Content He Didn't Come Up With - #2

Content He Didn't Come Up With

Part 2

Warning: Some of these may be offensive.

Thanks to Cassy for this: Science Fair Gone Wrong

More at http://www.somethingawful.com

Content He Didn't Come Up With - #1

Tonight we have a new special:

Content He Didn't Come Up With

Part 1

In an effort to put up content without doing any actual work, I present offering #1 of my new segment: Content He Didn't Come Up With:

No, I don't hate you...

This is just a short note to everyone out there who contacts me, asking me to join yet another social networking site:

Don't ask. It's not that I don't like you, it's that I don't care for the majority of those social networking sites that are out there. Frankly, you can find me on only two of them at this point:

• MySpace - Which has turned into SpamFest in my opinion. I would drop this one, but I do have a number of very nice friends and such on there, so I won't do it... but I don't tend to spend a hell of a lot of time on there.


• FaceBook - Which I prefer because it's generally been spam free so far.

So if you want to have me on your social networking, you'll need to be on one of those two. And bear in mind, I don't just add everyone to my list of friends. I either need to know you fairly well, or you have to give me a really good reason to add you. And please, don't be asking me to be part of your network if you're just looking for feedback on your band. I'll give it a listen, and if I like what you have to offer, I might add you, but don't expect it.

And to all you God-awful spammers: please find some new pictures to use of hot naked chicks before you mass-invite people to be your friends. I'm tired of seeing 12 different invites from people who all apparently look the same... I realize that Britnism seems to be going around a lot in recent years, but you don't all wear EXACTLY the same clothes (or have the exact same lake thereof) and you don't all have chests that extend 30 inches out... get some new photos so at least there's something different for me to see before I hit the SPAM button.

Thanks.

Quality control missed a few... million...

Far be it from me to lambaste a movie before it's out... normally... but I have to. I don't really see a choice here. Frankly, I'd like to know what the major studios are smoking these days, to be letting crap like this out of the room with the screaming monkeys at typewriters. Let's look at a few of the summer line-up movies:

Step Brothers
Staring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly
Premise: Two step-brothers who don't get along, who are supposed to be adults, trying to deal with having to live together, share a room, and act like normal people who are more than 5 years old... amazingly, I've seen more intelligence from 5 year olds.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Staring Brendan Frasier
Premise: same shit as the last two movies. It was good the first time around. It sort of made sense the second time around. Now they're not in Egypt, and while I realize that other cultures have used mummification, this movie is more about keeping Brendan Frasier from making too many shitty movies at one time. Problem is, it failed, because also coming out is...

Journey to the Center of the Earth
Staring Brendan Frasier
Premise: Hollywood takes a great idea which has been made into a movie, and decides to entirely re-invent the thing so that Jules Verne is probably turning in his grave. Of course, this is probably a fluke, because God knows that Hollywood rarely puts out a movie that's meant to keep an actor busy, or capitalize off of a great concept by producing at least 2 really shitty sequels that just degrade the original concept...

Oh wait.... what the hell am I saying...

The Love Guru
Staring Mike Myers
Premise: Mike Myers has entirely played out Shrek and Austin Powers movies, so it's time to find something else he can take and make into a boring, waste of $10.00 per ticket, plus the gas to drive there, and FORGET about popcorn or soft drinks. You only have two kidneys and if you ever intend to put kids through college, you can't afford to get snacks. This movie looks pretty pointless, not to mention stupid. I even have attached part of the official movie poster for your benefit (if you want to call it that).



Ok... this would be the official poster if I worked at those print shops. But I think you get the gist of this. And look, I'm not doing this to say ALL movies that are coming out are bad. There look to be a few good ones, too. We've had a couple of good super-hero films for release this year (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, even Hancock doesn't seem bad). We have the Sex and the City movie if you're into the semi-chick-flick / romantic-comedy thing (I'm willing to give it a bit of credit cause they're sticking to the original concept). We have slap-stick in the form of Harold and Kumar. We have some interesting Indy films, like War, Inc. We have a couple decent looking animated flicks (I think Pixar's film looks great, and usually it is)... but some of these? Why are we still letting these actors get paid for this crap, and why aren't we demanding that they get jobs that are more appropriate to their skill level? I think there's a shortage of speed bumps at McDonald's restaurants, though obviously they'd need to get their own health insurance.

God help the entertainment industry. It's like a factory producing cars; they've had some bad units lately. Quality control missed a few... million.

It takes courage and a willingess to reach out...

No laughter on this. No humor in it... it's not a funny subject. Ironically, it's about a comic, and I have to say, it took courage. So before I get into the meat of this post, I have to say this clearly and up front:

Tim Buckley. You write a great comic. The humor you've put into your comics on a regular basis is terrific. I'm not a gamer, compared to many people, yet I can appreciate nearly all of the work you have in your comic. I can't always relate to some of the jokes, but I don't say that has anything to do with you - some jokes you can't get without experiencing what other people have. Regardless, your comic remains among one of my most favorite places to visit on the internet. And after today's comic, I will absolutely continue reading your work. You've moved beyond them realm of comics that have to always be silly, and into the realm of comics that stop and make you think. I see you placed, now, on the level of comics like "For Better or For Worse" and "Crankshaft" and "Funky Winkerbean". I'm not sure if that'll mean anything to you, but what it means, coming from me, is that you have proven that you know the difference between writing a good comic, and writing a phenomenal story.

Now for a longer explanation for everyone else: Tim Buckley writes a fairly well known web comic called "Ctrl + Alt + Del". The name is, I believe, a reference to the characters you used to press on a computer to restart the system (or to escape the hideous blue screen of death). Perhaps Tim meant it for something else, though I can't imagine what it would be, and I don't recall ever seeing any other explanation on his site.

Tim has been writing this comic for quite some time. The first one on-line is from November of 2002. I'm not sure exactly of all the details of how he got started on it, though I know he explains some of it on his site (the URL is at the end of this post). It is something of a comic geared towards the gaming community (take that however you wish) although as Tim stated in one of his posts, he doesn't want to confine himself so uniformly to one genre. For a cartoonist with an established audience, that takes some serious guts. It's easy to see yourself alienating yourself from your audience when you go someplace new with a storyline. If you don't believe me, ask Lynn Johnston, the author or "For Better or For Worse". She's definitely been criticized for storylines involving one of the character's friends being gay, the passing of a family pet (actually two, now that I think of it) and the likely death sometime in the future of a grandparent.

Tim decided recently to take a storyline involving pregnancy of one of the main characters, who is engaged to another main character... and involve the concept of a miscarriage. Before you start writing about how horrible that is, I think it's important to remember a few very important facts here.

1. A comic doesn't necessarily need to be funny. Many are, but many comics are also full of sad, dark, or otherwise unhappy topics. Don't believe it? Take a look at Marvel Comics. How many of their comics are happy all the time? Good luck finding many (any) out of their superhero lineups.


2. Many films that are comedies also will have drama in them. Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Independence Day, Men in Black, Mrs. Doubtfire... comedy? Yes... drama? Also yes.


3. Nobody said that having to involve a difficult subject means you're being tasteless. And it takes a very mature person to handle a conversation about a topic like this. More importantly, it takes an incredibly skilled person to be able to write about it, and know how to treat the material. Tim didn't make the comedy about the miscarriage. He makes the comedy about the characters, and reaches out to us to think about how people can learn to work through and overcome something trying.

I could go on. But I won't because I've said what I need to, and frankly, I can't do justice to this topic the way Tim's own post about the decision did. But I'm going to post a couple links here for you all.

The strip that introduced the pregnancy
The strip that starts the miscarriage storyline
Tim's own post about his decision on the storyline

That is all.

Gregory T. Awarski
Loyal fan of Ctrl + Alt + Del
Certainly before this strip... and most certainly, and respectfully after.