I thought this cartoon was quite amusing.  Done by that rapscallion animator Happy Harry.


This will be my last blog post for a while; I've got to spend time getting ready for Hal-Con.  My next blog post will be (late) Monday, where I'll hopefully a pictures and the like to share.

Legion Election

Apparently it's a bit of a tradition in the Legion of Superheroes to have a fan-vote election for the next leader of everyone's favourite teenagers-in-the-future superteam. Prior to a few days ago, I had no idea this was the case, despite having read the series off-and-on over the years.

You can cast your vote for the candidate of your choice here.

And you should definitely go and vote! Why? Because, as Mightygodking points out, one of the candidates is a forward-thinking, charity-minded, red-blooded socialist! And he's even a half-slug-caterpillar-bird thing from the planet Vyrga. With teleportation powers.

So vote for Gates today!

100 Posts!

This is the hundredth post I've made on my blog.

Um... Yay, me?

Sadly, I still don't have any completed arts... But I can show off the stages I've gone through with my current art project, trying to design a neighbourhood I call Ghost Town:

Here's the initial sketch.

After that, I decide on my palette and get all my flat colours set down.  (This one I've shown before...)

Next, I start adding the big details.  (You may notice I've changed the dimensions of the barber shop and lamp post on the left side of the painting.)

And then I start zooming in on the little details (at this point, mostly the brick-work in the buildings.)

And that's where I am now.  I've still got a long way to go before it's done, though.

* * * *

And in other news, the premier is already starting to talk about school-related cutbacks - and has already frozen the Early Adopter School Initiative.  That's the program for getting laptops into classrooms throughout the province.  Ain't that just swell?

Finger-Licking Ugh

This is mechanically separated chicken.

 

If you've ever eaten a Chicken McNugget, or bought pre-fab chicken nuggets from the grocery store, then you've had some of this before.

It contains:

-All sorts of parts of the chicken people don't normally eat.

-Ammonia (to kill the massive amounts of bacteria).

-Artificial flavouring (hence the pink colour).

Next they'll add food colouring so it doesn't look pink anymore.

For the record, this is also available in beef, turkey, and pork versions.  Pre-fab burgers anyone?

Guys?  Meat shouldn't look like ice cream, guys. 

UPDATE:

Found this video on the topic:

Also this one, which is less catchy but has better visuals:

Omar Khadr set to Plead

Omar Khadr, a young man who was taken prisoner in Afghanistan while fighting NATO forces alongside the Taliban in 2002. He was 15 at the time; he captured while wounded, probably tortured, interrogated at length, intimidated and threatened with many things including rape and murder, and held for years without access to a lawyer. He was eventually given not a trial, but a tribunal, and is currently in the midst of his second military tribunal to determine his guilt or innocence.

He's also a Canadian citizen, albeit one whose plight has been largely ignored by Canada's reigning governments.

Indeed, successive Canadian governments have refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the fact that groups like Amnesty International urged doing so. In fact, not only did Canada fail him - as established by the Canadian Cabinet, the Federal Court of Canada, and then the Supreme Court of Canada, resptively - we've spent $1.3 million making sure that he stays in Guantanamo... Rather than fighting for his Charter Rights.

According to the buzz in the media, he's about to plead to a lesser charge. As a result, he'll serve eight years, and will likely be made to withhold any formal accusations of torture - much like what happened with John Walker Lindh's own plea bargain.

I'm not going to talk about this, though, because I'm sure there are plenty of news sites, and plenty of other blogs, where you can hear all about this stuff. Instead, I'm going to focus on a narrative I fear is about to grow through certain media sources - one which I find incredibly ugly, particularly given everything this young man has already been forced to endure.

There are certain groups who are doing their level best to make sure Khadr's repatriation won't happen. This includes one purported "expert on evil" by the name of Dr. Michael Welner:

In an exclusive interview, Dr. Michael Welner says Khadr is known to have expressed peace-loving intentions only to "those advancing his public image" from behind the razor wire at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Welner also discounts much-cited comments by some U.S. guards at Guantanamo that the Toronto native is a "good kid" and "salvageable" - calling them "shallow in their prognostic significance."

"When one leaps to the conclusion about Omar Khadr's future because he is friendly, one might recall that Osama bin Laden has always been described as gentle, likable and charming," New York-based Welner told Postmedia News.

"There is no record of (Khadr's) publicly repudiating al-Qaida, as civilized Muslims should, not even a letter composed for him by Dennis Edney," he added in a reference to one of Khadr's two Canadian lawyers. There is "no call . . . to radical Islamists to mature beyond their elemental intolerance."

Welner, 46, spoke as the Canadian government faces the prospect of soon receiving a call for Khadr to be transferred to a Canadian jail in the event he is convicted of war crimes charges he faces in a Guantanamo military commission.

This Doctor, and I use the term loosely, has created what he calls "the Depravity Scale," purportedly a "achieve a scientific-legal standardization of evil." I expect this Doctor, again a term I'm using loosely, will get a lot of face-time from certain news sources.

Let's be clear, though: The man's a quack. There's no such thing as a scientific measure of evil. The whole idea doesn't even make any sense.

Looking through the sources Welner used to build his scale reveals all of a single reference to an actual, academic journal (Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law). His scale never went through any sort of peer-review process, either - it was an editorial. This is exactly as scientific as measuring someone's skull to determine whether they're likely to commit murder. Or, to use a more modern example, diluting medicine to make it more effective.

And yet Dr. Welner is trying to use this system he invented whole-cloth from his imagination to make Khadr's situation even more miserable.

This poor man has spent a third of his life in prison, terribly mistreated, denied a fair and open trial, and now is likely to spend yet another eight years behind bars. But this still isn't enough Dr. Welner.

For shame, Dr. Welner. For shame.

This is the Best Campaign Attack Ad

Well, it is.

Is Your Kung-Fu Strong Enough?

A pair of martial artist sisters in China have been having trouble finding a suitor whose kung-fu is strong enough to be worthy of them, it seems, so they've arranged a tournament for would-be suitors.  Only those strong enough to make it through the tourney, and then best them in one-on-one combat, win their masks...  And their hands in marriage.

Avoid, rather than hug.  Hug, rather than kiss.  Kiss, rather than fondle.  Fondle, rather than...  well, you get where I'm going with this, oui?

As unbelievably awesome as this sounds, I'm not making any of this up.


And what might be the best typo of all time:

Marital arts experts Xiao Lin, 22, and little sister Yin, 21

Then again, maybe it wasn't a typo?

BONUS POST! That Sure Didn't Take Long...

Argh!  I just couldn't wait until Wednesday to blog about this one...

The PCs have barely gotten into power, and they're already talking about selling off Crown property.  Y'know, like how the Libs tried to sell off NB Power, and it got everyone all pissed off about it?  And then of course the Tories utilized that anger in their campaign...

It's not NB Power this time, though.  No, it's NB Liquor that they're talking about selling off.

Allain said the corporation is well run and profitable and that employees do a good job. But given New Brunswick's $749-million deficit, he'll look at whether privatizing it makes sense.

I can save you some time there, Allain. It doesn't.

This makes even less sense than the sale of NB Power, since NB Liquor is, by their own admission, an even better-run company.  And unlike NB Power, there's little to no chance of NB Liquor ever running in the red anytime soon.  It is, and shall remain, a viable source of income for funding government works and paying down the deficit for decades to come...  AS LONG AS YOU BASTARDS DON'T SELL IT.

The fact that this is even under discussion, particularly after the last NB Election, should scare New Brunswickers.

It's just so maddeningly stupid, and so very much against the tone of their campaign ("Don't vote Liberal, they tried to sell off Crown property!  Crown property that belongs to all of you!") that I cannot help but feel lied to.  Of course, they didn't campaign specifically on the promise of not selling off NB Liquor, so I guess that will give die-hard Tory voters a talking point to fall back on should they ever be called on putting these jerks in power.  Allain doesn't even officially start the job until Monday and he's already pissing me off!

Oh, and get this:

Earlier this month, the Crown corporation refused to release the internal report on NB Liquor's compensation packages for executives.

Allain said he doesn't approve of witholding information.

"New Brunswickers own NB Liquor right now, so the owners should have access to transparency. That's one of the fundamental beliefs that this government has and we're certainly going to be doing that."

However, Allain would not commit to releasing the report.

Emphasis mine.  It's like they're not even trying! It just makes me want to... want to...

GRRR!  ANGRY!

Project Rooftop

Project Rooftop is a really fun site frequented by an assortment of artists (professional and amateur) who are all head-and-shoulders better at the craft than I am.  The site is dedicated to remixing/redesigning classic superhero costumes - trying to get something new and fun for an established hero or villain without losing the essential qualities that made the character's original costume unique and recognizable.

Each entry is judged by the site's panel of judges, who discuss their own particular philosophies about what makes a good costume in doing so.  I don't always agree, but it's usually very insightful.

All in all, it's a site I keep going back to in order to, both for learning and inspiration.

That's a redesign of Luke Cage by Ray-Anthony Height.  Luke Cage hasn't really had an actual costume since the eighties (which was this).  Check out the PR page itself for many, many more.

How To Decipher a CPC Press Release

From here.

On Tuesday, Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, and Christian Paradis, Minister of Natural Resources, released an update on our Government’s economic and fiscal projections – for the first time showing a return to a balanced budget.

...by "balanced budget" they mean "largest deficit in history."

(In the interest of fairness, and to make sure I'm not misleading my readers, this is true in terms of raw numbers. As a percentage of the GDP, though, Mulroney's deficit was larger. So depending on how you look at it, this might only be the second-largest deficit in Canadian history. NOICE!)

With help from Canada’s Economic Action Plan, Canadians are recovering from the economic recession, and getting back on their feet. In fact, since July 2009, our Conservative Government has helped create over 400,000 new jobs across the country.

Notice they don't mention anything about all the jobs that Canada's been bleeding out lately. Nor does it point out how many of those 400,000 jobs are full-time, how many are part-time, and how many are seasonal. I won't go into any spoilers here, but here's a hint: Knowing these things makes that 400,000 figure a lot less impressive.

And while we continue to help Canadians make ends meet, our Government is looking ahead to balanced budgets, and building a strong foundation for future economic growth.

Help Canadians make ends meet... Except for all those Canadians who are unemployed. Or underemployed. Or having trouble with the rising costs of food or education or whatever. But it's not like they count.

Today’s update shows that our Government’s plan is on track. The federal deficit will be lower this year than previously forecasted.

This is really easy to do. I can do it myself, in fact. Watch.

Me: "I predict that I will lose $200 at this casino."

*enters casino, bets $150 at the craps table, loses it all*

Me: "My losses are much less than was previously predicted. Yay me!"

And for the first time since the global recession, we are forecasting a balanced budget.

"Forecasted." This means that they're really, really hoping the economy will grow enough that they can keep doing what they're doing and then, maybe, by 2015, everything will just magically fall into place.

I'm not kidding. 2015 is the year that they're talking about when they say

While Canada is on the right track, our recovery remains fragile. That’s why our primary focus must remain jobs and growth.

*cough* seasonal, part-time jobs... *cough*

Clearly, the Harper Government is helping solidify Canada’s recovery. By contrast, the Ignatieff/ NDP/Bloc-Québécois Coalition plans to raise job-killing taxes such as payroll taxes, by bringing in a 45-day work year. This would halt our recovery in its tracks and, according to experts, kill almost 400,000 jobs.

Ah, yes, the coalition boogeyman.

"Beware the Coalition!  It comes to devour your child-folk!  Ooga-booga!"

 Our Conservative Government will not put the economic recovery in jeopardy.  We will continue to prioritize the economy and the implementation of Canada’s Economic Action Plan.

This is the same Action Plan that I've previously made fun of. Well, aspects of it at least. To be fair, there are significant parts of the CEAP of which I'm in favour, even if I suspect it's not really being implemented in the best way.

* * * * *

By the by, if you're wondering what the 45-day work year this press release was talking about, it's a reference to Bill C-308. This was a Bloc bill that reduced the number of days required to qualify for EI benefits to 45. There's a bit about it here.

That evil coalition obviously doesn't have much of a united front, since Ignatief's Libs killed it.

Said Ignatief:

Ignatieff said upgrades of the EI benefits, an idea he once supported and an issue over which he threatened a year ago to force an election, are too expensive and no longer needed.

Just so's you know how big a shitheel Ignatieff is, when he supported the bill unemployment was at 8.3%. It's currently at 8.1%. WHY YES IGGY THAT IS ONE HUGE POLICY-CHANGING DIFFERENCE THERE.

To this unexpected change of vote, Layton rejoined:

"I guess there's not much room for the unemployed in the big red tent."

Oh, snap!

Alward and Voting Reform

Yesterday, our new Premier David Alward unveiled his cabinet accompanied by some very strong words on the New Brunswick economy. Or perhaps they just seemed strong to me; it's pretty standard for a new government to remark in a slightly-optimistic way on the great challenges that lay ahead and how it will require solidarity with the voting public to meet them and blah blah blah. Still, when you use the word "despair" in your speech? I dunno, that doesn't strike me as a terribly good sign, even if it's as part of a sentence not asking people to fall into it.

Still, reading about his cabinet team and the overwhelming majority government they'll be heading up brings to mind the sad state of affairs found with our electoral process, which has been getting a lot of attention in the press lately.

In 2006, Bernard Lord claimed he was going to initiate a referendum on voter reform as a result of the 2005 report by the Commission on Legislative Democracy. He promised to do this once he was elected, Scout's honour. I have my doubts as to whether he would have gone through with it or if it would have become part of the PC government's traditionally high number of broken promises,* but it's all academic because the fact remains he wasn't elected. Instead, we received a Liberal majority with a minority of votes.

This last election was even worse, with 76% of the seats going to the PC party, while only receiving 49% of the votes. Of course, nothing will ever quite match the hilarity of 1987's election, where the Liberals managed to turn 60% of the popular vote into 100% of the seats in the Legislature. That was really something.

And yet, it still wasn't enough to get New Brunswickers to agitate for a change to the system.

Credit where it's due - I had no idea that Lord had promised any such referendum until it was pointed out to me recently. It still surprises me... And even if it was an empty promise, that's more than I would have expected from either of our big two.

I wish that Alward would follow in Lord's footsteps and call for a Referendum on the Commission's recommendations.** I'm not going to be holding my breath, though. While the system as it stands is pretty fundamentally broken, it's broken in a way that works for both the Grits and the Tories. They've both been bitten by the system, but it's also benefited them greatly in turn. Fundamentally, neither party likes having to compromise - governing from common ground, making deals with other parties to form and enact legislation, these things are much harder than just holding out until you get the majority (which you'll do eventually, you just have to be patient). Then you can get all the stuff you want pushed through without much problem.

What's the answer? Well, amazingly, the papers I've been seeing lately have been helping - a number of editorials have been calling for Proportional Representation. But that's not enough. I tend to think that, absent a sudden NDP/Green welling of support in New Brunswick (two parties that support PR and the Commission's recommendations), Elsie Hambrook is correct in that it really needs a champion.

I'd be ecstatic if it turned out to be the current Tory government, or even elements within it, that became that champion. It would prove most of my thoughts about them wrong. Like I said, though... I'm not holding my breath.

If you feel like I do, you might want to consider joining the Facebook group New Brunswickers for Proportional Representation.  Not that Facebook groups count for much, but at least it's somewhere to start.

* = Not that the Liberals are much better. About the only major party in New Brunswick that's never broken its promises is the NDP, by virtue of never having won more than a single seat at a time. Ugh.


** = For those interested, Elsie Hambrook wrote what those recommendations were:

In the mixed-member proportional representation that was recommended for New Brunswick by the Commission on Legislative Democracy in 2005, about 35 MLAs would be elected as per usual, from ridings, and 20 regional seats would be filled from a list of candidates presented by parties, according to each party's share of the vote. Voters would cast two ballots, to elect a local MLA and to choose a party.

I Guess Sesame Street Isn't Completely Worthless These Days...

At least, I laughed pretty hard at this.



(In case anyone reading this has been living under a rock and has no idea what Grover's doing, look here.)

I've Never Been a Big Avengers Fan...

So I guess I never quite realized just how silly Ant Man's history got over the years.*

That's just the first panel of several.  You can see the rest here.

* Still nothing compared to Hawkman's, but for a completely different meaning of the word "silly."

Space Cadet

I don't have anything to show of my own, so here's a couple of videos I find pretty inspirational.  They're by Joshua Middleton, who's one of the best cover artists in the comic business.  He's pretty much a master of the craft.  Part 1 is here:


And part 2 is here:



Pretty cool music, too.

Another Nation May Back Out of the ACTA

This time it's Mexico.

The ACTA stands for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, basically a bunch of international standards on intellectual property and copyright that's being hammered out by a bunch of different countries - including Canada.  (This is why the Tories want to pass bill C-32, to get us up to snuff with the ACTA should it pass.  This is a topic on which blogger Michael Geist has written at length, and he's far more informed and up-to-date on this issue than I am.  Head over to his blog if you want to educate yourself.)

Thing is, a lot of the nations involved in the negotiations have become less and less keen as time has gone on.  The EU parliament, for example, is making noises that they may ultimately reject the agreement due to a lack of transparency throughout the process, combined with worry about "giving governments a blank cheque to write draconian anti-counterfeiting laws that endanger citizens' fundamental freedoms."  Many have also suggested that some parts of the ACTA have proven to be overly preferential to corporate interests.

And Mexico's now unofficially rejected the ACTA in a non-binding agreement.  Which may amount to nothing, but is more likely an indicator that Mexico's going to make its withdrawal official pretty soon.

Canada's still all up ons, though.  So, congratulations, Canadians!  Our government is now officially more secretive and beholden to corporate interests than Mexico's government.

Tea Party rumblings in Canada

According to a recent poll, Canada may be seeing the first glimpse of a home-grown tea party.  Nothing official, of course, but the sentiment is there.  (Perhaps we'd call it the Red Rose Tea Party?  Pity.)

Of course, the above article is flawed in that it just lumps up distaste with government on all sides of the political divide and calls it "Tea Party-like," which is a poor descriptor.  The Tea Party in the United States is about a particular kind of distaste with government.  It's the sort of distaste that advocates for government getting out of health care (except for Medicare, of course, because that doesn't count for some reason.)  They're the sort of people whose distaste in government leads them to call for ever-lower taxes, and the dismantling of public transportation programs paid in part by tax dollars, but then yell, whine, and kvetch when there aren't enough buses to get them all to one of their rallies.  The sort that wants to privatize everything because government can't do anything right, except maybe kill brown-skinned people overseas and keep those gays from getting married.

However, by the data presented in the article, a significant portion of those in Canada fed up with "government and elites" are of the conservative bent, which suggests that crazy ol' Stevie isn't crazy or reactionary enough for them.  I do not consider this a good thing for reasons that should be obvious.

Just in case it isn't, though, let me present a case study of the sort of mentality the typical Tea Partier has.

Here's an example where an essential service is neglected out of greed.  Really, it's hard to get more essential than firefighting, but the people in Obion County didn't feel like setting something up for themselves - likely because of the costs involved in doing so.  The nearby city of South Fulton, in what I can only imagine was a fit of charity, offered to provide fire department coverage for Obion County.  As this was out of city limits, this was not something they could force on them; furthermore, it was not something they could simply do for free, because this sort of thing costs money.

The simplest solution is the socialized one - roll the fee into property taxes and ensure everyone's taken care of.  Obion County decided to make it an opt-in system - if a homeowner wanted the Fire Department to service his or her property, then that homeowner would pay the nominal fee of $75 a year.

You may have heard of this story already, as it's made a lot of distance over the blogging parts of the internet.  Anyway, the end result is that a guy named Cranick decided not to pay, his house caught fire, and when he called the Fire Department to come save it, they refused.  They eventually did come out, but only to save his neighbour's house when the fire spread.  Even when they were there, though, they still didn't help the guy out because he hadn't paid and by the time they got there it was too late for him to change his mind.

It's easy, for someone like me who lives in a country with universal access to health care, to get all morally indignant at the firefighters.  The U.S. doesn't have our health care system, though (because SOCIALISM!), and firefighters' work insurance coverage south of the border tends to be laser-precise.  There's a good chance that if they'd tried to help the guy, and one of them got injured, they'd be footing the bill themselves because their insurance simply doesn't cover them fighting fires outside of their jurisdiction.  That's outside of potentially losing there jobs due to disobeying orders from their superiors who are worried about the free rider problem inherent in the situation.

And it's not like Cranick couldn't have paid.  This wasn't some poor subsistence farmer scraping to get buy.  The home that burnt down is a 34-acre farm with three houses on it.  It's a beef cattle farm, and he likely still owns a second farm in Kentucky.  If he'd just applied a third of his USDA subsidy from last year to pay for this service fee, he'd still have his house.

He didn't, because

[quote]"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.[/quote]

The guy tried to game the system (a system he probably had a hand in setting up, by voting not to have a county fire department) and he lost.  And that's the Tea Party mentality for you, in a nutshell.

A mentality that's simply unsustainable for a culture such as ours - one that decries the taxes needed to ensure the health of our most cherished institutions, yet refuses to give up those institutions.  One that looks for loopholes that benefits oneself at the expense of one's neighbours, all the while bragging about bootstraps and free markets, and screaming about vague, barely-concealed racist fears of "the other."

A mentality that, sadly, we may be seeing the first glimpses of in our own Great White North. 

The irony here is that, despite the contempt in which I hold the Tea Party and likeminded individuals...  I still think they should be able to get make their voice heard democratically through proportionate representation.  I'll just do my best to shame them at every opportunity if a Canadian Tea Party ever does form.

Sintel short film

Sintel is a really very impressive undertaking, and you should really watch it right now.

It's a 14-minute film made by independent artists using free 3D rendering software, and released under the Creative Commons 3.0 license (meaning it's free to download, copy, distribute, remix, learn from, etc.)  While it's not quite Hollywood quality (the animation gets a bit choppy during some bits of action, such as during the first fight scene), it's very, very close.  And it was done by an international team of artists working collaboratively with donations from folks on the interwebs.

It's also the second animated film of this ambition that I know of which was released under a creative commons license (the other being Sita Sings the Blues which is also awesome and highly recommended.)

It will be interesting to learn how the DVDs do commercially - Sita Sings the Blues, last I checked, was doing quite well despite the setback of being boondoggled to the tune of $50K over songs that were meant to be in the public domain in the first place.

The comments here will be spoilers, so read them only after you've watched the film.

The Top Ten Retro Gaming Secrets

I found this article both interesting and sufficiently nerdy to qualify for a monday post.  Goes to show that for all the hype and bluster about innovations in gaming, really the industry's mostly just refining processes that have been in use for almost as long as there's been a video game industry.

Ghost Town WIP

(WIP = Work in Progress)

I don't have anything finished to show off for this Friday, so I'll show off what I've been working on lately.  Now that almost all of the character designs are finished, I've moved on to doing building and location designs for important areas in the webcomic.

The first I'm doing is Ghost Town, which is a no-man's-land in New Avalon.  It's the site of a supervillain-caused disaster that's nobody lives in anymore - people who go in tend not to leave.

Still got a lot of work to do on this one, not the least of which is because I'm doing it differently than I've ever done these sorts of illustrations (meaning, I'm not going to be using any hard black lines, and I'm using a limited palette.)

  

Got a lot of work left to do, obviously.