Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Also... you know you've had a hell of a weekend when your entire Headfriend Council restructures itself during the course of a single shower. Details of the Goddamn Furriness later, maybe.

That was bloody fascinating. Had lunch with a couple of Peg's friends from the animation industry. They were both Spumco veterans and had some... fascinating stories. Super-nice folks, and it was gloriously weird listening to them talking about taking meetings with $INCREDIBLY_PROMINENT_HOLLYWOOD_PERSON. Neat cap to the weekend, kinda reminded me of the dragoness's powers, and... yeah. We're both pretty exhausted and pretty excited right now. At Burbank Airport, about to head home.

So after that quote about grief from Nick Cave, BoingBoing listed a bunch of other related articles, presumably based on the first articles "death" tag: a website for finding out who's died in your house, a recipe for sugar-skull pastries, cremain-scattering at Disney parks...

...and then "master Python with this complete training package!" I presume this is because (a) pythons eat people or (b) learning to code is like letting a little bit of your soul die. O:)

(of course, the above quote doesn't really offer much guidance in the event that the people you're grieving for are still, in some form or another, quite alive... but luckily i've always been good at improvisation 😔​ )

It's 2018. Reality has gone Full Philip K Dick. The answer to any question of "Is X Valid?" "Is it OK if I just go ahead and believe Y?" or "Does A count as B?" is YES. The people in charge of any kind of social or political consensus about anything have completely lost their fucking minds, and we can't even guarantee Consensus Reality will allow basic daily survival anymore.

If. It. Harms. No. One. Do. And. Think. What. Ever. The. Fuck. You. Want. (And fast!)

"It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable." -- Nick Cave

(source: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/05/if-we-love-we-grieve-nic.html )

(n.b.: While Peg sat on Santa Monica Beach and did nothing, I started reading Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, which is about a billionaire asshole who suffers large during a city-wide traffic jam. I'm enjoying it so much, and thinking fondly of @acetone_kitten every time this rich financier prick is unhappy. <3 )

#AmericaHasNeverNotBeenAnAmoralShithole

I mean, FFS, I could probably find an instance of Theresa May using "42" in a speech. Does that mean she's a closet Hitchhiker's fan? 🙄​

I just saw someone try to argue that a passing Trump reference to "88" of something in a speech was _surely_ a reference to "88" as a white nationalist shorthand for "Heil Hitler."

Dammit people. We have hundreds upon hundreds of solid, legitimate, sane things to accuse Trump of that don't boil down to webkook apophenia. Do we HAVE to dabble in numerology? Does it SOUND like Trump to couch his racism in codes and riddles and not just blurt it out?

We've gotta be better than this.😾​

"If you're not good, I'm going to log into every one of your social media accounts overnight and change your name to Lucille Ballsac."

Well, that was an emotional roller coaster. Skimmed an article about the World Wildlife Fund's most recent call to action. Read a Reddit post full of DOOOOOOOOMFUL comments. Reread the actual article in detail and realized most of the DOOOOOOOOOOM didn't even reflect what the article said, and was roughly 1500% more hysterical and panicky. And thus kinda promptly went back to cheering for humans to perish and everything else to survive, because we're JUST SO DUMB.

I haven't been this physically, mentally, or socially exhausted in a long time and I'm really pretty happy about it. As much as I've griped about the cynical corporate-think of the con panels, the social side of it was pretty great, and we finally ran into a bunch of fellow comics people. I think it was worth it! Even the frustrating stuff got Peg and me brainstorming, and I think we got a lot of useful ideas out of it!

Ever have one of those evenings where everything is technically *fine*, but so many frustrating little *potential* issues crop up at once, you have to take like an hour to patiently go over the warning panel with your inner Chief Of Maintenance and figure out which blinkenlights should still be on and which shouldn't?

I THINK I've resolved everything, from finding out (AFTER I gave the waiter our debit card) I get paid NEXT week, to finding out it's time to renew my insurance...

Never trust a self-styled creative person who uses the word "impactful" without irony.

I keep forgetting to mention this, and something in a random browse reminded me:

BBC Three's Fleabag is really good, as is Phoebe-Bridge's other series, Killing Eve. Both require a pretty high tolerance for social awkwardness comedy (but NOT necessarily cringe comedy), but are actually both pretty sincere and rewarding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_riff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Streets_of_Cairo,_or_the_Poor_Little_Country_Maid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantella_Napoletana

Huh. We chatted with a comics creator who's been mixing graphic art with an occasional song on Youtube to draw people in.

That's way outside our skillset, but... you know, we know some actors and we know some people who can do audio production. And we have a lot of background material and side stories we won't have time to explore in the comics.

I wonder if any of y'all would be interested in listening to -- or helping with -- Parallax audio dramas, maybe w/some basic animatics?

Great job, guys. I feel so confident about you people handling the subtle details of our financial affairs.

Those who can't do, monetize.

(*this is just a Mr. Show reference; there was no actual pepper involved)

(cont'd)

Q: "Hey, I got accidentally tagged as adult, and that took only one day, it took me over a month to get it deal with, and you STILL haven't told me how it happened. You know, it really disrupted my income during a difficult peri..."

A: "Pobody's nerfect!"

Yeah, I'm done with this bullshit expo.