unhinged. “Uh.” Ever so articulate, as always. I think I was red from my hairline to my collarbones. “You’re welcome,” I stammered, unable to help a rather stupid grin, mostly from raw surprise. He grinned back; then the greeter cleared her throat impatiently, so I let her check my receipt, walked out, and went home without looking back.
I’m so used to hearing snotty comments from straight people should any gay person dare to find them attractive or display passing, harmless interest that it really threw me to have someone be so casual about it, and handle the situation with such class. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. I wasn’t actually interested in flirting with him, but if I had been, it would have been a simple matter of “Thanks, but I’m straight” answered by an “Oh, no problem” without the slightest hint of conflict, nastiness, or resentment caused by crossed signals, misunderstanding, or prejudice.
I wish more people handled things with such aplomb - from our side of the spectrum, too, as we often react poorly to straight people flirting with us as well.
Maybe then we wouldn’t have to deal with attitudes like this guy.
Er. Remember when I said I’d never cut my hair again, down to the point of threatening Carlos with an electric purple weave if he came near me with a pair of scissors?
Yeah, well…”never” turned out to be “when I got so preoccupied that I let my hair go to hell and by the time it hit 18 inches long, 10 inches of it was a dry, broken, frizzy, dead mess that couldn’t be saved.”
So…yes. Rapunzel has been shorn. That’s not a good representation of it, but I’m still getting used to drawing it. It’s short, it’s punky, it’s sideswept, it sticks up everywhere, it saves me an hour a day, and I am discovering the wonders of gel (yes, I’ve become one of those guys). I don’t know if I’m going to keep it short or not; I like it more than I thought I would, but at the same time I keep having these moments in the mirror where I think “oh god, my hair!” and get all whimpery. It’s kind of pathetic. You should have seen me when I turned around in the stylist’s chair and just saw all these ropes of hair lying on the floor. She thought I was going to cry.
But it was worth it to see the looks on my friends’ faces. And it may be much easier to deal with after the Chicago move, as it’s much windier up there…so that’s incentive to keep it short.
I only wish I’d been able to give Carlos the pleasure of cutting it, as he’s been begging for a good two years now. But alas, Carlos has moved on to greener pastures in more upscale salons, and the rest of the people at that salon…well, they’re a bunch of rude, stuck up putas who get their ta-tas in a knot if you dare to call and ask when they might have an appointment open. So I had to call around, but eventually I found a place within walking distance, with reasonable prices and people experienced with dealing with highly mixed ethnic hair types, and got to spend two hours in a chair with a lovely woman named Freda. We alternated between comfortable silence while I worked (I brought my laptop and some writing assignments for New!Job, and had my mobile internet, thank you Verizon) and laughing our arses off while arguing over just how short it was going to be in the back (I was in a mood and wanted it gone so badly I would have let her shave it, but thankfully her cooler head prevailed and I’ve got layers anywhere from one to four inches long that I can spike all over the place). In the end she did a great job, and I’ll definitely be going back there until I move.
Aaaaanyway. That’s enough about my hair. I really don’t have much else to say; that’s been the most exciting thing in the past week, other than getting my first paycheck for my new job. Isn’t my life exhilarating?
Here. Have a practice sketch I did using a photo reference to try to work out how in hell I’ll be drawing my hair for the comics from now on.
See that? That is why I don’t post photos online; when I stop squinting and glaring at things, I look like a big-eyed waif-boy. And the short hair only makes it worse.
Oh, and sorry I half-assed the art on the comic. Busy weekend and I was in a bit of a rush. At the end of the month I’m finally buying my Cintiq as a birthday present to myself and to celebrate my one-year anniversary with 451, so the quality of the art should start improving on these things.
Shut up. It’s been a rough week. I consoled myself with Brahma calf-high police-swat-style black leather steel-toed boots. (Damn, that’s a lot of hyphens.) Better to spend $30 on boots that look as if they could quite happily kick your ass than waste $300 on a pair of tasseled loafers or something equally ridiculous.
So…I’m back. Quietly, inauspiciously, oh-god-do-I-have-a-headache-ly (spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically…?), but I’m back. Things aren’t quite going as I’d planned - or they are, but not on the time scale that I’d wanted, but that’s neither here nor there and things are sorting themselves out soon enough. Regardless, I should start updating again regularly. No idea if I’ll have the energy to rant and rave and rip people apart, but then I haven’t been reading the news this past week, either. I’m sure there are plenty of things to get caught up on that will leave me frothing at the mouth and ready to tear someone a new one.
I did, however, go vote in the Texas primary last week. That…was painful. I honestly couldn’t find a single candidate on the ballot who didn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth regardless of their stance on gay issues…but voting is a civic duty, and one I wouldn’t have had a couple hundred years ago when my dark skin would have denied me that right. So I vote on principle, and because I really, really don’t want to hear another bloody four years of complaining that it’s the fault of low turnout from my generation that got us into the mess we’re in right now with a second term with W - only in this case, it’d be a mess with whomever made it onto the ballots after the primaries.
…I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. You think that’s bad, you should see what happens if anyone tries to touch one of my three computers.
I’ll be back next week with a hand-drawn comic for Monday and daily posts following, once my break is over. Haven’t stabbed anyone at work so far, but the week’s still young.
Look for a guest post tomorrow by our very own resident psycho sweetheart, Lessa (and just in case you didn’t think she did any work around here with all her crazy bouncing around, check out her blog at Big Brother Craze).
Sorry if the art’s a little hinky on this one. Okay, let’s be honest, sorry if the art looks like it was ganked from the cover of a post-apocalyptic Lisa Frank spiral-bound notebook. I’m still losing my bloody effin’ mind trying to manage five jobs at once (sad thing is, I spend more time on this job than all but one other, and you don’t want to know how little I’m paid for this), so I’m kinda cutting corners on comic artwork and building things in Photoshop where I can, without much drawing involved (this one was mostly gradient fills with texture brushes painted on top). Two more weeks. ~crosses his fingers~ I can handle this for two more weeks without killing anyone, right?
…don’t answer that.
3,000 comments contest update
We’re teetering on the edge of 2,500 comments, with just a few over 500 to go to hit that magic mark of 3,000 cumulative comments - and I’ve finally decided on a prize. I keep forgetting not everyone’s a gadget-geek like me, and I don’t have to pick out some nifty little bit of tech every time. So for this contest’s prize, the person who posts the 3,000th comment will receive a DVD copy of Velvet Goldmine, all shiny and brand-new.
Just to be fair to our international readers, I won’t be ordering the DVD until we see who wins, as there are region issues to consider and I wouldn’t want to ship someone an NTSC-only DVD if they live in a PAL region, and vice versa. (Granted, a lot of DVDs come with multiple region encoding now, but better to be on the safe side…) Once a winner is determined, I’ll just put in the order and have it shipped directly to your door.
…this was actually based on an entirely cracked-out conversation with one of my friends, after he listened to the second Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast and latched on to the “Queerzilla” silliness. You really don’t want to know about the rest of it…trust me. It makes the events during the 100/500 comments contest look tame by comparison.
Speaking of that, lovely Lessa was kind enough to send pictures of her wearing/using her prizes (well, one of her prizes, and one prize she snitched from Barbara):
It made me laugh far too much to see that. She apparently traumatized her kids, while reinforcing their friends’ idea that she’s the coolest mom ever. Hell, I’d kill to have a mother with that kind of sense of humor (but then we already know how I feel about my mum, don’t we, so no need to beat that deceased equine).
Still on the topic of comments, if you’ll recall, the next comments contest mark was set for 3,000 cumulative comments. I still have no idea what the hell I’m giving out as a prize this time (although I’m eyeing a cute little black and blue 2GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 player, even nicer than the last one I gave away), but just for a progress update, we’re just over 2,420. (We ended the 500 comments contest with almost 2,150, I believe.) So we’re getting there, slowly but surely. I figure it’ll take another few months to eat up that last 600, unless we suddenly get a huge surge of traffic/new visitors or you guys lose your minds and pull off some unexpected, insane Herculean effort.
I’ll update you guys on the prize soon, and continue posting progress updates now and then.
Before I go, you may remember that I mentioned a LiveJournal friend, Vivian, whose slogan is “Keep Your God Off My Body.” Well, now she’s got a CafePress store where you can get the logo on a T-shirt; she’s also working on “Keep Your God Out of My Classroom/Government/Job Security”, but right now the default is the only one available. She’s not doing it for profit (who could, with CafePress’s outrageously high base prices?), but she just wants to get the word out about the undue influence of religion in decisions involving birth control, abortion, women’s rights, minority rights in general, government, and other areas that affect all our lives. So if you want to pick up a nifty t-shirt that’s not nearly as tasteless as mine, check her out:
That’s all from me, and I’m out. See you tomorrow. Ciao.
Er…ignore the teeny!goth bleeding heart…uh…thingy. I was just being silly and playing around with Photoshop. I know the comic’s a bit early for Valentine’s, but I didn’t feel like putting it off and doing it Thursday instead. I kind of like to keep on schedule with this thing. (Hush, those of you who used to follow the old comic. I know. I know. That’s why I try to be diligent on this one.)
So…I think that makes my feelings towards Happy-Make-Singles-Feel-Like-Crap-Over-Cheap-Chocolate Day. “Let’s waste tons of money on fake bullshit to prove we really love someone!” Shitty excuse for a holiday. No further elaboration needed. (Although I will admit to being a tiny bit of a hypocrite, since I did splurge on a Valentine’s gift for one person this year, just for the fun of it…) I think this will be the first Valentine’s Day that I’ve spent single in a good ten years. Sad thing is, I don’t really think I’ll be able to tell the difference.
Bleh. Happy early Valentine’s, anyway.
To swerve off on a different note: It’s around that time when I try to decide if I should do another Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast. The first seemed to go over well, and a surprising number of people showed up for the second; we had a few technical difficulties with some interference, but I bought a new microphone headset (well…got a new one for free using the Dell gift card that came with my new laptop) so hopefully there won’t be any more creepy transmissions from the underworld.
I won’t be able to do it this month, since I have that whole “y halo thar, five jobs at once” thing going, but I can probably do it some time in late March when even sleeping no longer requires multitasking. Let me know if you guys are interested and I’ll set a date and try to think of more things to ramble about, or dig through some old reader letters I haven’t answered. (And we’ll stay away from religion for poor Mizuki’s sake.) There may be another prize giveaway; I’m thinking of doing a range of T-shirt designs, most less embarrassing than the ones currently available. We’ll see what comes out in my sketches and if I have anything ready in time.
And Hikaru, before you say a damned word: if you misbehave in the chat room while I’m live on the webcast, I’m calling you during the webcast and putting you on speakerphone. Remember that.
I’m not even sure why I’m trying to post this when the site’s tanked and has been for almost two days now. If this ever shows up (since my admin console on WordPress is working but the rest of the site is redirecting to the main 451 Press site), sorry the site’s been down. Some sites on the network are suffering from huge scraper attacks and our head honcho is swamped trying to block them as they come and keep things running, and a few sites are suffering as a result.
On the topic of the film: seriously, forget the worst effin’ pies in London. That was the worst bloody film in London or anywhere else, and after sitting through it last night, I’d like to be reimbursed for those lost hours of my life that I can never regain.
I love theatre, musicals (well, to an extent; they have to be good musicals, but if I can enjoy Ewan MacGregor in Moulin Rouge I should have loved this), Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and grim, grimy, gory scenarios. Sweeney Todd had all of those, with a dark psychological edge and fun flips of the macabre counterpointed by the whimsical…and it fell completely flat. I don’t understand how it gained such widespread critical review, or made it into the IMDB top 250.
Though I’m pretty sure the singing had nothing to do with it.
I was shocked that Johnny Depp could sing at all, especially in such a clear, angelic voice…but that doesn’t change that most of the singing was pretty lackluster, random, and seemed to be done just for the sake of singing. It wasn’t music; it was just singing one’s lines rather flatly, and not a single melody stuck with me after the film. Don’t get me started on the leading lady, who was likely only the leading lady because she’s boning the director. Good gods, I thought my eardrums were going to pop when she hit a few high notes. The entire thing was listless, washed-out, and even the actors seemed bored by their parts. If they can’t be bothered to take interest, why should I?
Stop looking at me like that. No, seriously - this is so, so not my fault. Even I’m not this tasteless and crass. No, in order to find that, you need to turn to the higher levels of government. Only they are refined enough to produce this level of crassness.
Well, them or their kids.
Think I’m joking? Think again. The son of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas actually designed this game for a class project at the Rhode Island School of Design.
The scary part?
My version is tamer.
His version has bags of cocaine, guns, a guy in a wheelchair…gods. ~facepalms~ Just read the bloody article. You’ll get the idea. If you want to see even more of the glaring, hilariously awful, I-know-I-should-be-offended-but-I’m-laughing-too-incredulously wrongness, check out the site for the product.
And while you’re clicking links, check out this radio podcast of a talk show host’s call with Shirley Phelps-Roper. That’s right, Fred Phelps’ nutty daughter. The best part is when they call her out on her illegitimate son (after she’s been hurling insults and accusations at everyone else) and all she can say is “So? What about it?” I’ve never heard that much deep-fried crazy in that little time before; that woman is riding around with a bucket of Colonel’s Extra Crispy perched on her shoulders. I don’t think she was even responding to what they were saying; I’d wonder if she was even speaking English, but those were English words coming out of her mouth. Not in any comprehensible or sensible order, but…still English words.
It’s kind of like a three-year-old who makes up their own sentences from the words they know. “Daka bear baba-booie truck” means “I want ice cream.” Phelps-Roper isn’t quite so easy to translate.
Oh, by the way, the Akismet problem is fixed. I’m not going to say what the problem was, at the risk of sounding like I’m b*tching about my employer (because I am), but apparently whatever rectal-cranial inversion problem there was has been fixed. Yay. ~mutters~ “Patching”, my tarty little brown ass. Anyway, your comments should be showing up automatically now without me having to fish them out.
…okay, that’s a teeny bit of a lie. It was a bit of laziness, as I was too jittery about the second DR Live Webcast yesterday to do any drawing before the broadcast, and felt too much like a wet noodle after. Brain-fried. Totally. While being lazy, though, it’s also a tiny homage to the 500 comments contest and the sheer insanity that went on there. That post is going to live on in infamy for the rest of this website’s days.
So if you missed it, last night was the second DR Live Webcast, and it was a mess. There’s quite a bit of sputtering, growling, and cursing right there on the webcast, because there was something majorly wrong with the broadcast and either my computer or my connection was being evil. It sounds like something out of White Noise or Fear Dot Com. It should still be understandable, though…I hope. I can’t stand the sound of my own voice, so I’m not listening to find out.
Thanks to everyone who showed up, though; the turnout was surprising. It was fun keeping up with you guys in the chat room afterwards (and Hikaru, thanks for keeping up with the log for me this time so we caught all of it).
I’m out of things to say, except to backtrack to something a bit more serious: April Gilford, the one who tipped me off to the CWA article about gay men and staph infections, has done her own post on the article over at Life as a Christian Woman. In it she covers a lot of facts about MRSA, dispelling much of the fear-mongering and myth that the CWA article tries to spread. It’s definitely an insightful read, and worth every word. Head on over there and have a look.
That kiss? Not the best idea. But we’re…um…not going to talk about that.
What we are going to talk about, though, is the 100 Comments Party…which turned in into a 500 Comments Party. Holy crap. That…was bloody amazing, you guys. Seriously. It was also a little crackheaded. There were bulbous eyes, cabana boys, g-strings, cookies, body shots, baby oil, web designs, skinless ones, B-52s, bad singing…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Over 500 comments of pure insanity in less than 48 hours…yyyeah. I don’t know what we were all smoking this weekend…
…but damn, was it fun.
Thank you to everyone for participating - and thank you to the winners: Sam, first-prize winner for 100, and Lessa, JM, and Indikaze as 2nd, 3rd, and 3rd runner-up. And let’s not forget Barbara, the winner for 500…who won with a comment about bacon cereal and is now the proud owner of a teddy bear with a rather questionable logo on its shirt.
…the comic title, by the way, is a little bit of homage to Lessa and Kaine with their B-52s. Love shack, baby. (Now I’m going to be singing that all day.)
Not much else to say; I don’t think we’ll do another comment party for a while, at least not until the Akismet spam filter is fixed - as having to monitor and approve everything was driving me out of my mind, even with Hikaru’s help. (Thank you, by the way. As much of a dick as you are, you’re also a darling. I owe you.) However, we can set the bar for the next general comments contest, in which we count comments accumulated over time on every post. We’ll say…hrm. We’re well over 2,000 now, so let’s set the bar for…3,000? Yeah, that’ll work. So the next prize will be given away when the overall comment count reaches 3,000. Er…no hurry on that. Really. I think we all need some rest.
I’m out of here. Don’t forget that next Sunday at 5:00p CST is the second DR Live Webcast, in which I may be giving away another prize to one of the listeners. Ciao.
DarksideRainbow.net is 451 Press's look at the darker side of the
rainbow - where gay life takes a decided turn away from the happy, the
shiny, and the pink, complete with news, gossip, and a healthy dose of
caffeine-fueled cynicism from gay blogger Adrien-Luc Sanders. Check in
Monday through Friday for a decidedly tongue-in-cheek slant on current
events in the GLBTQ world, spiced with a few fun rants.
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