Awesome Disney Puzzle

Amazingly cool jigsaw puzzle we chanced to find.

Matt Groening Required Viewing

If you're looking to familiarise with Matt Groening's phenomenal animated sitcoms but it seems too mammoth a task, this is my personal recommendation on how to get all the essential nutrients while skipping the fluff.

The Simpsons (170 episodes out of 569)
[S1 E01] Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire
[S1 E03] Homer's Odyssey
[S1 E04] There's No Disgrace Like Home
[S1 E06] Moaning Lisa
[S1 E07] The Call of the Simpsons
[S1 E09] Life on the Fast Lane
[S1 E12] Krusty Gets Busted
[Season 2]
[Season 3]
[Season 4]
[Season 5]
[Season 6]
[Season 7]
[S8 E01] Treehouse of Horror VII
[S8 E02] You Only Move Twice
[S8 E05] Bart After Dark
[S8 E06] A Milhouse Divided
[S8 E08] Hurricane Neddy
[S8 E09] The Mysterious Voyage of Homer
[S8 E10] The Springfield Files
[S8 E11] The Twisted World of Marge Simpson
[S8 E12] Mountain of Madness
[S8 E13] Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious
[S8 E14] The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show
[S8 E15] Homer's Phobia
[S8 E16] Brother from Another Series
[S8 E18] Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment
[S8 E22] In Marge We Trust
[S8 E23] Homer's Enemy
[S8 E24] The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase
[S8 E25] The Secret War of Lisa Simpson
[S9 E01] The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson
[S9 E03] Lisa's Sax
[S9 E09] Realty Bites
[S9 E17] Lisa the Simpson
[S9 E22] Trash of the Titans
[S10 E03] Bart the Mother
[S10 E07] Lisa Gets an "A"

Futurama (53 episodes out of 140)
[S1 E01] Space Pilot 3000
[S1 E02] The Series Has Landed
[S1 E03] I, Roommate
[S1 E04] Love's Labours Lost in Space
[S1 E05] Fear of a Bot Planet
[S1 E06] A Fishful of Dollars
[S1 E07] My Three Suns
[S1 E08] A Big Piece of Garbage
[S1 E09] Hell Is Other Robots
[S1 E10] A Flight to Remember
[S1 E12] When Aliens Attack
[S1 E13] Fry and the Slurm Factory
[S2 E01] I Second That Emotion
[S2 E03] A Head in the Polls
[S2 E04] Xmas Story
[S2 E05] Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?
[S2 E06] The Lesser of Two Evils
[S2 E07] Put Your Head on My Shoulders
[S2 E09] A Bicyclops Built for Two
[S2 E10] A Clone of My Own
[S2 E13] Bender Gets Made
[S2 E14] Mother's Day
[S2 E15] The Problem with Popplers
[S2 E16] Anthology of Interest I
[S2 E17] War Is the H-Word
[S3 E01] Amazon Women in the Mood
[S3 E02] Parasites Lost
[S3 E04] The Luck of the Fryrish
[S3 E06] Bendless Love
[S3 E07] The Day the Earth Stood Stupid
[S3 E10] Where the Buggalo Roam
[S3 E11] Insane in the Mainframe
[S3 E14] Time Keeps on Slippin'
[S3 E15] I Dated a Robot
[S3 E17] A Pharaoh to Remember
[S3 E18] Anthology of Interest II
[S3 E19] Roswell That Ends Well
[S3 E20] Godfellas
[S3 E21] Future Stock
[S3 E22] The 30% Iron Chef
[S4 E01] Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch
[S4 E02] Leela's Homeworld
[S4 E03] Love and Rocket
[S4 E07] Jurassic Bark
[S4 E09] Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles
[S4 E10] The Why of Fry
[S4 E11] Where No Fan Has Gone Before
[S4 E12] The Sting
[S4 E15] The Farnsworth Parabox
[S4 E16] Three Hundred Big Boys
[S4 E18] The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings
[S6 E07] The Late Philip J. Fry
[S7 E26] Meanwhile

My Orifices Cannot Take Any More Sexbang

I got very upset yesterday when I bore witness to garbage billowing out of a human's face at the end of the 15th episode of Game Grumps' Pokémon FireRed series, and so I wanted to share the following on here because evidently I feel quite strongly about it.

Here's the text of my YouTube comment:

Danny... what the fuck? What the fuck even are you saying with these words? "Some people are, some people aren't." Wow. So, hey, any lovelies out there who might be going through some body image issues at the moment, you're probably just unattractive. So sayeth our dearest Sexbang. Thank you, Danny. Also, all babies are adorable. Like, literally, the qualities that humans find cute are the qualities found in our young. I have no idea why you are specifying Asians at all. Did you just, like, take leave of all rationality for a few minutes there? I also like "There are lots of beautiful Asian people." as if that makes it okay that you just said some of them apparently turn out gross. Because what could possibly be more important than being physically beautiful?

Now, Danny would never, for example, single out an overweight woman in the street and tell her she's ugly. I know he would never do that. But apparently it's okay to offhandedly declare that some segment of people aren't attractive. I just don't see a difference between those two actions. Because when you say something like that in a public forum like Game Grumps, viewers with pre-existing insecurities will connect the dots, and it hurts just as bad.

I realise Danny's not out to hurt anyone, and I don't hate him as a person or anything. But this isn't the first straw. It would be cruel and extremely entitled to expect him to be a "replacement Jon" or something like that. He's just himself and that's fine, but I don't like it very much at all. So I guess I'm done now.

Praiser? I Hardly Know Her!

I was watching this video with Richard Dawkins and Ricky Gervais about religion, thoroughly enjoying being a preached-to choir, when Mr Gervais made a comment about agnosticism in regards to mythical creatures, as well as the existence of multiple different organised religions*. This gave me pause as I thought about how I really felt, and I ended up coming to some conclusions that I'd like to share here.
 Maybe I'm wrong here, but this is how I generally interpret the word agnostic: "Since there's no way of gaining any evidence either way, and believing in it does no harm, it's just not worth discussing or debating. To each their own." The only thing I really feel this way about** is the idea of something spiritual existing somewhere in the universe that we couldn't ever really feasibly find out about, nor would it have anything to do with our little speck of dirt. Something I will always debate and argue against at every turn, however, is religion itself. Organised religions, I believe across the board, preach ideas of sacrality and worship that I feel ultimately result in nothing more valuable than violence and hate.
 I was thinking about that Aussie radio DJ prank call involving the royal family that ended up driving the woman involved to suicide. I couldn't understand how being taken in by a harmless prank could cause a person that much mental anguish, but then I had a thought: she let down the Queen. This is obviously just a theory and entirely speculation, but what if she was raised in an environment where everyone just revered the royal family and the ground they walk on? That isn't really a religious example, but it's the same idea, and I really feel strongly that conditioning people to hold something sacred (like a book, for example) or worship someone on a pedestal like they are somehow higher or more important than anyone else, on a basic human level, whether it be a god, the Queen, the Pope or Tom Hanks, is terribly counter-productive to humanity. People do terrible things in the name of their god.
 And of course, this all starts at a criminally young age, or else it would have no staying power in the mind. Parents indoctrinate their children (and that is what it is) into whatever faith happens to be popular in the household when they're too young to even understand what thinking for one's self is, and by the time they've become rational, critically thinking adults, some people just never stop to look back questioningly on something that simply has been in their entire lives.

*To kind of respond to what Ricky Gervais said about agnostics, it's really just the one thing I mentioned that I feel that way about, and I'm certainly not walking around saying "Well maybe some made-made religions could be true I don't know!" (If you could read that last sentence in that voice you use when you're telling a story and you want someone to sound stupid, that would be great.) And I don't believe in auras, psychics, ghosts, goblins or Santa Claus for two reasons. One: they, too, were invented by people, and two: we can and have scoured the Earth and found nothing substantial.

**I'm not agnostic about Heaven, but I do think the basic idea is harmless and even beneficial***. I have no doubt that the simple belief in being able to meet your deceased loved ones again is what gets a lot of people through some of the tougher times. But even that can get twisted into a tool for manipulation when you start subscribing to a holy text. "Don't do this or you won't go to Heaven, blow up this and be eternally rewarded," etc. Not good times.

***This is a thing I made up today about the idea of Heaven.

My Writing Process

As I've been going through the initial writing process for Since It's V Day, I found it interesting to note how monumentally helpful a simple thing like a text editing program can be. I can't imagine the headache involved in trying to organise scenes written on paper, after you've jotted them down in the order they came to you. So I thought I'd detail here how I go about writing a story and why the easy functionality of WordPad is a fucking godsend.
 Basically what it comes down to is the ability to get the basic plot events marked down with several blank lines inbetween so I can easly insert content in its chronological place as it's formulated. Using this method I can begin to fill out the document with more detailed plot points and scenes, small bits of dialogue, character moments, descriptions and notes. It also helps to easily signify where I still have gaps in the sequence of events that require filling in.
 Now rather than set time aside for dedicated writing sessions, I'll usually just go about my day and, as I said in my last post, when an idea is new and exciting, it tends to fill my mind at every silent moment. This makes it easier for ideas for scenes and such to come more naturally as I mull over the plot, and I can simply insert them into the document as I go.
 Once I feel like I've got enough material, I'll begin stitching the scenes together, figuring out how they'll flow into each other, etc. Then, once most of the events and dialogue are written out, I'll go back to the top and begin systematically figuring out how each sequence will break down into comic panels, and begin producing the pages as I go. This is also how I wrote Two Guys Walk Into the Internet....

Since It's V Day

Something incredible has happened. Something amazing that I never imagined would happen to me, or rather, I often imagined would never happen to me. I... have had an idea. Yes, an idea. Phenomenal. But, as I say, it was a kind of idea I never thought possible. Not an idea for a joke, but rather something... else.
 I woke up at about 9pm last night, and for whatever reason, just lied in bed for a while, letting my mind wander. The tapestry of a small story began to weave itself into existence without permission. I considered it carefully, molding and refining it, and before long I knew I had to get up and write it down. Being new and intriguing, it filled my mind at every silence, and so ideas begat ideas, the story began to grow, and my excitement mounted.
 I've now just spent all night and day typing notes, thinking about characters and designs, and sketching out storyboards for a climactic scene towards the end of the story. A purely dramatic story is, once again, something I never even dreamed of attempting in all my days, so this will be completely untested water for me. Maybe I'll suck at it and it'll be terrible. But I'm not gonna find out by thinking about it.
 I'm making this post to mark down in the history books the day this project was birthed and pre-production began. I'll be quite interested to see how many superhero reboots have happened by the time this thing is done. This is a story called Since It's V Day.

Toby

                        

3x22: Through the Looking Glass

28. Screenshot Comic #1

A few years ago on IMDb's Lost board there was a little fad for a while where someone would make a comic strip template out of Lost screenshots and a bunch of people would take it and insert their hilarious captions. The dialogue for this first one jumped out at me pretty much as soon as I saw it, except for the third panel, which took a while to figure out, but I'm pretty happy with how it ended up. I'm glad I thought of something that actually uses Ben's pose, instead of just ignoring it and telling the story through dialogue.
 Also, the M&M's are peanut.

An Ode to Time Well Spent

There might be too much stuff on the internet. I've been finding that I don't write, draw, or even play games nearly as much as I'd like, and yet I still can't keep up with all the web content I want to. So these are the sites and serieses that I just can't fit in anymore. Maybe in twenty years I'll return to this post and see where all these great sites are at or ended up, but for now, there's just not enough time (well, for some kids, that is).

Cinemassacre
http://cinemassacre.com/
Ctrl+Alt+Del
http://www.cad-comic.com/
Explosm
http://www.explosm.net/
Irregular Webcomic!
http://irregularwebcomic.net/
That Guy With The Glasses
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/
Weebl's Stuff
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/
Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series
http://www.yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/
GamesRadar
http://www.gamesradar.com/uk/
Knox's Korner/The Benfer
http://thebenfer.com/
Hi, I'm a Marvel... and I'm a DC
http://www.youtube.com/user/ItsJustSomeRandomGuy
How It Should Have Ended
http://www.howitshouldhaveended.com/
MS Paint Adventures
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/
Red vs. Blue
http://www.youtube.com/show/redvsblue?s=1
Zero Punctuation
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, Minecraftia

Block with Greatness

My first night in Minecraft was spent by the soft, warm light of cooking sand, squatted in a hand-forged hole in the side of a hill. Over the coming days, this hill was slowly leveled and in its place sprung up a home of most stirdy brick. Already, life was quite comfortable, and I knew the next thing I wanted to do was start a large building project, as was the style at the time.

Lollipop Lane

I chose this subject because, it being a symbol of something I have great passion for, I figured I'd be less likely to become disenchanted and abandon the build. Plus, I could do a bunch of fun quotes and stuff.

"That should do it."

A perfectly cromulent quote.

The first step was to decide on a place to set up and turn it into a large area of flat grassland, and what better construction site than my own front yard? As I set to work steam rolling the neighbourhood, I found I suddenly had a lot of mind-numbingly repetitive time to contemplate the future. I figured I was gonna need a lot of wool down the line to dye pink, so I started making a habit of punching every white sheep I could see, as well as brown and light gray ones for the roof and driveway, respectively.

A Car Hole

Most of the land I wanted to clear out consisted of hills that didn't stray too far from sea level, but there was one mountain, which I sliced down the middle, completely mining away one half, and making a huge natural staircase from the other.

"My doctor says I have the wrists of an 80-year-old."

Soon enough it was time to place blocks. Taking in my hand more stacks of white wool than was probably ever necessary, I set to work, using the screencap included above as a reference image.

"Lisa's window is the next one."

Naturally, a lot of time at this point was spent standing around thinking, plotting and planning, placing blocks and taking them back again, seeing how things looked and staring at empty spaces to try and figure out the best possible design. This was definitely the most fun part of the project, by far the most involving, and is pretty much what makes any Minecraft build worth doing. Hence the Creative mode eventually making it into the full game.

"That's okay, the box is empty."

Once it was all done up in white wool the house looked a lot like one of Doc Brown's unpainted models. The only difference being that I had all the time in the world to paint it. And painting it meant lots of roses. Also bonemeal.

Bare Backside

At first I was going exploring for roses and using bonemeal to make pink dye, but before long, version 1.6 came about and suddenly I could grow my own roses where ever I pleased. And with that, Skeleton hunting by night became a long-term quest, while my days were spend scrounging up some clay, frying up some cactus, and keeping on the lookout for those brown and gray sheep.

"Remember, you can always find east by staring directly at the sun."

Once I got some pink dye going, I started taking out the white wall blocks and pinking them up, but then I realised I could get up to 4 wool from a single piece of dye by colouring and shearing sheep. So most of the white wool I'd already gathered ended up going in the incinerator.

The incinerator (on the right).

Eventually the only thing left to colour was the roof. By this point about 1% of the job had been done using brown sheep, but I was going to need a better method. Unfortunately, there wasn't one around, so I decided to put the build on hold until a more efficient method of gathering brown wool was implemented, whether it be wool regrowth on sheep, animal breeding, or a way of farming cocoa beans.

"We need some more vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice-cream!"

A little while later, 1.9 prerelease 2 became available, and as it turned out, sheep breeding was the way of the future. However, it turned out all sheep were born with white wool, so it was back to waiting, for the moment. It wasn't until the sixth 1.9 prerelease that I was delighted to hear that baby sheep had been updated to inherit the wool colour of one of their parents.

The Simpsons' House in Minecraft

I immediately started trying to round up a pair of brown sheep, which didn't take as long as I was expecting. Miraculously enough, two spawned together around the back of the Simpsons house. Since I was still in 1.8, I couldn't use wheat to lead them around, so I quickly captured them in a ring of fence and then, with some difficulty (those passive mobs are wily buggers), funnelled them into a pen closer to my home.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

And so MineCon went down in Vegas, and at last the official release of Minecraft was here. I started a wheat farm and set to work breeding up a storm. The end was in sight now, but I soon learned that wheat grows very slowly. And here I thought my days of Skeleton hunting were over.

And that's the end of the story.

"Just don't look! Just don't look!"