10/12/2000

Greetings again, Earth people!

    I come to you today a bitter, hollow shell of the man I formerly was. I also come to you with a new perspective on time. A typical class period at school is 50 minutes, no problem. I can sleep it, I can nod and make eye contact while thinking of which girl in the class is cutest, I can do pretty much anything to occupy myself for 50 minutes without much trouble. Just now however, I invested a simple 63 minutes of my life into something, and lost it. I want those 63 minutes back, despite the fact that I would, without a doubt, use them to do the same thing over and over again until it worked or time stopped giving me the 63 minutes back...in which case I'd probably still do it once more for kicks. The other night I decided my desktop lacked a certain....I don't know what. To fill this void I created a wallpaper of Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion. The plan went well and I was pleased with the result (besides the upper right, where I should've made it less obvious it was a square shot). Tonight, I decided, that I would take full advantage of my serial experiments: lain DVD and visual experiments lain (the lain bible) and make a lain wallpaper. One that I felt was worthy of following the one of Asuka-sama. Well you can probably tell from the opening which program decided to crash after an hour and three minutes of scanning, screen capping, and editing as I chose the "Save as..." option. Tomorrow, its grandparents die.
    I don't know how many of you are aware of the current situation with Israel and Palestine, but I'm sure those of you who do are as worried as I. Economic crisis? We can recover. Diplomacy shot to nothing? We can recover. But the fact of the matter is, if this irritates either side or a neighboring country enough, the entire Middle East could become nothing more than a giant smoking crater like the island now known as Atlantis. Even if not by nuclear weapons, by a conflagration set off by any given oil field in the area. If you want my less reserved take on the issue of war, that's what my latest scribble entry is about. [Note: at time of printing, scribble.nu is down for maintainance, not our fauilt :)]
    Though I would love to comment on today's strip, I feel Sam has already made any relevant points as far as a pu-ro-to ri-n emerging, and I know you guys don't want another rant like last time ^^. So in lieu of said insanity, I will provide a few linkies, nothing pimpy, just some sites that really catch my attention.
First off is Close the world a great site for serial experiments: lain and a few other sections. The main appeal of this site besides it's almost hypnotizing soundtrack and beautiful aesthetics? If Stig ever claims to be good at Flash, I shall point him this direction and laugh as a man posessed.
Secondly, a nice alternative to the "Nihongo" site listed above which will give you charts of the pronouniciation languages, verb conjugation, particles, and some vocab, I strongly suggest Haucks for all your Japanese learning needs. Boku wa Asuka-chan o anadarakenisutai desu.
Lastly, as the deadline approaches, I must recommend BeOS to anyone who wants a powerful graphical OS, a nice selection of free software, and a lovable interface. Fast, powerful, pretty, Be. I would use it more than Windows if some of these clauses became true-
1) I got off my lazy ass and networked the Windows9x boxen on my LAN through it properly
2) Adobe ported some stuff to it
3) I got off my lazy ass and compiled GIMP in Be.
    That's all for tonight folks, I'll catch you on the proverbial flipside, don't go eat a gun on me.
-Joel, the mad

"The Christians love their guns
The church and NRA
Pray for their salvation
Prey on the lower faiths
The story book's been read
And every line believed
The curriculum's been set
Logic is a threat
Reason searched and seized
"
-NOFX's The Decline off their "The Decline" EP..

-Joel

9/26/2000

Hoi again, minna-san! Joel returns for the first time in a while with the news update! Now it's a big responsibility to write this update. It's being read by tens of people, all of whom could make or break this comic. Well aren't you just so damn special? Well you know what? You can't fire me! I QUIT!... I'm sorry, I got a little carried away there, it won't happen again...

I would speak highly of today's strip. The subtle play upon the Arthurian legend, the coming of age tale woven into its gentle wit and whimsy, like the carved features would slowly and ever so subtly appear on the face of an adolescent imp or elf. This is the subtle and unique refinement that seperates Idle Minds from any other web comic. The mixture of classic story telling with modern humour, not unlike a tapestry of sorts which we lay out for you, our dear reader, every other day. We do this not for ourselves, but for you. We love you, reader. We love you long time.

I'd like to take a moment and speak of the next big thing I'm sure you'll all be stepping on each other to get to...well...perhaps not that extreme, but for what it's worth. Scribble is an online journal which you can tailor to your liking, add posts both public and private to, and all in all an excellent way to vent how you feel and let people get to know you better. Yes, I have one. No, you probably don't care. Yes, I'm going to link you. Yes, I debated a good 5 minutes before doing that. Yes, I will likely regret it. Just remember, anything I write there is in no way related to Idle Minds, but rather my personal outlet. Even if I mention Idle Minds by name, it's in no way related or referring to Idle Minds

Here's it's customary for me to link what seems to be every site I've been to in the last 2 days in hopes of getting "click backs" and other such tactics which are about as honourable as Dolomite's last date... Instead, I will list some music I have in my playlist along with relavent links. This will hopefully make me seem cultured or at least seem capable to hack out some HTML in a competent manner.

The Pillows
   Our Love And Happiness
   Advice
   Ride On a Shooting Star
Moxy Fruvous
   King of Spain
   Psycho Killer (cover)
   Drinking Song
Boy Sets Fire
   My Life In The Knife Trade
   Fashion As a Weapon
   Rookie
J. S. Bach
   Goldberg Variations
   Orchestral Suites I-IV
   Fur Elise

Oh, and Stig held a red hot poker to my eyes and spake unto me- "Remember, new crap in the stuff section, banners and winamp skin" My team of crack investigators are looking in to what this cryptic message from the past may be trying to tell us... and they'd better do it soon, paying them with crack is hell and a half on the tax forms...
-Joel, the mildly insane