When was the last time you broke out the comics page of the newspaper? (Assuming you’re part of the ever-shrinking group that actually buys newspapers). Is it just me, or have the comics become so dreadful and insipid, that they’re no longer worth looking forward to?
Famous stalwarts are mere shadows of their former glory. Dilbert’s down to being funny twice a month. Garfield lost any sort of creativity and energy 15 years ago. And Cathy’s as compelling as reading a novel spit out by a random word generator.
But at least those guys at least pretend to attempt to entertain, and like the hand of a blind man finding a seed, will occasionally produce a strip of some worth. These on the other hand, are the kinds of strips that everyone I know skips over, except maybe to laugh at the “drama” and “emotion” the authors so regularly fail to generate.
Prince Valiant: This strip appeals to those who both like medieval fighting stuff and have no problem reading
War and Peace in three days. This Venn diagram demonstrates the problem with making this your target audience:
As you can see, the intersection of the two sets is very, very tiny. That being said, it’s still found in every major newspaper that I’ve read. Guess it’s true what they say about having connections.
(You can click to enlarge, but it’s not worth it.)
Mark Trail: The best part is its liberal use of English-speaking animals to interject vital plot points into the story.
Apt 3-G: If you haven’t read the strip from pretty much the beginning, whatever Margo and company says and does makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like reading one paragraph from the middle of
War and Peace:
See what I mean? However, they do have a brunette, redhead, and blonde, so they got your preference covered.
July 19th, 2007
4 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Entertainment
Dogfighting is brutal, sadistic, and intolerable. I don’t need to relate the kinds of torture dogs go through for this form of entertainment, but anyone involved in this stuff has to be mindless or heartless. Some time ago, the feds found evidence of dogfighting and training in a property owned by NFL quarterback Michael Vick. It should be noted that he does not actually live there, but had at least one cousin living there. Over the past weeks, there have been rumors of the kinds of activities and speculation of how much the football star was involved. Today I received this from PETA:
NFL star Michael Vick, of the Atlanta Falcons, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on felony dogfighting charges. We need your help to tell the NFL that someone who allows this kind of neglect and abuse to occur doesn’t belong in its organization. Please write to the NFL to ask that Vick be immediately suspended.
I’m glad PETA will beat the drum on this kind of thing, but Vick has not been convicted of anything yet. Except, perhaps, in the court of public opinion (yay, pukey cliché!). So there will be a lot of PETA Moonies petitioning the NFL to suspend a possibly innocent person. Well done.
July 19th, 2007
8 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under In the News, Sports
Have you ever wondered how insects tell themselves apart? We can barely see a difference between one praying mantis to the next, yet we know that somehow, they manage to determine who’s who.
It’s just like old white guys in government. Look at the picture at the top, and tell me how the heck we can tell those Senators apart. If it weren’t for the different color ties, those guys be indistinguishable.
There is one thing I must congratulate Congress on. The webpage the picture’s from is proof positive that Congress does have some self-control on the budget, as they clearly have not hired anyone to update the page design since the mid-90’s. A few things my co-workers and I noticed:
- There’s still a link to Netscape Navigator
- Site is “optimized” for IE 4 and Navigator 4
- The senator pic uses imagemaps
- A 400KB 2500px wide pic is loaded to display a 421px wide pic
July 19th, 2007
2 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under History, Science/Technology
thank...