Thread "Rant, moan, rave and share - for all your chatter, natter, ETCETERA! 2013/2014" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 1:10AM, Oct. 10, 2014

ozoneocean wrote:
Did you hear that Pluto is back to being a full planet again? :D
The promblem with the dwarf planet kerfuffle was that people were imagining that "planet" was a term with a specific scientific definition… or at least they tried to give it one, but that never really worked, because there IS no such thing as a "planet" per se, just things we choose to call planets. It's a cultural definition.
Then there were the people that said all the other round objects out in the far asteroid belt should be full planets as well then, but that doesn't follow either: we call Europe and Asia "continents" and we have that on maps, geography books etc… even though there's no seperation between them appart from national borders and history, and even that is blurred.
If we choose to name Pluto a planet and not the other objects, so what?

That's great news! The Scarf household were inexplicably downhearted when Pluto was downgraded. My daughter couldn't stand the idea of Pluto being bullied by all those gas giants:
"Nyah, look at you - yer just a cloudless lump o' rock - sod off to the Kuiper Belt and don't come back!"
Here's to plucky little Pluto and his girlfriend Charon: don't lat the gastards grind you down.

Posted at 2:10AM, Oct. 10, 2014

Bloddy gastards!

Posted at 3:10PM, Oct. 10, 2014

I'm having a really hard time figuring out what I'm going to do next summer. My sister is getting married in the middle of July which (I know, I'm being selfish) is incredibly inconvenient in terms of study abroad programs, which almost all seem to run July to beginning of August. If I manage to get a museum job here in Canada then I could fly back for the wedding and it wouldn't be exorbitantly expensive, but it remains to be seen if that will happen. I might have to commit to an exchange program long before I know whether I'll get a job. Or if I don't do that and don't get a job, then I'm stuck in the city all summer which would be the worst thing ever.

All this is made doubly frustrating by how confusing it is trying to navigate the websites of various international universities to find the information I need, and the fact that the woman who is in charge of exchanges at my university seems horribly incompetent. I asked her some very basic questions today that she couldn't answer and she promised to check into them and email me, but hasn't done so yet. -_-

Posted at 9:10PM, Oct. 10, 2014

HippieVan wrote:
I'm having a really hard time figuring out what I'm going to do next summer. My sister is getting married in the middle of July which (I know, I'm being selfish) is incredibly inconvenient in terms of study abroad programs, which almost all seem to run July to beginning of August. If I manage to get a museum job here in Canada then I could fly back for the wedding and it wouldn't be exorbitantly expensive, but it remains to be seen if that will happen. I might have to commit to an exchange program long before I know whether I'll get a job. Or if I don't do that and don't get a job, then I'm stuck in the city all summer which would be the worst thing ever.

All this is made doubly frustrating by how confusing it is trying to navigate the websites of various international universities to find the information I need, and the fact that the woman who is in charge of exchanges at my university seems horribly incompetent. I asked her some very basic questions today that she couldn't answer and she promised to check into them and email me, but hasn't done so yet. -_-

I wish you luck getting to your sister's wedding. :)
As for incompetence… I find that a lot of my coworkers can be like that. Especially with reports and radio protocol. Now I wouldn't mind if they were all new hires, but some of these guys are either from security companies other than ours, or they've been here quite a while already (not as long as myself though).

Yeah… imagine writing nothing but radio codes into your security report then having to explain to the court what they are…

Posted at 5:10AM, Oct. 11, 2014

HippieVan wrote:
I'm having a really hard time figuring out what I'm going to do next summer. My sister is getting married in the middle of July which (I know, I'm being selfish) is incredibly inconvenient in terms of study abroad programs, which almost all seem to run July to beginning of August.

Ah, you know it was pretty sad to leave Canada right before the Summer. I felt it would have been my big payoff after that blisteringly cold winter to experience "warm" Canada. I should not complain, though. I had a chance to experience all four seasons plus Canada Day 2013.

As far as your concerns about having to choose between a study abroad program or your sister's wedding (congratulations to your sister, by the way), is this the last summer you would have the opportunity to travel abroad or would it be possible to research some winter break travel-study program? There is no better excuse to escape the winter cold and having to hibernate than by living in a warmer country from December-January.

ozoneocean wrote:
B Gata H Kei

I started watching the first three episodes of this series after your recommendation on the last page of this forum and it is really addictive that I might just binge watch the rest of it tonight. It is such a lighthearted romance comedy. I must say that it is a pretty accurate case study of the perils of dating from a socially awkward perspective. I think one of the best parts is that it has a female protagonist acting like the super geeky loser nerd. The show is a mishmosh of various look-a-like harem anime characters I have seen in the past (ie. Love Hina, Happy Lesson). One problem is the amount of fan service given the age of the characters. But when I think back to high school, people that age were involved in way worse situations that to think otherwise is just being naive. Anyway, yeah, B Gata H Kei reminds me of those strange high school years and has me reliving pretty random memories from that time. Great suggestion, Oz!

Posted at 10:10PM, Oct. 12, 2014

It IS a good anime. :)
Yeah, some of those other female characters are a bit like the cliches in haren shows, but none of the rest are interested in the guy… except for his shy childhood firend. Ugh, I'm glad they didn't make too much of that.
With the age thing, I think thus: it's an animation, not real people, with voice actors in their 20s. SO I just think of the characters as 18 years olds and I don't get grossed out. :)
Now Princess Jellyfish IS fantastic in that respect; the youngest character is about 18 or 19 and the rest of the ladiies are in heir 30s.
The only fan service is bare man-chest though… and an andogenous one at that. But it's so funny and charming, and just so great to see a whole bunch of non-cliche characters. I really wish there were more episodes, it's so cool to see them interect. I much prefer the antics of the side characters to the main protagonists actually… I wish there were more episodes focusing on them instead of the the two main characters.

——

Wow, Monday has got me down. It may be because I'm suffereing the snotty tail end of a cold and it's making my brain a bit fuzzy for some reason, but I feel really unmotivated and grumpy. I just want to go back to bed and let other people handle everything… drunk duck, work, everything.

Posted at 9:10PM, Oct. 14, 2014

Wednesday now and I feel a lot better. This stupid cold is getting better. I'm still pretty snotty though.
—–

Don't you hate it when you get older all your firneds are always busy doing other crap? Like paying off mortages or going to birthday parties for friends of their kids? :(
My frineds are too grown up.

Posted at 5:10AM, Oct. 15, 2014

It's even worse if you are one of those friends you describe. I haven't seen a friend for months - only other people with kids, haven't seen much tv, movies or heard much music outside of kids choices and when I finally find time to do any of those things I'm half dead. My comic only exists because I've learned to draw at 3am in a kind of semi conscious state.

Posted at 3:10PM, Oct. 15, 2014

O… kay… So I installed The Sims 4 (finally… had it for a week). What's the first animation I see as the game is loading? A female sim in a cowboy hat… laughing. And then she drops dead.

Then a scene of joggers passing by the screen… then a moment later a ghostly black robed thing is following them…

Now I'm totally afraid of what I'm going to find in the game…. O_O

And apparently this game takes place in an "alternate" world of The Sims, which means the histories of such people like Bella Goth may be completely different…

Posted at 8:10PM, Oct. 15, 2014

I feel for you Scarefer. :(

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Litterally the only game I play now is Angry Birds.I'm a champion at it! :)
…like everyone else. :(

Posted at 10:10PM, Oct. 15, 2014

ozoneocean wrote:
Litterally the only game I play now is Angry Birds.I'm a champion at it! :)
…like everyone else. :(

Angry Birds? There's one game I haven't played yet… I'll probably try it later tonight. So far the only game I've played on the tablet is Minecraft Pocket Edition. Of course it's cheaper than the PC version ($7 U.S. on the Google App store I think). The game was vastly improved with the 9.0 update (now 9.5).

Too bad you need a phone/tablet with a ARM7 dual core at minimum (or better) to play the "infinite world" settings… :(

As for Angry Birds, should I go for the original, or for all the wacky other versions out there (such as Star Wars)? :)

And for the forums… I wonder why when I quote a post, then attempt to edit the post with the quote in it, the "/quote" portion is at the beginning… right before the quoted text instead of at the end? It's a good thing I know a little bit of HTML…

Posted at 1:10AM, Oct. 16, 2014

It's because the forums use a super crappy JavaScript editing thing whose sole purpose is to virtually sodomise us :(

The or first Angry Birds is the best one to start with. It's the best! The others are just for when you get bored of it.
Now I'm going to draw and watch Sword Art Online. I've heard it's OK.

Posted at 2:10PM, Oct. 16, 2014

Gotta say this about the Sims 4 children of Mortimer and Bella Goth… they're ADORABLE!!! Yet sad. Then again their father is mad scientist and their mother disappears all the time. Still possible for Cassandra to be engaged to the neighborhood cassonova Don Lothario, but the age difference will be… let's just say Cassandra is a teen in this version of The Sims, and Don is a full fledged adult (unlike in previous games where the age difference was much closer).

I have yet to recreate Frenchie Cassonova in this game. Kinda afraid to as in The Sims 3 the result was a lot of his children eventually populating the town…

As for my main Sim, Repyh Rezol is working his way to becoming a best selling author. Except he's not the unlucky guy that his spiritual predessesor Cipe Rezol was… The Goths are his friends after all (and a good source of inspiriation for his books). :)

*fights off the temptation to create a Drunkduck House*…

Posted at 6:10PM, Oct. 17, 2014

Saw something interesting in some newspaper comics recently. In this comic, a manager of the store featured in the comic is trying to hire some employees for some upcoming sales event (or is it just summer… I forget). Anyways, somehow she loses all her good potential hires to a rival store who seems to know which ones are the best and hires them on the spot. The manager suspects that her employee interviews are somehow being spied on…

Can this really be done legally? I've heard of employee poaching, but that's done while the employee is already working with the company (such as when I was offered a job with higher pay by a rival security company which I didn't take because they couldn't ensure that I'd work my 40 hours per week). This is before said employee candidate starts work.

All I can see that's dirty about it is this… The rival store didn't have to spend time and money on hiring people as that's already been done by the store that the candidate was attempting to sign up with. All they'd have to do is hire the best ones after the spying is done.

Posted at 7:10AM, Oct. 18, 2014

Yes that's perfectly legal, unless the other guys are breaking ileagal wiretapping laws. The thing is that its he employe's freedom to choose where they work. You an't interfere in that unless there's a type of non-competition contract in place, and even then it's a civil matter, not a legal one.

Posted at 5:10PM, Oct. 18, 2014

Lonnehart wrote:
Anyways, somehow she loses all her good potential hires to a rival store who seems to know which ones are the best and hires them on the spot. The manager suspects that her employee interviews are somehow being spied on…

Think about it this way, most if not all of the potential hires probably applied at both stores. So after the one does all the selecting and hiring the other just sends in a lackey to find out who was hired and make them an offer. You already had their resumes and applications you just had the other store do the interviews and winnowing out for you.

Human resource professionals are nicknamed "head hunters" for a reason. So who did they hire? Aha, let's find his resume in the stack… okay make him an offer. An old HS friend is one and she details the process on her FB page (under a cover name, but her old friends know who she really is)

Posted at 10:10PM, Oct. 18, 2014

Thanks for the clarification, guys. That got me wondering when the newspaper comic character was trying to figure out why all her potential candidates were suddenly being hired out by her competition. And this is why interviews are held in company HQ or someplace the company controls, and not at some mall eatery. :)

Found out that in The Sims 4 your Sim CAN die from intense emotions. Already seen screenshots of a naturally hotheaded Sim dying from way too much rage… And some who have died from being embarrassed. Makes me wonder… is it possible to die from being too happy? :)

Posted at 5:10AM, Oct. 19, 2014

Lonnehart wrote:
And some who have died from being embarrassed.

Is it from blood loss from those horrible nosebleeds?

Posted at 12:10PM, Oct. 19, 2014

^Well if he saw something he didn't like in anime he'd have to run in the opposite direction at breakneck speed~

Oh and speaking of anime…is anyone watching cross ange? Its code geass meets orange is the new black hentai edition. I love it.

———–

My dad has been doing mom's laundry since she works a lot. I mistakenly left my laundry basket out and he did all of it. Ruined three shirts. ._. I know he was trying to be nice but goddamn it you dont put rayon in the dryer. Now I have to think of some way to tell him not to do my laundry without it being totally awkward ungrateful daughter tier.

Posted at 8:10PM, Oct. 19, 2014

Baka and test has the best nosebleeds I think. It's a thing of beauty, exagerated to the very fullest! :D

@Skill- is that Cross Ange or Cross Angel? Whatever it is I will be sure to check it out!
I tried watching Sword Art Online, but it's boooooring - a bunch of kids get locked into a VR MMO game and how to play to the last level in order to escape. Persona4 seems to be an ok drama with weird techno supernatural murder mystery stuff going on so I'm giving it a chance.

Im also watching Great Teacher Onizuka at the moment. This one was a real find! I was surprised how enjoyable it is. It's about a thug ex-bike gang leader becoming a teacher in a middle school and trying to be the very best teacher he can. When it started it seemed pretty dodgey because there was all this talk of wating to get it on with the 16 year old girl students… but it gets out of that thankfully, and the only student teacher who mentions that he "got it on" with the students is fired and arrested apparently.
Anyway, it's good in a really dumb, stupid way. A lot of the humour comes from things seeming to go in a pervy, awkward direction but pulling back from that and going another way at the last minute. It has a pretty outdated look too for an anime, but that retro feel works for it too. And I like the way that not all the characters have the typical perfect anime look, there's a lot of variation.

The one bad side is that after about episoiode 14 or something it seems to lose its way a bit. It gets a little dull… I'm not sure why, but the credit visuals and music are different so it was probably the start of a new season. There's also CGI 3D stuff used at that stage (for things like cars), which is often a bad sign in anime, especially when it's not well done.

There was on unbeleiveable moment in one of the earlier episodes were a student faked up a dirty pic of his teacher and put it on a billboard: so you have a pic of this guy, totally nude, sitting on a wooden torture horse, with his hands tied above his head, and 3 dildos shoved up his bumb. Uncencored.
So that's the kind of humour it goes in for.

Posted at 2:10AM, Oct. 20, 2014

Pluto is a planet again? so the solar system now has what 12 or 13 planets? maybe…
So Lite-bites has come to a close, tough decision but it's been treading water for a while now.

Posted at 5:10AM, Oct. 20, 2014

Lite Bites? Noooo! D:

Making Pluto a planet doesn't mean we have to add the other nobody bulbous kupier belt pumpkins because the defiition isn't strict like that. Basically it's what we agree is a planet = a planet.
The same way Europe is considered a "continent" when it's part of the same landmass as Asia. :)

Posted at 7:10AM, Oct. 20, 2014

no, no, no, no and no…. europe is not part of rthe same landmass as asia… asia inhabits but a part of the europeon landmass, get it right ;-)
I do wonder if there are actually people out there who think that.
Pluto, dwark planets… etc… whatever you call them… I had always thought of it as simple as if it orbits the sun (or a star) its a planet. if it orbits a planet, it's a moon. dwarf planets are just a sub genre. of course this has no scientific reasoning beyond my own simple categorizing.

Posted at 7:10AM, Oct. 20, 2014

ozoneocean wrote:
The same way Europe is considered a "continent" when it's part of the same landmass as Asia. :)

It's even worse in the Western Hemisphere. There's some difference of opinon over what to call Central America (Middle America? I thought that was a social class in the USA? Confusion reigns) and why is Mexico part of North America, but not the rest of the isthmus? Isn't seperating a geographic entity at a national border a bit arbitary?
So sad over Lite Bites ending. There is hope that since Genejoke's other projects come back after long hiatus this might too?

Anime: The teacher one is an anime? My nephew is a huge fan of the manga. Got to see this. Have you seen Chromartie High School? Laugh out loud funny with some different character style. Plus there's a live action movie which is even funnier! They also did a great job with the dubbing and dialogue Westernizing it that makes it funnier than the Japanese sub-titles.

I'm still in the middle of D. Grey Man. Now is Kwasar a take-off on it? Allen and Sasha look nearly identical! But all that soma sucking was nearly more of a boob fetish than even I could handle. Ten years ago that would have been considered hentai.

Posted at 9:10AM, Oct. 20, 2014

GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) is one of the most popular manga series created, well, or at least it was ten years ago. In addition to the anime, there is even a live action J-Drama based on it but it focuses more on his relationship with another adult teacher than creeping on the students. I did not see too much of it, I was skimming through, but I recall this scene where an odd coworker at the school had an entire wall covered in pictures of one of the female teachers at the school and it was pretty sketchy.

–

Pluto was reinstated as a planet the same way it was removed in 2006. There was a vote taken and less than 5% of the world's astronomers were present and had their vote counted. There have been pro-Pluto advocates since 2006 who have been wanting to make it a planet since that vote. Most likely, the person responsible for voting Pluto out of the Solar System probably retired or stepped down and the next group of astronomers were eager to undo what he did (similar to the way the Catholic Church is handing all the clean-up from the post-Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI era). This is also a way to make planets a hot topic again for elementary kids since sending rockets into space is no longer a world stopping event. I think it is entertaining how Pluto is making the news. It feels like it belongs in a tabloid magazine that has an obsession to publish articles on its controversial planet status the same way the media loves to focus on the public lives of celebrities.

I, for one, have always been a fan of Pluto. I like how it crosses over with Neptune's orbit making it the eighth "planet". I also really like the mythology connected to it since Pluto is also named Hades, god of the underworld, it makes for interesting stories. Speaking of which, I really love the Hades and Persephone myth that I have been inspired to start working on the preliminary sketches for a new webcomic called "Persephone".