Scroobius Pics

Scroobius to the left, Dan Le Sac to the right.

"Mic? Check. iMac Laptop? Check. Laminated copy of the periodic table? CHECK"

One song was an enjoyable mish-mash of a half dozen characters Scoobius played, with slight costume changes for each.
When he busted out "Thou Shalt Always Kill", everyone had a great time chanting along.
Around the Camden Locks at night.

No seriously, the new Bjork album is realllly good - pass it on

I was thinking about leaving the site alone today, knowing that tomorrow will almost inevitably yield some blather (maybe even pictures!) regarding the Scroobius Pip show I'm going to tonight.

BUT

then I read this interview with Bjork. One aspect of her new album (Volta) which I can mention without this degenerating into a wank about how much pleasure her music gives me...is how it reflects something I've never seen in any of her previous work.

Politics.

Now you could muddy the waters by getting into the sexual "politics" of a lot of her work, particularly if you are one of those people who see no distinguishing difference between belief's, opinions and politics. So to clarify, I am talking about Politics with a capital P. One song addresses a suicide bomber while another is a rallying cry against colonialism and there are subtler undercurrents in a couple of other songs as well. It isn't so present as to make it a Political Album but it's rather noticeable when all that's come before has been more to do with nature, love, raw emotions and a host of other things from which you'd have to get rather metaphorical to draw any connecting lines to the news of the day.

It's nice to have been a fan of someone for ten years and still feel that new facets and sides are being revealed to you, that there are are still more to come. Coming back to the article that sparked this post, the specific portion which made me appreciate her even more is thus:

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Interviewer:There’s a lot of personal sentiment on Volta—I’m thinking of “Dull Flame of Desire” or “Wanderlust”—but there’s also a lot of politically oriented stuff, like “Declare Independence” (personal/political) and “Earth Intruders,” where you try to assert a kind of pre-civilized state. I’m curious what—besides the tsunami in Southeast Asia, which you mentioned in another interview—helped you return to this sentiment, which reminds me more of something like “Human Behavior” than anything else.

Bjork:Perhaps I am one of incredibly many that became a little pissed off with the Iraq war. And, especially since I am only spending half of my time in this country, it was pretty mind-blowing when Bush got reelected. On another note, I think that it is important to feel positive about globalism—it isn’t necessarily only an evil thing. I remember reading as a child, in music school, a quote from Stockhausen that in the next century (now) we will have killed all the animals and become only one nation, but it is going to be amazing, everybody communicating telepathically and floating into space between the stars. I don’t agree with him completely but I feel it is important to move on and stop clinging to old stuff. By moving forward and letting go, so much other stuff is going to come back to us like unite as one tribe and hopefully we’ll manage to get rid of organized religion.

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It's an easy guess which specific sentence amused me the most.

The new Bjork album is really good, pass it on.

Man, if there is one thing I'll need to learn for the webcomic (as well as some more HTML and drawing ability) it's patience. About ten seconds after I uploaded that sketch yesterday, I only then noticed a couple of things I really should have fixed (what is up with Ben's lopsided chin?) before inking. I'll leave it up since, in general, I'm taking a "Warts and all" approach to this site...I just hope it will serve as an appropriate lesson to myself to help me avoid repeating the series of events which lead to it.

1)I draw something
2)Not having done much drawing in the past, my threshold for becoming very pleased with myself is low. Thus, with a minimum of error checking, I decide that what I've done is pretty okay when in fact it contains a certain amount of crap - not unlike processed meat.

This may sound like I'm being a bit harsh on myself, but I'll want to be this watchful when I'm doing the comic since once it is up there it is up there. People won't feel inclined to come back later for a re-drawn version of a shoddy strip anymore than I'm going to want to go back and redraw it instead of doing a new one and progressing the story.

Meanwhile, I gather that there has been a bit of nonsense in Ontario regarding Facebook? Do any of you guys have anything to add?

I guess there are others than me who are less than fussed with this Hyper-Connected Generation bullshit. Reading that article, I actually found myself becoming a bit anxious before I reminded myself that I don't actually have to participate in the trend - well, any more than I currently am. Now I'm going to throw my non-existant hat into the jargon ring and coin a neo-hyper-dynamo-term(-o-fuck).

E-Hermit
Some desolate, wary soul who refuses to have a blog or a presence on MySpace, Facebook, Meebo, Bebo, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Technorati etc. Nor do they podcast or "Lifecast", publish wikipedia articles or have a Flickr or Photobucket account.

A month and change from my twenty-fifth birthday, when I generally stop being considered a "Youth" by numerous facets of British society, and I already am starting to feel an urge to sit on my lawn with a shotgun in my hands and a corncob pipe.

Addendum: Holy Crap Banksy Revealed!
Nabbing this from Roberto, I hearby present a link to another article where you can see the face of Banksy!

From the train this morning...

A BLOG POST IS BEING MADE*YOU ARE USING THE INTERNET*YOUR WIFE IS LEAVING YOU...

You know, when I used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine I often wondered why having so many basic things being announced by the computer didn’t piss people off more. “Well, I’m just glad I don’t live there!” I’d think.

See where this is going?

I could list the full litany but instead I’ll just mention the straw that broke the camel’s back. What woke me up half an hour early today? Why it was a megaphone loud, repeated announcement of “STAND OUT OF THE WAY, THIS VEHICLE IS BACKING UP. STAND OUT OF THE WAY, THIS VEHICLE IS BACKING UP” blasting from the garbage truck outside my house. From transit, to cameras, to trash to appliances….everything in England WILL TELL YOU WHAT IS UP AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT AND ALSO MAYBE WHAT YOU SHOULD DO IN CASE SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS.

THEN IT WILL TELL YOU AGAIN.

'Zis is, perhaps, most basic comic you are havink

The character is the fourth and final member of the Main Cast, a fellow named Ben who hasn't featured yet in the Bronze Age stories or in the little preview sketches. While I work on getting more strips done, I'll use this one as a template for experimentation and displaying the results.
Word bubbles and using layers to slide in photographes for the train windows will be the first things I screw around with, most likely. Anywho...still need to work on this and that, but I feel like progress is being made and this definitely topped up my interest/excitement for the project. I guess I could have taken more time on this but I was just so excited to be doing a proper strip instead of doodles and such.
Meanwhile I'm meeting MySpace Man to talk over the changes for the second draft of "Momentum" (AKA the scifi short with Parkour in it). I'm looking forward to it, partially because my collaborator claims he knows a Thai food place in Picadilly which sells all you can eat for three quid...but also because I'm really curious to see what our combined notes and ideas will gel into.