Monday night my modem crapped out on me and I was without internet till this afternoon. Naturally this occurs at a time when I have various questions I need answering by the global mass of knowledge Isn't that always the way when you need to find out if Rodrigo Borgia was a contemporary of Henry VII or Henry VIII? (the answer being Henry VII)

Tuesday I get a jury summons! Always a lovely thing. Thankfully it was for Civil Court once again, which means an easy trip on the rail line and a wasted afternoon. First two times I did jury duty I just sat in the main summons room for a few hours till they told everyone to leave, then the third time I got called to a jury, but wasn't picked, I'm expecting a similar result again.

Except for spilling ketchup on myself at Burger King this afternoon, today seems to be going fine.

It seems there is a 2004 biopic of Steven Hawking starring Benedict Cumberbatch! 

Real Networks is suing Apple over some anti-trust issue about not letting iTunes access Real's Harmony service. Since I happen to own a model that's covered in the lawsuit, I registered with their site to get included in the case.

At best, this might end up being some piddling little check I get a year or two down the line. Something similar happened with another class action settlement I found myself lumped into. I'd completely forgotten about receiving the letter about it some time ago, and then all of a sudden I get the check. I ended up looking it up on the internet to make sure it wasn't a scam.

So I'm making certain to note this in the journal so I at least have some reference in the future.

Due to the weird weekend, I had this morning off. So Mom and I hit the movie theater to see the Avengers. It is a great movie and Joss Whedon really shows his skill as a director. He turns in a flawless superhero action movie. The Hulk, who honestly did not work that well in his own movies, ended up stealing the show in this one. Mark Rufalo did good job of making Banner at least as interesting as his green alter ego. If nothing else, just having the rest of the cast to work off of made the character more interesting.

Naturally, there was a post credit scene. I'm surprised they were going to go that route for the sequel, or whatever the next movie will be. It's an ambitious setup, and if they get Whedon back for the next one, I hope it will live up to the expectations.

We had the Saturday truck get cancelled since it was under 1000 pieces, so they moved it back to Sunday just so we would have some replenishment for the weekend. But it was the weekend of the big "The Shitops at Target"  brand rollout and worse than that there was word floating about some big wig from the home office was in the area, so there was the threat of a visit that morning.

So our manager in his infinite wisdom decides we need to come in at midnight Sunday to take care of the truck. Naturally, trying to get the whole crew to drop their weekend plans to come in at the middle of the night to work this truck doesn't work too well. We were distinctly short handed, and even unloading the truck was a slog at times when too many people were off the line. Combine that with Shay, the team's resident loud obnoxious nuisance being particularly annoying and full of herself. She and Kelly were fighting all night.
 
It was a relatively small truck, just 1900 pieces, but the shortage of people and generally demoralizing atmosphere it took us till 8:30 that morning to get done. That threw a wrench in my plans for the day, I was going to see the Avengers with ORAC, but I was too tired and just went straight to bed.

Even worse, one of the guys in the crew had already seen the movie and insisted on talking about it and throwing out spoilers all over the place. So overall it was an unpleasant night, and I'm quite happy to see it over.

samjohnsoncomics is this comic creator on deamwidth whose been irregularly promoting his comics on scans_daily since February. Today he gave a previewq of his comic The Almighties and the readers are not impressed.

Considering the story is a hyper-violent "parody" of the Avengers that's clearly coat-tailing on the movie's release, it's no surprise the fans at S_D are unimpressed. When people show up on the community just to promote themselves, it usually doesn't work out too well for them. Especially if they over do it and post a lot about their work. I recall a few other webcomic artists creators doing the same thing (oftentimes posting even more) and my usual reaction was not to even bother reading their posts. Though Sam Johnson's post has brought out all the snark and merciless opinions.

Knowing the scans daily community, I don't plan on posting any of my work on there anytime soon. Largely to avoid the kind of reaction a lot of the people on there are handing this guy. I at least appreciate how much my comic sucks, and don't really need confirmation.

http://his-spiffynesss.dreamwidth.org/9204.html.

Apparently, a couple different sources close to the movie's production have leaked the identity of the role Benedict Cumberbatch is playing in New Formula Trek 2...


( Spoilers Ahead )

Mom got all her DVD collection converted and stored on the hard drive, and since we still have a goodly amount of storage on the drive I figure I'd start ripping my stuff on there. So I started with Big Bang Theory, and I'm thinking I'm going to look a little closer at the options tab on our file converter and see if I can edit the file's metadata a bit before conversion. 

Part of the problem I've been having with my comic is that it's not exactly where I want it to be. My problem is I'm just so serious and I really have trouble getting into that kind of wonky campy mindset of the Golden and Silver age comics. 

So I'm hitting a few comic sites and blogs and getting some inspiration. That is largely taking the form of C.C. Beck, the creator of the original Captain Marvel. His clean line work, with it's minimalistic  and slightly cartoony designs (reminiscent of Dick Tracy's Chester Gould)  have always interested me.

I really want to give my work more of that kind of feel. It does mean more redesigns for the characters, but alos I need to figure out how to get more of that campy, wonky feel into the stories. It shouldn't be that hard in stories about a couple of naked people fighting crime in the jungle, but I still haven't quite wrapped my head around it.

I'm five pages into this new  story I'm working on, and I've hit one of those slumps in productivity. I haven't worked on the comic in a few days, and I'm developing a bit of that anxiety for where I want to go with this thing.

I must admit I'm getting to that point where I'm thinking of setting this project aside, like a lot of the other comics I've done in the past. Though I do have the satisfaction of having two complete stories and fifty one pages out there, not just another incomplete project like I've done so many times before. 

I don't think I'm totally abandoning Kaza, just stepping away from it for a while. I do want to finish this next story, just I don't want to force myself to do so the way I forced myself to finish the last one. I think I'd be better off just picking at this story on an irregular basis, the way I did the first story (I was off the comic from July 2010 to January 2011 in between pages 7-8 of the first story)

This is the reason i know I'll never go professional in the world of comics, I'm just to artsy fartsy and needing my "muse" to actually accomplish something.