Archive for July, 2009

The Beasts of Delphos 3: Machinist’s Apprentice

Oh right, it’s Friday. Last chap­ter, Barris got very lucky, and took his bunk­mate Allis to share his for­tune. Here we see how he does as an appren­tice to the machine slaves. Previously we’ve heard oth­ers talk about how bright Barris is. He is intel­li­gent and obser­vant, and while these are desir­able traits in anyone, […]

A tryptich for the times

What we had: What we dreamed of: What we ended up with:

It’s a small town

and every­one knows everyone’s busi­ness. There was crack here. Not the good wet kind. The hard, fiery ter­ri­ble sort that leaves you shorn. She was eigh­teen. She was enjoy­ing the Fourth with her fam­ily, her mother and half-​​​​sisters and –broth­ers. She ran out­side her house, scream­ing, and the 9mm bul­let hit the back of her head […]

Post 501

Like you thought it would be something else.

Post number five hundred

This is it. Just thought you’d like to know. Thanks for tun­ing in. You poor, sad, life-​​​​not-​​​​having bas­tards. Now go some­where and get laid or some­thing, will you? It’s Friday night. Jesus.

One of these things is not like the others…

…which one is dif­fer­ent, do you know? Can you tell me which thing is not like the oth­ers? And I’ll tell you if it is so. You know it’s only a mat­ter of hours before the op-​​​​ed car­toons start, fea­tur­ing Cronkite, Armstrong and MJ together on the Moon. Only one of them doesn’t deserve to be lion­ized. You […]

The Beasts of Delphos 2: The Freeman

Continuing my online seri­al­iza­tion of the com­plete text of The Beasts of Delphos. In the first chap­ter, we were intro­duced to Barris and Allis, two young slaves who work in a mine on a planet called Delphos. They’re human — all inhab­i­tants of Delphos are — but they’re clearly liv­ing in a time quite a dis­tance from our own […]

It was a very stupid idea anyway.

When Bush 43 was still — eww — in office, news broke that cir­cum­cised men had a lower chance of con­tract­ing HIV infec­tion than their uncut coun­ter­parts when hav­ing unpro­tected sex. The “news” was treated as a major break­through and, as I recall, a lot of coun­sel­ing was done of uncir­cum­cised men, sug­gest­ing they have their fore­skins removed instead […]

Okay, Okay.

I’ll stop whin­ing. Like hell I will. 107 degrees — and stormy. Can you begin to imag­ine the kind of humid­ity that means?

Monotony, thy name be desert weather

Sure, it’s con­sis­tent — but I mean, come on. It’s weather like this that makes you feel a day lasts an entire month. What the fore­cast doesn’t show, of course, is the steady 20-​​​​mile-​​​​per-​​​​hour wind that blows in con­stantly from the west-​​​​southwest and feels about as com­fort­able as stand­ing beside an open kiln for 16 hours at a time. […]

TabletDraw: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Always, always always, my pre­ferred mode for illus­tra­tion is pen­cil and paper, with ink­ing. Of course in our ultra-​​​​modern age, that doesn’t always work; Illustrator has taught many to expect very clean, slick graph­ics that are more or less entirely vector-​​​​based. There’s noth­ing wrong with the look per se; cer­tainly I can work in that format […]

Yes. YES! Respect the n’t!

Nice to know I’m not the only one with a peeve or two. Via The Warehouse.