August 19th, 2008

I got the DC Super Heroes: the Filmation Adventures DVD set on August 15th of the year 2008. I haven’t seen some of these cartoons since I was a little young’un in the mid 1970’s. These cartoons are fun from pillar to post and I was surprised by a few things in the set. For one, a very famous DC Comics hero just blatantly kills somebody and says what amounts to, “Well, so much for that. Let’s bounce.” The best part is that I have friends who aren’t uppity about comics and cartoons so we could just watch some of the segments for the craziness that they are instead of stroking our goatees and claiming every 3 minutes that we’re watching them “ironically” (also known as goat-stroking) or some such crap. Besides, I’m the only one with a goatee and one of the people there was female. BUT STILL. This will replace the ones I taped from that DC mish-mash show that aired USA Cartoon Express and Cartoon Network years ago. I have an unfinished post all about this set and I’ll try to have it finished soon.


From Game With A Brain:
25 reasons gamers annoy non-gamers

As a sad, sad shell of a man that has spent the last 8 years working on a old-school gaming site and draws fan art of characters that really just look like a mess of pixels, I still agree with most of those. Number 8 is just a truth that most people don’t want to accept.


I keep talking about secret projects that I do on the side if all the random stuff that I do regularly. One project isn’t as much a project as it is a skill that I want to develop. I’m getting better at it and I’ll have something to show off in a few weeks. For now, here’s the only so-called clue you get:

Not that anybody will really try to guess, but I have nothing better to do. No, I didn’t notice how creepy that looks until I posted a larger version of it.

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August 16th, 2008

Bully and John’s blog, Comics Oughta Be Fun, is usually filled with laughs, win and (naturally) fun. Unfortunately, there’s some serious business going on and this needs to be passed along.

(from this post)

Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: “These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, ’cause I wanted to see what her reaction was.” This was only one example of several instances of harassment, stalking or assault that I saw at San Diego this time.

1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.

2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the “prettiest girl at the con.” They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.

3. Another friend of mine, a woman running her own booth: on Friday a man came to her booth and openly criticized her drawing ability and sense of design. Reports from others in the same section of the floor confirmed he’d targeted several women with the same sort of abuse and criticism.

Quite simply, this behavior has got to stop at Comic-Con. It should never be a sort of place where anyone, man or woman, feels unsafe or attacked either verbally or physically in any shape or form. There are those, sadly, who get off on this sort of behavior and assault, whether it’s to professional booth models, cosplayers or costumed women, or women who are just there to work. This is not acceptable behavior under any circumstance, no matter what you look like or how you’re dressed, whether you are in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit or business casual for running your booth.

On Saturday, the day after the second event I described above, I pulled out my convention book to investigate what you can do and who you can speak to after such an occurrence. On page two of the book there is a large grey box outlining “Convention Policies,” which contain rules against smoking, live animals, wheeled handcarts, recording at video presentations, drawing or aiming your replica weapon, and giving your badge to others. There is nothing about attendee-to-attendee personal behavior.

Page three of the book contains a “Where Is It?” guide to specific Comic-Con events and services. There’s no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she’s sympathetic to the situation but who doesn’t have a clear answer to my question: “What’s Comic-Con’s policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?” She directs me to the nearest security guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there’s little that can be done.

“I understand that,” I tell them both, “but what I’m asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what’s the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?” But this wasn’t a question either could answer.

So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like “Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX.”

The first step to preventing such harassment is giving its victims the knowledge that they can safely and swiftly report such instances to someone in authority. Having no published guideline, and indeed being unable to give a clear answer to questions about it, gives harassment and violence one more rep-tape loophole to hide behind.

I enjoyed Comic-Con. I’m looking forward to coming back next year. So, in fact, are the two women whose experiences I’ve retold above. Aside from those instances, they had a good time at the show. But those instances of harassment shouldn’t have happened at all, and that they did under no clear-cut instructions about what to do sadly invites the continuation of such behavior, or even worse.

I don’t understand why there’s no such written policy about what is not tolerated and what to do when this happens. Is there anyone at Comic-Con able to explain this? Does a similar written policy exist in the booklets for other conventions (SF, comics or otherwise) that could be used as a model? Can it be adapted or adapted, and enforced, for Comic-Con? As the leading event of the comics and pop culture world, Comic-Con should work to make everyone who attends feel comfortable and safe.

I’ve never been to the SDCC, but the other cons that I’ve been to always seemed like a chance for different types of people to hang out without having to put up with any harsh nonsense. Whether she’s wearing regular street clothing or dressed like a comic character, women and girls should be able to comfortably enjoy themselves at a convention as much as we guys can. From now on, we need to keep a sharper eye out for stuff like this and keep it from happening and alert security when it does. If some sickos were doing the same to somebody’s kid, would you just stand by and let it happen? I hope not. Don’t let it happen to female con goers either.

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August 14th, 2008

Another reason why August 2008 sucks can be found in the link below:

The Herald, Sharon, Pa. – Fire destroys Splitstone Entertainment

Splitstone was one of those places that would make you exhaust your monthly allowance of saying “Hot damn, I can’t believe they have that!” Why? The last time my friends and I took the long drive there, we walked in the door and found The Official Nintendo Game Players Guide and I ran into a copy of Jaleco’s Shatterhand, one of the best games little-known games for the NES. That’d be a mind-blowing day at most places, but not Splitstone. This is the same place where I bought the Versus Books SFA2 guide and Double Dragon live-action movie on DVD on the same day. Remember a few years ago when even the big chain video game stores still had everything from the NES to the Playstation 1? Splitstone was like that to the 25th power. Splitstone went past the NES era all the way back to the Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision and even the Odyssey². I hadn’t seen an Odyssey² game since… cripes, 1980 something. My fingers hurt when I thought about trying to type out all of the epic goodness and recaptured childhood memories I’ve bought from there over last few years. We bought an official boatload of tapes when they were clearing out their VHS stock and many of the NES carts I’ve been able to get for my sister came from there. They had tons and tons of old and new video games, movies, music and even books. I never even got around to checking out all the comics they just started selling. The people that worked there are cool and they never played that “Oooh, I’ll sell it for the highest price I see on eBay!” crap. They also had a disc grinder (or whatever they’re officially called) and all CDs, DVDs and game discs were always in perfect condition.

We didn’t go there that much this year thanks to the rise in gas prices and the really bad weather during the winter. I’d just asked my sister what NES games she still needed and planned get them from Splitstone. Sadly, that’s not going to happen for a while. I’m glad that no one was hurt but I feel really bad for the owners because it’s a family run business. Even after they rebuild, I don’t know how they’ll replace all of the incredible stuff that they had. It really was one of those places where you’d find the game or movie that you never thought you’d find. I wish them all the best of luck in getting through this and rebuilding.

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August 12th, 2008

By now, you’ve probably heard the bad news from the entertainment world. First, the world lost the hilarious and hard-working Bernie Mac. I’ve been a fan of his since I first saw him on Def Comedy Jam and it’s always a treat to see him pop up in a movie. His self-hating cop is probably my favorite part of “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” and I quote parts of it whenever I’m talking about some Uncle Tom. Then we get the sudden sad news that composer, singer, actor, voice actor and all-around soul man Isaac Hayes died. I don’t have words for how much I enjoyed his music and how much he cracked me up in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and South Park. Those are two really talented people that have left this Earth far too soon.

Then, it happened. You know what I’m talking about. “Aw man, they always go in threes.” No they don’t. This is what I think happens: people hear that celebrities always die in threes so people keep separating them into groups of three in their head. There’s another reason, but I’ll tell you that a bit later. Some people brought up that Estelle Getty would be the first of the three, but she passed away 18 days ago on July 22nd. Others brought up Jesse Helms but that was on the Fourth of July. A lot of people said George Carlin, but that was in June. June! How close do these three have to be? Can I put Marlon Brando, Fatty Arbuckle and the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu into the same group? It’s a group of three, isn’t it? I checked out IMDB’s ‘Died, 2008’ page and this wcbstv.com page for reference and just a quick glance at January shows that Heath Ledger died in the same month as actress Suzanne Pleshette, chessmaster Bobby Fischer, the original horror host Vampira, Sir Edmund Hillary and Brad Renfro. June 2008 robbed us of George Carlin, NBC’s Tim Russert, special effects pioneer Stan Winston, blues man Bo Diddley, Cyd Charisse, and Don S. Davis (General Hammond from Stargate-SG1). Those aren’t even complete lists! So if you’re going to group together people people in different months, you’ll have to make groups bigger than three.

The second reason that I think people tend to stretch the group time periods out is psychological. It still doesn’t fully register in my head that George Carlin is gone even though it was over a month ago. I thought Estelle Getty died a week before Hayes and Mac when it was really longer than that. It’s a lesser version of the same feeling you have when someone that you know in real life passes away. Of course, another reason why it seems to happen in threes is probably because that’s as high as many entertainment reporters can count. Ba-dump-bump!

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August 6th, 2008

I may have a proper post later in the week, but I just want to kick out a quick note to those who check this thing to know what I’m working on at the moment. Now that I’m past whatever weird sinus troubles I had for about a week, I’m getting enough sleep to have the power to draw non-crappily. Here’s the current workload:

1.) The main thing is a group of commissioned artwork that I keep bringing up. For some weird reason, I’m having trouble drawing one pose that I’d sketched weeks earlier. I’m slowly battling it and may be able to get it right soon or I’ll switch to another character.

2.) I’m still putting my first two ‘universe’ comic stories together in my head. I’m hoping that the first one is enough to give people a basic gist of the universe’s feel and past without resorting to info dump. Plus, it’ll be interesting to see if people get (or care) about one of the big things that I hint towards in the first one. The first story has no real action (except for single shot of people kicking butt) while the second one starts off like the end of a story and ends with the beginning of almost every story that happens after that.

3.) I’m finally toying around with a program that I should’ve been checking out long ago. It’s caused me to have tons of new, random ideas that I’ll never get around to fleshing out, but I plan to have some fun on the side with it. Besides, if I get good with it, ScrollBoss will have some interesting new content. No, I’m not telling you what it is yet, but I will when I get some screenshots (or more) together.

4.) Website sections still being worked on (but not much right now) include Illmosis’ Character Profiles (if you refresh the one that I linked to, you’ll see the random profile pic script at work) and ScrollBoss’ Game Index. I need to update MugenBoss’ item system before I start asking people if they want me to host their stuff.

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July 20th, 2008

Damn, I’m tired. Ever since I got the NewOld Computer, a lot of my free time has gone towards trying to get it up to code or trying to cook up content for ScrollBoss’ 8th Anniversary update. Most of the work was behind-the-scenes stuff that nobody sees and couldn’t give two poots about. That’s why I’m going to tell you about them right now. Just kiddin’. Instead, here’s my Top Five List of things that I wish that I didn’t have to do for the update:

5.) Update at least 70 PHP pages with new side menu INCLUDES knowing damn well I’ll have to go back and do the same for the headers that I didn’t have time to redesign thanks to item number 4.
4.) Have to wait until I could access the old Hard Drive’s version of ScrollBoss that had a lot of non-uploaded things. I still don’t have a lot of programs working yet including Beats of Rage.
3.) Make an entire font in vector only to accidentally delete it when sorting data between the two drives. Yes, I’m talking about the font in this earlier post. Luckily, the new version that I started looks a bit better as the letter A I used for the banner of the Game Index page easily beats the first one I did.
2.) Spend a ridiculous amount of time working on graphics that didn’t have to used:

1.) Continue to not show over 20 sprite edits that are far better than the latest ones I added to the site. By now, I know that showing them before they debut in the projects I made them for will mean that someone will shoehorn them into their own fan game in the most fuctarded way imaginable. I don’t need to see Blue Be, er, any secret sprites showing up in another hentai M.U.G.E.N. bonus stage.

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July 4th, 2008

Lego Capt. America beats down a Ratzi! Buy War Bonds!

… and some firecrackers:

Okay, it’s the song Firecracker (with the Computer Games Intro) by Yellow Magic Orchestra. Much respect to Omanchin100 for uploading that video.

So let’s end this post on a bright note. Harsh, but so was he. Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

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July 4th, 2008

ScrollBoss font WIP 1 That USB Hard Drive enclosure that I ordered last week still isn’t here so I can’t finish some of the ScrollBoss’ 8th Anniversary projects. Instead of whining about it, I’ve burnt that anger by working on the long-overdue vector ScrollBoss letter set. Since I couldn’t find the backup CD with the old vector logo on it, I started over with the vector logo of a ScrollBoss section that I’m saving as a surprise. Right now, I have A-J, L-P, R-W and 6. I don’t know how to turn it into an actual font to use in a program, but it’ll be very handy for future projects.


People around here were, as the young’uns would say, getting their fool on before the holiday even started. Lots of vehicles almost hit other vehicles or people. There was a lot of loud yelling from one street over followed by the appropriate amount of police sirens to answer said hollerin’. If that was just the demo, I can’t wait to see the full release version of all-out dumbassery. By “see” I mean that I’m staying in the crib. Hell, it was barely June when kids (or kid-like grown folks) were dropping smoke bombs at cars from the overpass that’s a few blocks from here.

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June 29th, 2008

I posted a rant a few months ago about how a lot of lyric sites don’t seem to give a crap. It was inspired by trying to figure out a name from James Brown’s Santa Claus, Go Straight To The Ghetto.

So there’s a part near the end of the song that I couldn’t figure out. He says “Tell ‘em **unidentified** told you so” but I couldn’t figure out what the name is. Don’t ask why I’m just noticing this after all these years. Whatever it is, the name definitely isn’t James Brown. I decided to hit the lyric sites to see what they say. Not only did they claim that he said “James Brown” there but they don’t even have the obvious parts of the song right.

I forgot to put that name in the original post, but I kept thinking it was “Hank Ballast” or something like that. I looked around today and most of them still have messed-up versions of the lyrics. The one place that seems to have best version is the VH1 site. They don’t have all the botched lines like “Pitch up your reindeer” and admits that even they can’t figure out what that name was. But thanks to VH1, I think I figured out what the name is.

While watching VH1, a rock documentary had a clip from a man named Hank Ballard. I look the man’s up on the electronical intertubes and Google points to a lot of links about Ballard and the Godfather of Soul. They worked together in the late 60’s which was the same time period that this song was recorded in. I’m not a music historian or expert, but I’m guessing that the James Brown lyric missed by most sites is “Tell ’em Hank Ballard told you so.” If anything, I’m more embarrassed that I didn’t know who Hank Ballard was.

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June 29th, 2008

Linda from Double DragonFigured I’d post something I drew since I barely seem to do that here anymore. It’s Linda, a very, very bad woman from the old arcade game, Double Dragon. I drew a picture of her in practically in the same pose a few years back but that didn’t turn out so well. Too cartoony. This is more like it. It’s weird because I was thinking of drawing it over again recently because I need art of her for a few ScrollBoss projects. Out of the blue, a friend of mine e-mails me because he needed the old pic for a fan game project. I was glad that he wanted to use my art, but I felt bad because it was a bad picture. So that was sign that I need to draw her again. Plus, it’ll be good to have a pic of her that matches the quality of that Abobo pic I did last year.


Harley Quinn Lego figure I bought that Lego set with Harley Quinn just for the minifig. Seriously. The Batman Begins-style Batman that comes with it was immediately put aside for trading fodder and the other parts are still in their bags to be sorted later on. It comes with some of those little diamonds and gems that you can put into a treasure chest and has lots of good vehicle parts. But, really, it’s all about Lego Harley Quinn.

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