I gave my notice at the market two and a half damn weeks ago, and my last day is finally in sight: Thursday, June 5th. I’ll be down at The Fishbowl after work to celebrate with some coworkers, some friends, and maybe even some regulars. You should come!
Things I need to buy before I can make some donuts:
And then — delicious vegan donuts for everyone!
Who else adores the new Discovery commercial? I particularly like the part where Adam deliberately lights Jamie’s sleeve on fire.
I just made this soup on the fly. It’s pretty good, but still needs a little something… maybe some apple cider vinegar? I dunno. I’ll experiment next time.
Roasted Goodness Soup
Ingredients
Preheat oven to 425° while you prepare the squash and garlic for roasting. For the squash: peel, cut into eighths, scoop out seeds and nasty bits, put in a baking dish of some sort, brush with oil and sprinkle liberally with kosher salt. For the garlic: remove outer layers of paper, cut the very tops off of cloves, drizzle with oil, and wrap up in aluminum foil. Stick it all in the oven for 40 minutes, or until the kitchen smells so delicious that you can’t handle it anymore.
While the goodies are roasting, set a heavy pot over medium heat. Heat a little bit of oil and sweat the onion with a bit of salt until translucent. (At this point I sprinkled on a hefty amount of garlic powder, but I’m not really sure it did much.) Add the herbs and water, turn the heat down, and simmer until the veggies are done roasting.
Add the squash and squeeze each clove of garlic into the soup. Simmer for 15 or 20 minutes, then purée with a stick blender or food processor or whatever you’ve got.
If anyone tries this recipe, let me know how it turns out!
I’ve got a bonus coming my way for some web work, and I already know how I’m spending it. How jealous are you?
Scratch that, I’m calling it Hair of the Irish Monkey.
Ingredients
Run the banana under hot water until it’s thawed enough to peel. Break it up into chunks and put in the blender. Add remaining ingredients, using enough soymilk to just cover the bananas. Blend until drinkable.
Double-fist this with a strong cup of coffee to get your hung-over ass pumped up for the day.
I made vegan palak paneer! And it came out almost completely okay! Used Manjula’s recipe, subbing coconut milk for heavy cream and firm, unpressed tofu for paneer. Couldn’t hardly tell the difference, neither!
I’ve been cooking a lot of horrible food recently, (after a good streak, I had the gall to tell my new boy, “I’m a really good cook.” And BAM, since then everything’s tasted like shit.) so it’s very nice to have finally made something edible.
I thought last night’s cooking mojo would carry over and bless me with good pancakes this morning, but holy crap were they flavorless. They looked so promising, too.
In other news, the Remus jumper is back on track! Again! But really, this time! I ripped it out all the way to before the armholes, set fire to the SIX attempted sleeves, and am going for a seamless sweater ala Elizabeth Zimmermann and her Amazing Percent System! Maybe raglan, maybe seamless hybrid with the fancy yoke — who cares, I don’t have to decide until the sleeves are done.
Yuliya Shmidt: what’s up with your blog dude?
Jenny Cade: what’s up with *your* blog?
Jenny Cade: huh?
Jenny Cade: HUH?
Yuliya Shmidt: yours is woefully not updated
Yuliya Shmidt: mine does not suffer from the same condition
Jenny Cade: i really don’t have anything to say
Jenny Cade: ‘cept complaining ’bout the weather
Yuliya Shmidt: tell us about your boy
Jenny Cade: but then he might find it
Jenny Cade: and then i will be horrified
Yuliya Shmidt: i just spilled tea on my crotch
Yuliya Shmidt: unfortunate
Jenny Cade: okay, so here is my shopping list:
Jenny Cade: ooh, i can post that on my blog!
Jenny Cade: yaaaay
Jenny Cade: and i shall blame it on you
Yuliya Shmidt: excellent
Yuliya Shmidt: can’t wait
Tonight I shall feast on pancakes and palak paneer.
Let us ignore, for a moment, the fact that I am extremely intoxicated.
Let us instead focus on the fact that Questionable Content is an extremely enjoyable webcomic. One part witty banter, one part indie snobbery, and one part DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA!!! make for one heck of a comic. Its critics cite (and mock) the characters’ frequent “let’s talk about our feelings” discussions, while its fans either appreciate or overlook the I feel statements that pepper each storyline.
There’s everything going for this comic, and that’s why, I assume, it’s so insanely popular. The jokes are fucking hysterical when it’s on, the characters develop over time, and the art has gone from horrid to pretty darn good. There are robots, which is never a bad thing, and Jeph Jaques seems like a painfully nice guy — every news post ends with “see you tomorrow” or “see you Monday”, and that always reminds me of Mr. Rogers’ end-of-the-show song. Hooray for the friendly webcomics neighborhood!
With backstory that Monsiur Websnark has creamed himself over and jokes that crack Joe Shmoe up every day, it’s easy to see why Questionable Content is one of the most popular webcomics out there. Hooray for Faye!
↓ I have discovered a new pet peeve: idiots who use the terms “fair trade” and “free trade” as synonyms. Astounding.
↑ And a new love: Aldo Leopold, though not the zombie (YAY inside joke that no one will get!). I swiped A Sand County Almanac from Mark a couple days ago. It’s full of lovely little passages about the mundane beauty of life.
In thus watching the daily routine of a spring goose convention, one notices the prevalence of singles–lone geese that do much flying about and much talking. One is apt to impute a disconsolate tone to their honkings, and to jump to the conclusion that they are broken-hearted widowers, or mothers hunting lost children. The seasoned ornithologist knows, however, that such subjective interpretation of bird behavior is risky. I long tried to keep an open mind on the question.
After my students and I had counted for half a dozen years the number of geese comprising a flock, some unexpected light was cast on the meaning of lone geese. It was found by mathematical analysis that flocks of six or multiples of six were far more frequent than chance alone would dictate. In other words, goose flocks are families, or aggregations of families, and lone geese in spring are probably just what our fond imaginings had first suggested. They are bereaved survivors of the winter’s shooting, searching in vain for their kin. Now I am free to grieve with and for the lone honkers.
It is not often that cold-potato mathematics thus confirms the sentimental promptings of the bird-lover.
This one’s easy: if you didn’t fall off your chair laughing at that panel, then Dark Legacy is going to be completely lost on you.
As I’m fairly certain none of you play World of Warcraft, I feel perfectly comfortable ending the review here.
Two dollars for two AAA batteries? Much love for Good Vibrations and all that, but that’s just silly.
Would anyone care to identify this one? Googling the lyrics is useless. Marmot, this is from your “La Conner Or Bust” mix.
AppleGeeks used to be crazy similar to Mac Hall (the predecessor of Three Panel Soul): they both have two authors, similar art, same basic story set-up and gags, not to mention the superficially similar names. (Can you believe I can’t think of a good synonym for “similar”? Sorry.) But as the Mac Hall authors started using more experimental art and keyed down the silliness, AppleGeeks’ artist, Hawk, honed his particular brand of clean, cartooney art, and writer Ananth mixed more drama, action, and long story-arcs into their original gag-a-day format. What were once two indistinguishable comics are now different enough to help define, at least in my mind, contrasting genres in the webcomic world.
One problem that many webcomics –especially those with long stories– face is pacing. It can be difficult for readers to remember everything that’s happened over the course of a chapter when they only read one or two pages a week. AppleGeeks deals with it well enough that I only rarely feel the need to go back and re-read previous pages — though I don’t think Hawk and Ananth accomplish it by forcing the story to whiz by faster. The story is littered with key events that are easy to remember, like explosions.
The characters in AppleGeeks have come a long way. What was once a large band of college buddies, each about as unique as a goddamn sheep, has become a small cast of likeable characters. Hawk, the artist’s fictional alter-ego, is the Mac-obsessed comic relief (for the most part). Eve is his naive and super-cute OS X-running robot who occasionally kicks serious ass — think River Tam and Kaylee put together in a blue-haired cyborg body. Jayce is more or less the straight man of the comic, often making an appearance just to scold Hawk. His girlfriend, Alice, recently switched bodies with a hellish little girl who’s hell-bent on exacting her revenge on Hawk. Awesome, right?
There’s so much going on in this strip. You can tell that Ananth relishes the opportunity to completely blind-side the readers — there was at least a week or so after that last big explosion that I thought two or three of the main characters were dead. With a few twists and turns, and gradual character development, he’s able to keep the story fresh and interesting in spite of its length.
When AppleGeeks is on, it’s on — and it usually is. Though each comic update is presented as a page of the larger story, it usually delivers on comedy, action, or both. (Or sometimes some roboty angst, but they pull it off well.) If I were doling out scores here, I’d give Hawk and Ananth points for characters, originality, art, and a couple more for originality.
I can’t decide if AppleGeeks is an action comic with jokes mixed in or vice versa. Sometimes that can be jarring — it feels like they’re breaking from the story to devote a page to an unrelated gag. Hawk and Ananth also have a nasty habit of posting half-done comics if they haven’t had time to finish. Hawk’s coloring is so crisp and purdy that seeing a black-and-white version of AppleGeeks is a very poor substitute for the finished product. I for one would much rather read the page a day or two later.
Overall, I’d recommend AppleGeeks to anyone who’s up for investing a good chunk of time into reading through the archives (at least from Eve’s debut).
A *lite* review of
AppleGeeks’ old gag-a-day format lives on in the relatively new AppleGeeks Lite, a newspaper-strip-like addendum that focuses on a cuter, cartoonier version of the main strip’s Hawk and all his wacky antics. The writer vs. artist ones are great. So’s this one. And this one. Aaaaaaaaaaand this one. Uno más.
Even if you have no interest in reading these comics, you should at least treat yourself to a gander at Hawk’s PhotoArt on Flickr. That shit’s awesome.
God I love this comic.
Ian does art for video games, and Matt is, I believe, a journalist. Put those guys together and you get a comic that’s very pretty and very smart. After doing Mac Hall for several years, they started the decidedly more grown-up Three Panel Soul a year ago. (Today! How crazy is that?)
There’s a lot of variation in TPS — the only real common thread between all the strips is that they’re three panels long. Sometimes it’s about the authors and their lives, often it’s about video games, and occasionally it’s about unidentified characters. Recently a lot of the strips have been about Ian’s cat Schrödinger. Ian seems to use the strip as a place to experiment with his art, so the reader gets to see several different styles develop over time.
This is not a “hit-or-miss” comic as far as I’m concerned. It’s always “on” — I’d bet Ian and Matt spend more time on their two strips a week than most other webcomics folks spend on daily comics. Most importantly, it’s simple — it doesn’t bite off more than it can chew, if you know what I mean, so you’re never left disappointed.
Also, I like their newsposts. =P
Me and webcomis? We’re like this. (Crosses fingers) When I was a kid, I read all the funnies every damn day. Webcomics are the natural, grown-up version of that fun tradition, but with a lot more variety, and often better quality. And they’re (usually) free, so yay!
There are 30 different ones that I check every day, and each one has something special about it. Some of them are really fucking spectacular. Most of them are hit-or-miss, but the hits make up for the misses.
Anyways. The point of all this babbling is that you and I, Reader, are about to embark on a very special journey together: over then next month or so, I’m going to tell you about each and every one of those special little comics I read, and you’re going to smile and nod and at least pretend to be interested. Lovely, yes?
So, starting from the top:
Real Life isn’t just the first webcomic I read every day, it’s the first webcomic I ever read. It’s been around since late ‘99, and was once under the Keenspot umbrella, back when that seemed to mean something.
As the title suggests, the comic is mostly about the author’s “real life” escapades, but with flourishes and exaggerations that make it interesting enough to read 5 times a week — like Greg’s friend Tony who has an evil lair/space station sort of thing orbiting Earth.
What’s really appealing about Real Life is that it’s about a nerd. A real nerd with nerd friends who talks about nerdy things and does even nerdier things (like making a chainmail mantle –piece by bloody piece– for a Ren fair). If you’re a Battlestar Galactica-watchin’, Dungeons & Dragons-playin’, teleportation chamber-buildin’ geekly one, you’ll feel right at home with Greg, Liz, and their veritable smorgasbord (orgasbord orgasbord) of friends.
The jokes are predictable, the art is bland, the characters all kinda have the same personality, the stories rarely go anywhere, and the author doesn’t even update the damn thing all time — but if you need a geeky fix, it’s great. And sometimes it really does deliver the funny.
According to Scientific American, there’s a nasty new Mac-only trojan out there. It’s only been found on porn sites, and it weasles its way onto computers by convincing poor horny bastards that it’s a codec required for video play.
The good news is that Web surfers can prevent infection simply by not downloading the fake codec software, or by avoiding porn sites altogether—whichever is easier.
