but i am having lot of problems with computers. right at this moment i am dealing with another computer mishap – i came home from vacation a while ago and turned on my desktop, which had been sitting stagnant for two weeks. it booted up normally but then proceeded to show me the dreaded BLUE SCREEN O’ DEATH. for nerds this is like being told that you have a terminal disease. i proceeded to try my cure-all resusication technique (turn the power on and off a bunch of times) and that didn’t work. safe mode didn’t either. so i was cooked. windows was broken into shards of tiny digital glass (clever? nah). so right now i am running “linux” off of a CDR. and i gotta tell you, its pretty sweet. when you close windows they turn into little 3d boxes and then LIGHT ON FIRE. all this time i had been closing windows without them going ablaze. i certainly did not know what i was missing. of course, linux is the pinnacle of nerd engineering – a system built by volunteers released for free. no one BUT nerds have heard of linux. honestly, they could really make a lot of money off this thing – market it, specifically targeting the FLAMING WINDOW FEATURE (FWF). mac and microsoft have a lot of catching up to do at this point.

so i saw transformers 2 last week, and i gotta tell ya — brilliant. a perfect combination of storytelling, action, romance, civil war, diplomacy, parrots, and megan fox. i got misty eyed at the poignant moments of brotherhood and togetherness. i applauded the triumph of the autobots – they are truly a parable of the triumph of the human spirit.

MORE LIKE THE HUMAN PEE-RIT (thats honestly the best i could come up with.)

seriously what a garbage movie. too long. too garbled. “keys” are a terrible plot device. ok so maybe who cares, right? its a movie about robots fighting each other, so the plot is secondary.

wait, that’s true!

i think i changed my mind. it was pretty alright. its a movie about robots after all. its hard to hate that.

my old friend agent simmons made a few appearances in this movie. he’s actually pretty funny in this one. likeable. i had no qualms with him.

BUT HOLY COW IS SHIA LABOUEF’S COLLEGE ROOMMATE ANNOYING AND POINTLESS

(l-r) megan fox (surprisingly un-likeable all movie), agent simmons (i like ‘em!), shia (shia), roommate (I KILL YOU)

he literally whines and complains the whole movie. it is supposed to be funny, but it is not. oh well, in transformers 3 he will be likeable and a new character, probably played by steve allen, will think he is a robot or something after bumping his head. calling it…

here’s a transformers related PIB.

sweet dreams…

jkd

For over a year, we have tossed around the idea of expanding into some longer-form stories on the side, but have found it difficult enough to effectively conceive a regular four-panel comic over the phone twice a week, and are not about to enter in the raw hours of composing a story while speaking into a tinny microphone. Thus began the mystical notion of a “Writer’s Weekend,” where we would meet up and craft stories of extended length.

Friends, this weekend is upon us.

We currently have two stories of exceptional length brewing, but these are far too large to ever feature in this limited space. Consider “Summer Blockbuster” a warm-up for these stories, as we figure out how exactly to tell  a longer stor , before plunging into one of our “epics.”

This current arc is not slated to have any appearance from either Tim or Marlon; they will appear when the story has run its course. We don’t  have much character development (shocking) for Tim or Marlon, but I feel  they have grown considerably from their starting points. The Pillow is interesting, as always, but I have no idea what kind of character he is. I think that I am much more intrigued by Kaiah’s character simply because she is so drastically different from Tim and Marlon, in both age and gender. I still don’t understand her, so hopefully I can get a better grasp of what we have created by the time this summer camp escapade has run its course.

Enough about that character building nonsense, let us discuss events, and possibly happenings.

This is old news now, but Michael Jackson’s death was interesting. I never listened to his music, and my only real experience tied to him was feeling extremely disappointed when he was not found guilty of kiddy diddling. After his death though, I read about what a depressing life he was leading in his final days, how stressed he was about his upcoming tour, and how he couldn’t dance like he used to, and how he repeatedly said he wanted to die rather than perform.

I was strangely empathetic toward this description, and I am not sure why. It was the line, “he didn’t want to disappoint his fans” that really resonated with me. I felt really sorry for him, so naturally, I purchased his “Essential” album on iTunes. It made me think a lot about the book “Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story” by Chuck Klosterman, in which he builds the book around the foundation of whether musicians need to die in order to truly become notable . . . or something like that. I honestly don’t know because the whole book was actually about Klosterman crying over women that he used to date.

So I have not figured out if I like Jackson’s music. I especially have a problem with the sound of children singing, I think because the sound of recorded prepubescent voices brings back traumatizing memories of screeching voices of children on Day of Defeat. I prefer the later Jackson, even though I find it far different from anything I would ever listen to normally.

There was a stirring of controversy over last week’s comic because it included the  word “goddamn.”

I know  it was a stronger word that you are typically used to appearing in the comic, but I would like to explain that you reading our comic is like a relationship. We love having you here, and we are glad that you like our stuff enough to return twice a week to check it out. Our comic has been very honest, and by that I mean that we are doing the jokes that we find funny, and we write how we think it will be funny. While we are flexible, sometimes we just have to go with how it truly resonated with us. I personally felt like having Tim say “goddamn” showed that he was extremely, EXTREMELY passionate about his dryer lint, which is something both Noah and I found funny. I didn’t feel like it would be as strong if it was censored, or a lesser word was replaced so we kept it in the rawest form. Unfortunately, if you do not like the language to the point where it would turn you off of our comic, I apologize for that. If we compromised for a segment of readership (as valued as you are) then we would be doing a great disservice to the rest who want to receive our comic that we want to read.

So if you were offended, I am sorry that you feel that way. I hope you can look past it.

That is all, my friends. See you on Tuesday for Part 2.

-Nathan

Likkle bastuds!

So anywho, clouds are like Vegas. We think of them as soft, warm, and comfortable entity worthy as the home of an angel. In truth they suck: cold, wet and not comfortable at all. So you DON’T want to live in a cloud, but you’re content to admire their elegant structures from the comfort of an airline passenger seat. The idea of living in a cloud is enough. Like Vegas, if you lived there you would either love it (unlikely) or you would get sick of it and want to be anywhere else but there.

This discussion brings a key question to mind. If clouds suck, and Heaven is in the clouds. Does Heaven suck? Let me see. Well probably . . . wait! No! I got it! Heaven is like Las Vegas! Flashy, a great place to party, and in the middle of f*%king nowhere. Think of it like this, if you live in Los Angeles and you win a free house in Vegas, it’s the same as being on earth and dying and going to heaven. You party and have a good time right. At first this is great but over time you will realize that that’s all there is, Just clouds and partying. Not a nice place to raise a family.

I woke up the other day with an extreme discomfort in my bladder, so I grudgingly got out of my warm, cozy bed and stumbled to the bathroom. And as I was standing there relieving myself, I caught sight of something in the corner of my eye. I slowly turned my head, and to my horror the windowsill had a glass of white liquid with a brown chunky substance floating on the top. I quickly dumped it in the toilet, washed my hands thoroughly so that I didn’t catch some exotic disease from a far off land. I then found my brother in the living room watching TV. I knew the glass was his because him and I are the only people who use that bathroom. In response to my question about the identity of the liquid he told me that earlier that day he was eating cookies and milk. I then asked why he was eating cookies and milk in our bathroom, and his reasoning for leaving the glass on the windowsill? He justified his actions by saying “I was going to clean it up?” When? When it goes sour? I don’t think so. I mean what was he doing eating cookies in the bathroom in the first place?

P.S. See Waltz With Bashir, its an amazing movie.

but all good things come to an end. turns out money is like important and stuff. so i have to work. and i annoy those around me to no end by complaining endlessly about it.

so michael jackson eh? dead! sorta sad even though i wasn’t really overly a fan of his music or connected to him in any way. its sad in that theres one less person out there to make fun of. and it was so easy! talk show hosts jobs have become more difficult almost instantaneously. now, when someone tries to break out the “why did michael jackson go to walmart?…. because boys pants were half off” joke, that won’t be funny – it’ll be TOO SOON and TOO CRUEL. shame on you. in serious though no one beat this guy in his prime and im sorta sad to see him go….

its funny to see the facebook statuses after somethin like this happens. it happened with heath ledger too. “OMG” “HEATH” “NOOOO HEATH” “RIP HEATH LEDGER” in rapid sucession. the news broke in rapid style with michael around 3pm yesterday afternoon here. i got a text with the news and then checked facebook to see the dozens of updates of lamentation. i betcha very few people didn’t hear about this within four or five hours considering how connected the world is.

but what if some people still didn’t know?

some ticket company had to refund everyone’s money for the planned michael jackson world tour that was planned for this summer. so i posed as a huge michael jackson fan who hadn’t heard the news and forced some poor ticketmaster employee to break the news to me. i employed any acting talent i had in my bones and tried to take the news like a death of a family member. i woulda gone farther with it…. but i sorta actually felt bad! weird!

i also recorded the call for you. oooh. technology!

due to years of modern media desensitization, i am surprised to find out i almost feel bad for this. almost. not at all though.

poop in bed this week is down THERE.

jkd

So Joel’s finally aquired a job, and I guess he was tired? Really, I don’t read his emails, I just skim them for excuses. He’ll have a post up for you sometime 5-6pm evening-ish. That’s what he tells me, anyways.

-Nathan

So anyway, rats are cool, but I must raise the question. Does Fiji bottled water really come from Fiji? I mean how much fresh water can a Pacific atoll produce? What makes Fiji water so special in the first place? All very important questions. I mean if I’m going to invest in a bottle of water, what guarantee do I have that I’m not buying purified sewage water from Fiji? Or if it’s even from Fiji in the first place? The proof is in the fine print “Natural Artesian water”. A-ha! It’s from a well in Fiji. Okay: now I know that when I buy this brand, I’m buying well water from Fiji, how comforting.

I should start my own bottled water brand! It would be great! I’d call it “Bikini Water: Fresh from the irradiated atoll.” For those of you out there who have no idea what I’m talking about, Bikini Atoll is a island in the North Pacific that we (the United states) blew up during Operation Crossroads when we were testing the effectiveness of nuclear weapons. So now the island is so radioactive that it is uninhabitable by human beings. Truthfully, it is a terrible place to get water so my idea wouldn’t work. You know what? I’m going to stop talking about this because I’m even starting to bore myself.

On a more interesting note, I witnessed somthing very odd the other day when I entered a movie theater with the intention of seeing “The Taking of Pelham 123.” There was a line set up at the entrence with about 7 people sitting waiting for somthing. I asked the second group of people in line out of curiosity what they were waiting to see. The three girls in their early twenties looked up from their cell phones and said “Transformers! We’ve been here since 7 this morning!” Mind you it was 8:30 in the evening. So those people had been sitting there all day waiting for the latest Michel Bay film, and the really sad thing about this was they wern’t even the first people in line. If that’s what they want to do, more power to them, but man thats a loooong time to wait for a movie. I wonder if it was worth it?