This is what my week's been like. I'm feeling a little better, but I'm really sick of being sick. Curse you, germs! I'm going to find out what the going rate on a hygenic bubble is on eBay.

TimeWaster™



The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo. A good easy-to-understand breakdown of the whole mess. I think it's too narrowly focused on the subprime mortgage aspect, but then that is a major element of the current mess.

Today I'm listening to: RadioPrank.com!

Everyone's sick of hearing me talk about how brilliant the webcomic Overcompensating is, but here's yet more proof. If you are a fan of Ice Cube (or at least you are familiar with his song "Today Was a Good Day"), then read the following right now. (Click for bigger version.)



It's tied for top spot with Doctor Monkey.

TimeWaster™

I just posted two funny comics for you to read. TPCQ: "Whatt'ya think I do, write letters all day?" (Ten points for the first commenter who can correctly identify the source of that one.)

Today I'm listening to: The o35s video game podcast!

Boy, that text at the end got really small. I hope people can still read it. I thought about maybe making it bigger but then I decided nahh, let's just cram it all in.

What do people think: Go back to pen for smoother lines, even if it takes longer?

TimeWaster™

I know I posted this earlier, but if you've never seen it then you might miss one of the jokes up there.



Today I'm listening to: Batanga Hip Hop en Español!

I actually did this. But then I talk to myself a lot. I'm talking to myself right now, in fact.

I'm worried this one might not be clear, and I hate having to explain jokes. Hopefully people will recognize what the other duck is holding. (If not, you can watch the YouTube video below, which is amusing even if you get it. It's a little quiet so you'll need to turn the volume up.) Even if you don't know the reference, though, I think there are enough other random funny things to make it worthwhile.

Special thanks to DLF for reminding me that MH did a bit about ducks.

TimeWaster™



Today I'm listening to: Mind Works 2! (A trance-ish compilation which was apparently released before music companies had websites.)

I haven't decided whether to do all-color or not as a rule, but I am going to make sure that each comic has a uniform color palette. Color takes longer, but it looks good if done right.

We make more comics before 9:00 AM than most people make all day.



I changed the title after Diane told me "8 Days a Week" is a Beatles song. I'm not a big Beatles fan, and I don't want people thinking I am. So now it's called Disillusion Overload. It's a great title. You love it. You also like the rap group Jedi Mind Tricks.

I think I'm getting the hang of this. Next up: Full color? Mayyyyybe.

Look, I did another one.

I got a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet. I downloaded some drawing programs, none of which is exactly perfect, but I'll work it out. I started a new webcomic. It's about my wild hedonistic life. I thought about calling it Sarcasm Overload, but Something about the actual title appeals to me. It's from a Run-DMC song.



Yeah, I know. Well, let's see what happens.

TimeWaster™

This video is a little stop-motion fun. From madsimian.



Today I'm listening to: SomaFM!

Well, he said he'd do it and now he's done it. On Friday 23 January, US President Barack Obama ordered two unmanned drone aircraft to bomb a pair of villages in Pakistan's unstable Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Okay, so this is the region where Bin Laden is supposed to be hiding. There have been raids by the Pakistani Taliban into Afghanistan, killing people there. And militants from this area are probably responsible for the murder of Benazir Bhutto. But I'm against these attacks.

For one thing, our smart bombs aren't as smart as we'd like to believe. We always hear from our official sources that we take out The Bad Guys and the bombs only fall on the heads of Those Who Deserve It. But as Juan Cole points out in his excellent piece in Salon (you really should read the whole thing):

Pakistani sources disagreed over whether there had been any foreign fighters at all at the second target, with locals claiming that 10 family members, including women and children, were the only victims. Villagers in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt sometimes rent to the Arab fighters because they are sympathetic to their struggle, but sometimes they just need the money.

Cole makes two other important points:

1. Pakistan's President Asaf Ali Zardari (Bhutto's husband) is trying to keep a very fragile government together, and he all but promised the people that the US drone attacks would stop when Obama took over. If we keep this up, he may lose his grip and extremists might gain political power — with the end result of nuclear weapons in the grip of a militant anti-US government.
   
   
2. I'll just quote Cole: "[Obama] may find, as Lyndon Johnson did, that such military operations take on a momentum of their own, and produce popular discontents that can prove deadly to the military mission." Not to mention the thousands of people who would die along the way.

This week Democracy Now! had an interview with Pakistani scholar Sahar Shafqat, who had some important points to make.

I think a lot of disillusionment has set in, because there were hopes that there would be some kind of policy correction, policy change, and that appears to not be the case at all.

I don't have answers about what should be done in that part of the world, but I don't like the idea of US foreign policy coming in the form of killer robot airplanes.

Also: Pakistani tribal members — Get some SpellCheck for your banner!

TimeWaster™

And now for something completely different: A report from 1981 about new technologies that allow you to read the newspaper on a computer! WOW. (It takes two hours to download.) via RobotArm MonkeyBrain.



Today I'm listening to: Groove Salad!