UnRecent Linky

Digging through the backlog of linky suspects. Hopefully none of these have been linked before.

Pixel art cartooning demonstrates how much nuance in you can get in pixelart, using Star Trek characters

Great panels from vintage comics

Classic early 20th-c sci-fi artist Frank R Paul

Great essay from the Columbia Journalism Review (via the DimPost I think, it’s been a while) about being a young woman journo moving into the new media (Gawker!), or more generally, about what was (is) going on in journalism.

Cookie Monster trains IBM sales staff in 1967

Evan Dorkin’s FUN strips. Hilarious. Inappropriate. Not nearly as well-known as they should be. (Dude writes for Yo Gabba Gabba now, parents! See the horrible truth behind his child-friendly exterior!)

David Lynch’s interview project. Lynch went around the US interviewing random people. I haven’t watched any of these but one day I will. I kinda imagine it’ll be like The Straight Story, but real.

A song from Rambo: The Musical


Journo goes undercover at a gay-to-straight conversion camp.

Photo: Aleister Crowley and Fernando Pessoa playing chess.

NERD RAGE, in rap form

And finally…
David Mitchell with pizza

Who to blame?

[My laptop’s back in the ‘shop, trying to resolve the bluescreening problem. Hopefully they won’t spend too long messing about with it. Anyway, in the meantime I’m sharing my lovely stronglight’s laptop, but the timeshare + busy means blogging will continue to be light. Light is the new baseline, it seems.]

It’s election year. John Key and his National party are well-placed to swing back into power. There’s a chance a coalition of other parties could win a majority, but I don’t think it’s shaping up that way just yet. Key himself is confident – what else can explain his decision to campaign on asset sales, which the NZ electorate has a history of opposing?

Key and the Nats still seem to be doing no wrong, even though they are, y’know, doing stuff wrong. What’s happening? Why aren’t they catching some cost from the policy damage they’ve done? I’ve seen people blame the media, and I’ve seen people blame a weak political opposition. I blame both.

Goff and the opposition know the game. Politics doesn’t play fair, but it does play by rules. By any measure, the Labour party has failed to play smart or strong. It hasn’t given the media any reason to take them seriously. It hasn’t taken hold of the political narrative. It has shamefully indulged in “me too” politics when making a point of difference made both strategic and moral sense. They have failed. Blame them for Key’s strength.

The media also deserves condemnation, for settling for being exploited functions of the political game rather than pushing towards higher goals. Instead of setting the agenda, the media plays out its allotted role, reporting the latest scandal, forgoing analysis, indulging in personality politics and photo opportunities, letting itself be distracted. The media gives politicized claims a pass without checking the facts and gives voice to an overwhelming majority of rightward-tending opinions. They have also failed. Blame them, too, for Key’s strength.

None of which gets us anywhere. Blame carries some interest, in terms of understanding why things have got to the point they have; but for those who want a fairer society in New Zealand with greater social equality and a proportionate sense of what matters to our future, blame is just a distraction.

Action is needed.

NZ has a democratic system where every single vote counts. But when the country’s heading one way, just casting your vote isn’t enough. If this matters to you – don’t bother worrying about blame for how we got here. Start thinking what else you will do to get us out.

Already Linky

Week gone too quick for blog. Ahhh. Also, not happy that laptop destined to go for repair shop AGAIN. Still under warranty at least!

Interview with international comic-shop guy & friend of this blog, Andrew Salmond, about comics retail and comics community.

Marie sent this aggro pro-literacy fight song:

Photographer asks strangers on the street to get cosy. Results are good photos.

Right-wing nuts guide to Egypt (from Gawker) – just barely still relevant!

Dylan Horrocks blogs about discovering the geek side of the Egypt protests.

Everyone, including me, links to the Malcolm-Gladwell-mockery that has been a welcome side effect of the Egypt protests.

Counter Gladwell’s shallow pseudo-intellectualism with this fantastic, pragmatic analysis: 20 reasons why it’s kicking off everywhere. I’d wager it has been linked more than it has actually been read, because it’s a big block of text, but it really is great.

And you’ve seen this, right? THE MOST ILLEGAL THING in the history of professional wrestling:

From Hannah C, the delightful Compton Cricket Club

In time for Valentine’s Day, the best romances in comics

Ethics and tech: “an ethical iPhone would be too expensive”

And finally… women laughing alone with salad

Looking at her

Trying to capture part of my experience of fatherhood –

– the moment she came into the world? It felt discontinuous, like the world was torn down and then rebuilt containing something new. The arrival of Willa as independent being, breathing and looking – it seemed to break causality. A person, where there had been no person.

The light was shining on her. It actually was, the lamps in the delivery suite were arranged to drop a circle of light around newborn Willa, but I suspect that my brain would have made it seem that way regardless. There was information coming off her in waves, more than I could take in. Like if those lamps had been shining in my eyes – only they weren’t, they were bouncing off my daughter first, then flooding me. I couldn’t see her. There was too much information.

I still can’t, seven weeks on. Other people comment on resemblances but I can’t see them. When I look at her, my brain goes into overdrive. I get more data than I can process. Everything.

I know it won’t last – the chemical rush, the neural repatterning, the imprinting, the magic will all subside. But, I suspect, will never entirely disappear. So call that the first thing I learned as a parent: parenthood is a new way of seeing. Literally.

Tall Baby Linky

Our smiley little Willa is 62cm at 6 1/2 weeks old. This is well above the 99th percentile on the growth charts. Yes I am a tall chap, but this wee girl is way taller than I was at her age. So my question: have I unwittingly sired a dangerous 50-foot woman? At current growth rates she’ll hit 50 feet in about March 2031. Watch out world.

Belgian prank on phone company with frustrating automated answering service (via Sonal I think)

Korean students in English class write their own captions for Kate Beaton comics. Hilarity ensues.

American beliefs about social mobility and social inequality, vs. other countries, as infographics. (via Arama)

Dude cracks the scratchy-ticket lottery cards, decides it’s not worth his while to cash in so goes public instead.

Friend-of-this-blog Damon created a radial clock. Nice.

Gawker pulls together the various US rightie nutjob theories about Egypt.

The Don Martin Dictionary!

Friend-of-a-friend does step-by-step on how to compost effectively, even if you live in a tiny flat with no outside bits. Neato!

Everyone’s raving about Enthiran, and for good reason. This is the craziest robot fightin’ action EVAR. Mind to be blown it will be! (Thanks Mr 2Trees!)

And finally… AXE COP gets a movie! It is perfect at under 2 minutes in length. Remember, Axe Cop was written by a 5-year old boy and it is amazing.

Crime Deterrence

July 2008: sports broadcaster resigns after it emerges he violently and viciously assaulted his then-partner.
April 2009: sports broadcaster pleads guilty to the charge
Jan 2010: sports broadcaster back on the air!
Jan 2011: sports broadcaster begins weekly on-air chats with the Prime Minister.

So there’s the lesson, people. If you are guilty of brutally assaulting a woman, it could be as long as TWENTY MONTHS before the Prime Minister jokingly tells you which celebrities he’d most like to have sex with. CRIME DOESN’T PAY.

ICONS: The Mastermind Affair

Warning: this post is about tabletop roleplaying games. Sorry if it makes no sense to you.

Mastermind Affair cover

Just released: The Mastermind Affair, PDF-format adventure for the ICONS RPG. (Written by me.)

It’s a hefty 45-page adventure suitable for most traditional-type Supers RPG settings – I guess it’s a bit more DC than Marvel in its shadings. It has a whole mess of villains, all with that great Dan Houser art – you can see some of them in the preview pages. It has a descriptive character aspect of which I’m inordinately proud, but I can’t tell anyone what it is because it’s a minor spoiler. It’s a neat adventure and if you like Supers stuff, you’ll get a kick out of this.

Best of all: it is only a buck ninety-nine, American. The publisher, Adamant Entertainment, has adopted an “app-pricing” model where everything costs just under US$2. This means you can get ICONS itself, the amazing full RPG game, for $1.99 as well. (Also my older stuff for the same price.) It’s a fascinating and exciting business move, and I think it’s the way all digital products will inevitably go – music downloads, e-books, online newspaper subscriptions, etc will all be getting massively cheaper as it sinks in that the value proposition is different to that of a physical product.

So, $1.99 for a fun adventure. That’s about $2.60 in NZ pesos. If you are of gaming ilk, do consider it.

(Sadly, although the playtesters are credited, their amazing characters are not included. You’ll need to ask them for descriptions.)

Linky Linky

Okay, so it’s clear this year is going to be a bit demented, yes even more than usual. Bloggery might keep on going. It does keep me sane some weeks. Linky will hopefully keep rolling on too, even though linky without the rest of the blog feels uneven. But, there are interesting things out there, and it’s just gone Friday, so.

Keith Ng explains the anti-wisdom behind the NZ govt announcement to sell state assets.

Alternate universe movie posters. Some of these I’ve seen before, many are new to me. Awesome.

Infographic on whether sequels are better or worse than originals.

Red Letter Media’s glorious analysis of why the Star Wars prequels failed as films has reached Revenge of the Sith. Watch it. It is a long watch, yes, but you can consider it a particularly enjoyable form of penance. (See also this lengthy (written) rebuttal to RLM’s first review – which seems to miss forest for trees, but YMMV)

Aliens invade postcards

The Dim-Post somehow almost makes me want to watch Jersey Shore

Here’s what’s really going on at microlending website Kiva – they reveal stuff worth knowing if you’re into this kind of “CauseWired” (ahem) net-enabled activism.

Batman vs the internet

Lovely appreciation of sci-fi corridors

And finally, aaaah nightmare

World Avoidance

Having a baby in the house is endlessly involving, and it’s a convenient excuse not to think about (and blog about) all the nonsense out there.

Like the NZ government announcing it’s gonna sell off big chunks of state assets that make reliable income for the state, simultaneously throwing away future money for a mere handful now, and pushing national infrastructure towards an unprotected environment.

Like the UK discovering that Clegg’s choice (of the shark’s eyes monster) has proved more destructive to the nation than anyone could have dreamed, as he and the Lib Dems enable an eager dismantling of the public infrastructure.

Like the US descent into broken politics continuing at rapid pace as the response to horrific politically-rationalised violence has been even more incitement to violence by political voices.

Like the fact that increased environmental disruptions are costing the world huge sums, and global warming predicted this and predicts even more to come, but climate change response is off the agenda completely after the embarrassment that was Copenhagen.

So I’m not going to think about any of that stuff. I choose to live in a bubble a little bit longer. I’ll play The Game with myself, and hopefully I won’t lose too often. My tiny little girl giving smiles? That’s all the reality I want to think about right now.