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August 20, 2005
Eric Burns-White: I promise to do this just once a year.
On August 20, 2004, things were in a state of flux for me.
That should be somewhat obvious, right? I mean, last year was a year of unmitigated change for me. In March of 2004 I had my gastric bypass, which included over three weeks of recovery, followed by a month or so where I had to ask friends over to pick boxes up off the floor for me, because I was on severe restriction for lifting things, lest I herniate the incision. The incision today doesn't seem to be in any danger of herniating -- it is a long, pink thing on my stomach that makes it look like I was knifed in a well choreographed scene from West Side Story.
In May of 2004, I agreed to leave my position of 6 years and accept a different one at the same school. I was moving away from Management, and back deeper into technology. In part, I hoped to preserve my sanity. The job I had before was miserable, with stress no human being could endure, from sources political and through lack of crucial support in necessary areas. More than once, while I had it, I considered suicide. But I never did get around to that.
The new job, systems administration and IT, had all the bits I liked from the old job without the miseries, and I found my moods vastly improving. I also found that I had more time -- I wasn't bringing my job home with me so often. I wasn't stressing. The job wasn't filling every minute of the day. And as a result, I had a yen to write more.
Writing is what I do. It's how I keep on an even keel. At those low points I mentioned above? I could barely write. The words wouldn't come. It wasn't a block -- it was a lack of willingness to write. When I could work up the gumption, I'd play City of Heroes but that was about it. Now, freed from the pressure cooker, I found my spirits rising, my natural optimism flowing... things seemed... well, okay. And so I started writing.
Primarily, I worked on a rather ambitious novel I'd been working on for years, called Theftworld. I still work on it, though it takes exactly the right mindset. I'm not sure when it'll be done, but when it is I suspect it'll be the novel that builds my reputation in SF. But I have a love of the essay form. When I had my Online Journal, it swiftly became a series of essays about life and about me. My Livejournal, on the other hand, had swiftly become a long series of memes and... well, highlights of webcomics. "Look!" I would say. "This is a funny picture of a dog! Laugh at the funny picture of a dog!"
So... it occurred to me that I had a Livejournal, which meant I had a venue for serious essay writing. But it was being cluttered with the detritus of the web. I mean, honestly, Memes? And while webcomics weren't detritus, the stuff I was writing wasn't exactly in depth criticism. I had no idea I had that level of criticism in me.
So. I decided on three courses of action. 1) I would reactivate my online journal, this time using Movable Type as an engine (in the old days, everything was uploaded by hand. I don't recommend this). In this journal, I would write essays of substance. 2) I would have my Livejournal, where I would keep the day to day stuff of my life, of interest only to me and a few of my friends. 3) I would have a third blog -- one devoted to the crap I found on the web and the amusing pictures of dogs I found. The least significant of the three, if you will.
That one I originally was going to call 'stripping-the-web.com,' off the old Bloom County 'stripper' pun. At the moment I was getting ready to register the site, however, I thought "well, why not try websnark. It's certainly been taken, but who knows? What the Hell?"
It hadn't been taken. So here we are.
The Mission Statement, posted August 20, 2004
Do we really need another commentary blog on the web? I mean, honestly. How many of these are we supposed to accept, willy nilly? And who actually says willy-nilly in casual conversation? Or is that getting off the subject.
Why are we here?
It's more than the core of Western Philosophy going back to the Greeks as refined through Augustine and briefly sidetracked through the Asharites who figured we can't know the answer anyway so why ask the question? It's a justification for effort: the effort I put into creating websnark.com, and the effort you put into reading it.
Well, I've always been snarky and opinionated. My tribal totem is the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons (though a friend always claimed my avatar should be the Sea Captain. I don't know why. He also thought I was most like Nate from Overboard. I'm generally polite, though. An outlet where the ground rules state explicitly I'm being an opinionated bastard can only be a good thing for my psyche.
And besides, like a lot of websurfers ("surf" the "web." Is that hopelessly 90's or what? Should we have an updated phrase for the 21st century? Like "powerslacking?") I consume an absurd amount of web content every day. I read over sixty comic strips on the web. I read news sites and commentary sites and livejournals and weblogs. We live in an era where your office computer and your living room television have exactly the same capacity to entertain, with only differences in production values.
Looking back over my Livejournal for the past couple of years, I realize the ratio of content (defined as me bitching about my life, which is what you do in a Livejournal. It's in the terms of service) to "hey, look at this funny picture of a drawn dog" posts is pretty lame.
So. Why not put the dog pictures into their own shiny website, complete with automated systems for posting and automated comment systems so you, the reader, can agree that the picture of the drawn dog is in fact funny.
That kind of answers why I'm here and what I'm doing. But it doesn't really get into why you're here and what you're doing.
I have no answer for that. I mean, I don't think you're my mom, who wouldn't be reading this garbage anyway.
Whatever. Thanks for coming.
So. 365 days of writing. Well, I didn't post on every single day (though I went a very long time when I did), and after Wednesday came on board a good chunk of the writing is hers, but still. Standing from the vantage point of a year following, I'm able to look at the whole.
Let's talk statistics. This specific post is the eight hundred and eighty-eighth post on Websnark. The previous eight hundred and eighty seven posts have accrued nine thousand, seven hundred and thirty six comments. Just looking at text without any graphics at all, the writing for Websnark comes to eight point five megabytes. That constitutes one million, four hundred and ninty-six thousand, six hundred and forty-one words, not counting the words in this particular snark. So, call it one point five million words. Broken into standard typewritten pages, that becomes roughly five thousand, nine hundred and eighty seven pages of writing. Or, an average of about 16 and a half pages a day.
Wow. Not bad for the blog I wasn't going to actually care about, huh?
The thing is, I found the format fascinating, right from the get go. I was cheerful about it, and interested in it... and there wasn't much to say about my life in the livejournal and I had no "essays of substance" to put into the journal, and after a little while I discovered that I was writing essays of substance. They were just happening over here.
My expectations for Websnark were, at best, modest. I thought some of my friends would read it. Maybe my father. I figured I'd mention it in a couple of places, and maybe I'd get some links out of the deal.
The most people who ever showed up in one day? 213,000 people (by Unique IP numbers). That was from a Penny Arcade link. On average, we vary between 30 and 54 thousand folks these days. Links from the major sites always spike those numbers up. On the whole, the readership is stable, otherwise. Possibly trending downward. I've maintained for a while that we've found the audience we're going to find, and readership is only going to decline from here.
The only advertising I've ever done for Websnark is on Comixpedia, and that was because it was part of my compensation package for writing a column for them. When Gossamer Commons came out, I switched my banner ads for that.
The entire population of my home town could be reading Websnark, stop reading tomorrow, and I would never even notice the difference.
Where did everybody come from? I get asked that. "How'd you build your audience?"
Fuck if I know.
I know the two points it started from, however. The two links that were the difference between keeping a readership in the two figures and hitting five figures as a matter of course, a year later.
The first is Scott Kurtz. When I posted one of the dumber things I've ever done -- the PvP Update Pool (based on the premise that someone who made sure there was a comic strip up each and every day should also... I dunno, do it by a stupid timeclock or something), my friend Mason sent the link to Scott Kurtz. He was amused -- thank Christ -- and posted it to his forum. I actually said "yes, it's just a joke. Heh. Um... heh," there in the forum. The forum regulars regarded me as... well, like a nine year old kid who just shouted "Doodie" in church, expecting everyone to laugh.
However, Kurtz apparently took the time to read more stuff. And he happened to read, a couple of days later, the snark that was probably the best one I had done to that point -- a comparison of Miranda and Jade from PvP, done on August 26, less than one week into the life of Websnark.
This particular snark was also significant because it referenced Geek Women -- Your Little Standards Compliant Fantasy, which was an excellent Comixpedia article. One that probably informed the development of what Websnark turned into as much as anything.
That essay's writer? One Wednesday White. Who to my knowledge first became aware of Websnark because of that link.
Scott Kurtz read that particular snark... in the same day he got savaged (unfairly, in my opinion) in a book review that was less about the quality of Kurtz's compilation and more about how pissed the reviewer was that Kurtz poked fun at alternative comics in it. So he was feeling pretty low, and here was an essay that not only seemed to like PvP, but also put some thought into it. It addressed characterization issues and the like. It... well, treated the medium with a certain amount of respect.
That made Kurtz feel better in a day when he was feeling pretty bad.
So he linked to it. On his front page. Just briefly. "Check out Websnark's detailed deconstruction of PvP and the character development of Miranda and Jade." (The literary geek in me wishes to point out it's actually a Compare-and-Contrast essay with a little Mythopoetic criticism thrown in for good measure, not any sort of deconstructionism. But no one but me cares about that.)
And thousands upon thousands of people followed that link.
It's safe to say that that moment changed my life.
From PvP's Blog, posted October 12, 2004. Not the same thing I mentioned above. But it made me feel good so I want to reprint it here. Used without permission, so Kurtz gets to beat me up if he wants.
Websnark gets me.Everytime I get a high concept for the strip, I am always fearful that it will be lost on my audience. It's difficult sometimes because I have those pure moments, when all the pistons are firing and I really come up with something I feel to be inspired...then people email me because they don't get it.
But websnark gets me. His recent breakdown of Miranda was dead on the mark, and now he's exposed the thin veil covering my villain, Max Powers.
If you've ever wondered "Why does everyone hate Max? What did he ever do to the PvP gang?" You need to read websnark's latest article.
Don't think it's a Kurtz love-fest over there, however. He's critical of me where appropriate. I always say that I'm not as cool, nor as much of an ass as those on the net would indicate I am. Websnark has me nailed.
The other link that really changed Websnark -- and changed my own views about it -- didn't bring the same avalanche of short term readers that Scott Kurtz's did. However, it had at least as profound an impact on the site, and what Websnark is today. It certainly shaped what I did with the site. And it certainly blew my mind.
It came from Lore Sjñberg, the brilliant mind behind the Book of Ratings, the Slumbering Lungfish, Lore Brand Comics and one half of the now defunct but still hysterical Brunching Shuttlecocks. Sjñberg is one of those people you just end up instantly respecting, because he's so naturally, effortlessly funny. And he attracts a highly discriminating, highly amused crowd.
His link to me included some of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me. I'll quote some of them here, because... well, it's a retrospective. That's what we do. That's what we're supposed to do.
One thing I like about Eric Burns is that he's firm with his criticisms, but he's enthusiastic with his praises. The Web as a whole came of age in the Ironic Nineties, and it still retains a lot of that "must be critical to be cool" aura. With a name like "Websnark," you'd expect endless essays on how this comic or that just feeds pabulum to the masses and the only comic worth reading is something in a corner of Keenspace that nobody else likes -- or at least it used to be worth reading, back before the author sold out.
But no, instead of a bitchy aesthete, Burns comes across as a tough-but-fair coach or English teacher, the sort you see in TV movies. When you cross him, he's livid, but he's not just being livid to score cool points. He's livid because he cares, and when a comic does something right, you can tell how thrilled he is to be here, now, at this point in history, when strip comics are moving into new territory.
That means a lot to me. (And wasn't the first comment to make me wonder if calling this blog 'websnark' was perhaps not a good idea, since I don't in fact tend to be snide. More than one person has avoided the site because they've assumed it would be chock full of negativity.) Since reading that, I've striven -- not always successfully -- to live up to it, as well. I want to be the tough-but-fair English teacher, thrilled when someone does something great, but dedicated to the idea that we all can do our best, damn it.
It's not up to me to say whether or not I've succeeded in that, by the way. Nor is that necessarily what Wednesday seeks to do with her part of this whole affair. But it's in the back of my head when I'm snarking something. So take that for what it's worth.
When Sjñberg linked me, it didn't cause an avalanche of readers to come to my site. However, it did cause two discrete groups of readers to take notice. One was a certain kind of cartoonist -- Lore Sjñberg is one of those folks that webcartoonists read for the same reason the rest of us read... well, webcomics. And that (along with the Kurtz link) got webcartoonists talking about Websnark, linking to Websnark, and visiting Websnark.
The other thing Sjñberg attracted to the site -- more than Kurtz's link did -- was the kind of people who commented on snarks. Who did so intelligently and humorously and with a strong critical facility. The kind of folks more than willing to call bullshit on me, but do so in a way that made me think "wait -- this is bullshit.'
In short... Kurtz gave me an initial audience. Sjñberg gave me an initial community.
And the commenters on Websnark full on rock. There's a dedicated cadre of folks who clearly love the site, love what Weds and I do, but never feel like they have to agree with us just to agree with us. No, they disagree. They tear into us. They make fun of us where necessary. But they do it intelligently. They do it creatively. They do it well. I love them all. I really do. If you ever wonder how to absolutely make Weds's or my day? Comment on something we wrote. It blows our tiny little minds.
The initial audience and community that formed out of PvP and Slumbering Lungfish's links had one distinguishing characteristic, by the by. There were some fans of webcomics who stayed around. There were some fans of the writing who stayed around. But a surprisingly large number of webcartoonists started regularly reading. This surprised me. This surprised me a lot. And it made me realize that there weren't that many people out there doing what I was doing -- offering up critiques of the medium and discussions of the individual executions.
I had my lexicon -- which always was more based on me liking to use metaphors than anything else. Cerebus Syndrome. First and Ten. You Had Me and You Lost Me. And so on, and so forth. And I started seeing those references elsewhere. And more links began showing up. More people started pointing us out. More people started talking about Websnark. Joey Manley said, and I quote, "Websnark.com is the talk of webcomicsland right now. Everybody whoÌs anybody (yes, IÌm an elitist Ò and so are you, actually) is reading it." Things began to really catch on fast. Readership began to swell.
And... and this was a new thing for me... people started knowing my name. I go to cons, and people show up to see me. I had a beautiful, beautiful girl -- an artist, as it turns out -- go to a panel I was part of at Arisia, learn it was the Websnark guy, and squeal with joy.
Squeal with joy.
If you think I was unused to beautiful women squealing when they saw me before this point, you're absolutely right. I had another girl at that con -- also beautiful -- ask me excitedly if I could say hi to her sister in Websnark. So, you know, I did. When I went to the Dumbrella Meet and Greet, Phillip Karlsson recognized me before I recognized him. Phillip Karlsson, of Goats, knew who I was. So did Jon Rosenberg.
That still gets me star struck, by the way. I try not to name drop, but this is an anniversary, so let me throw out some of the people I've had contact with -- in some cases gotten to know, in other cases just gotten comments or messages from, and everything in between -- over the past year: Aeire, John Allison, Darren Bleuel, T Campbell, Maritza Campos, Mitch Clem, Kelly J. Cooper, D.J. Coffman, Chris Crosby, Alexander Danner, Greg Dean, Johanna Draper Carlson, Kaja Foglio, Paul Gadzikowski, Shaenon Garrity, William George, Ghastly, Amber "Glych" Greenlee, Casey Grimm, Brad J. Guigar, Lea Hernandez, Greg Holkan, Steve Jackson (who knew of me before then, but still. Dude), Jeph Jacques, Jerry Holkins, Phillip Karlsson, Dave Kellett, Mike Krahulik, Scott Kurtz, Josh Lesnick, Joey Manley, Scott McCloud, Mckenzee, Randy Milholland (who knew of me before then, thanks to Superguy, but still), Eric Milliken, Meghann Quinn, Jon Rosenberg, Jeffrey Rowland, Brandon Sonderegger, Paul Southworth, Tom Spurgeon, R. Stevens, Bob Stevenson, Kristofer Straub, Paul Taylor, Ping Teo, Steve Troop, John Troutman, Ursula Vernon, Andy Weir, David Willis, Christopher B. Wright, and everyone else who I should have namedropped up there but forgot -- it's not you, it's me.
I should point out, not all the people in that list like Websnark or like me. That isn't a list of endorsements by them. That's a list of the names who, when I look at, make me say "holy Fuck, [X] has heard of me?"
Some of the folks up there, I've gotten privileged to know better than others. DJ Coffman and I have had some spirited e-mail exchanges. The same with William G and I. I've spoken and written back and forth several times with Joey Manley (and I pay him to host Gossamer Commons, and very likely will be moving Websnark itself to his servers in the next year, for financial reasons and because I like him). I've gotten to serve on panels with and learn to really appreciate Alexander Danner and Kelly J. Cooper (the latter I've had some time to socialize with). I've had dinner several times with Randy Milholland. I've had extended e-mail and other conversations with Shaenon Garrity -- who I also got to tromp all over big chunks of San Francisco with, and who gave me some of the coolest things I've ever been given. I've been able to Skype-talk with Scott Kurtz several times -- in fact, when he was being interviewed for Digital Strips, he actually thought to yank me into it. I mean, wow. And so on, and so forth. Yeesh, what a suckup.
But as blown away as I am by the above, you catch yourself looking at the people who haven't linked you, or commented, or acknowledge you. And it's a list that never grows smaller. You get linked by Scott Kurtz, and you think "how come Penny-Arcade never linked me?" You get linked by Penny-Arcade, and think "why hasn't Scott McCloud ever linked me?" You get linked by Scott McCloud, and you wonder about Boing Boing. Or Mark Evanier. Or Peter David. Or Wil Wheaton. Or Slashdot. Or CNN. Or the BBC. Or the Presidential State of the Union. And what's a guy got to do to get Pete Abrams to notice him, anyway?!?!
It's unending. It's a treadmill. It's a mug's game. In the end, you have to accept -- as impossible as it is -- that not everyone's going to notice you. And you have to get to the point where you no longer care. It's wild and fantastic when someone you know and respect says something -- agreeing or disagreeing -- with something you wrote. You have to take that for the compliment it is and move on, and not worry about the people who don't acknowledge you.
Besides, as wild as all of the above is... it's nothing compared to the commenters.
God, so many commenters. I'd try to list all of the ones that mean so much to me, who've said or acknowledged or disagreed or made this place what it is. But it's so easy to forget people. There have been hundreds of commenters. How do I avoid forgetting someone basic? Start throwing names out (Kate Sith, Shadowydreamer, Larksilver, Spatchcock, gwalla) and you start remembering all the ones you've forgotten (whoa, wait -- what about PatMan, Lucastd, Darkstar and miyaa? Dude! You forgot SeanH! And JackSlack! You forgot Robert Hutchinson! Jesus -- you forgot John Bankert! You slept on his floor for a summer, you moron! And Frank, Lisa, Seanna, Becki and Karen! And Mason! And what about all the folks who were heavy commenters in the beginning, but moved on? Huh? Centurion13, say! What about Flit? Flit hasn't commented for a while, but-- yeesh, man, where's EDG? Where's Robotech_Master? Where's Dave Van Domelen? Or Snowspinner, or TRPeal! Or Forsytheferret, or or or or... Yeeesh.)
You get the point -- and if I didn't mention you and you think I should have? That's because I should have. There's just so many names. So many people. And it's that foundation that's built this whole thing up.
There's been low points. Bad points. Missteps. Mistakes. Drama. (Oh Christ, has there been drama.) There have been times I've been ready to close the site down, and times when I've kept the right attitude. But we've also made a difference. We've had influence. We've had amazing things happen.
It's why Wednesday White is here. We got to be friends, and she offered to post something for me once, and from there I gave her the keys. And she's an equal partner in this now. I don't just up and do things without bouncing them off her. She keeps me level. And she helps me deal with Internet Fame, which is still an odd thing to me. (Wednesday -- who will kill me for bringing this up -- knows from Internet fame. When the Web was still a newborn babe, struggling to find itself, and the King of the Online World was Usenet, Wednesday actually had Usenet groups devoted to her fandom. When I mentioned her to my old guard friends and cohorts, they all knew who she was, knew her from way back, knew she rocked. Which of course she does.)
And all of this got me a Webcomic. Greg Holkan -- whose Nemesis is fantastic, came on board with me to help launch and create Gossamer Commons. And we've really hit a stride in chapter two. The press on it's been fantastic. The pacing has ramped up. Life is good. Really, really good.
And, more to the point, Websnark helped spawn the dialogue.
The dialogue is all important in art. It's criticism -- in the truest sense of the word. The understanding and analysis of what is there. The placing of art within the cosm of its fellows. The distillation and discovery of new truths from interpretation. I'm not going to claim to be the first webcomics critic, nor anywhere near the best, but through luck and timing I managed to become one of the better known. It got me two gigs that mean the world to me -- writing for Comixpedia, and contributing to the Webcomics Examiner -- and it's spawned others trying to do the same thing. Tangents, by Robert Howard. I'm Just Saying, by Phil Khan. Journey Into History (and the HB Comic Blog) by Bob Stevenson. Webcomic Finds by Ping Teo. The Digital Strips Blog and Podcast, by Zampson and Daku. And many, many others.
I'm not saying I'm the reason those guys are doing what they're doing. I'm not saying Websnark by Burns and White was necessary for all those other voices. But we clearly had an impact. We clearly caused some folks to read what we wrote and say "wait a second -- I can do that!" And that's monumental. That's massive. That is good for comics in general. That is good for webcomics in particular. The dialogue improves everything. And if my making this blog a year ago helped that... well, that's about as fine a thing as I could hope for.
There's so much else to talk about. So much more to say. So much more to hope for. And there's the future. I don't expect our readership to grow, but I also think we're going to be around for a good long time. I've gone from a "I can't see why I'd ever sell merchandise" position to actively selling tee shirts (and the Snarky shirt should be up for sale tomorrow, just like the Strunk and White shirts should be in from the printer next week, in time to be shipped out to all the good people of the land.)
Oh, that reminds me -- I haven't talked about Snarky -- Ursula Vernon's little Snarkasaurus, created when I asked for a self-caricature for my Comixpedia column (Ursula figured she hadn't seen me, so I might be a comic-gnawing dinosaur), which became the mascot for the site. Or the Snarkoleptics -- created by Mckenzee after he coined the term to convince me I actually had a fandom. However, the Snarkoleptics have grown and flourished as a more general Webcomics community, devoted more to the dialogue than to me. And that's astoundingly cool.
There's so much I haven't talked about. So many bits of evolution, so many epiphanies I've had over the past year. I haven't discussed You Had Me, and You Lost Me, and the very different reactions that Fred Gallagher, Jeff Darlington and David Willis had to those essays. I haven't talked about the Shortbreads. Or the astounding feeling I got when I saw one quoted in a Diamond solicitation. Or the overall sense of failure I took away from them.
I haven't talked about so much that there remains to talk about. Even though I want to. There's too much to distill. Too much to quote. Too many people to thank. I haven't talked about my family's take, or how stunned I was when my sister started reading Websnark and my father started reading Gossamer Commons. I haven't talked nearly enough about Wednesday.
Wednesday.
Yeah.
It's been a phenomenal, exciting, frightening, wonderful year. I haven't got the words to express my thanks to everyone, to all of you reading this. I'm astounded at how far we've come. I'm astounded at how big this became. I'm astounded that you guys haven't figured out I'm a hack from New Hampshire with a big mouth.
But I'm also proud. I'm so very, very proud.
Thanks, everyone.
And in case you're wondering? This is post 888. It is 5,205 words long. Which means our collective word count, as of the moment I hit "submit," will be 1,501,846. In one year.
Dude.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:24 AM | Comments (109)
August 19, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Am I weird because I actually like burnt casserole?
(From For Better or For Worse. Click on the thumbnail for full sized "vous semblez fatigu».")
There has been a ton of speculation about where Lynn Johnston has been going with her comic strip. Having Liz be rescued from rape at the end of last week had people on the edge of their seats. There was a palpable sense of disappointment, however, when it turned out to be Anthony who had rescued her. "Aw man," the sense seemed to say, if senses in fact could talk. "This is all just setting up the Liz/Anthony Twue Wuv." Many people wished it had been her father who rescued her. Or Lawrence. Or a woman. And then they let Howard run off (after "apologizing.") It seemed a letdown.
Then, Anthony took her home... and started acting disturbingly. He started... well, hitting on Liz. Telling her how he feels about her. This is a woman who was assaulted like four minutes before, her world shaken as a sexual predator tried to take her by force, and now the man who rescued her is clearly suggesting adultery to her.
When she denies having any interest in being, as she put it, a home wrecker, Anthony wails that "I have no home!" And takes her to the park, and vents about how his home life is collapsing and his marriage is going with it and everything is going south. And he asks her -- I swear -- to "wait for him."
This again riled people up. "What's she going to say?" "I bet she tells him to go to Hell!" "No, she's going to agree! That sucks!" Et cetera. I was one of them.
And then, the very next day, we have today's strip.
And Liz is at home... staring at the wall. Shell shocked. Anthony's protestations of love and enjoinments to "wait for him" haven't inspired either devotion or disgust in Liz. Instead... she is numb. She has learned that yes indeed she's going to need to file a police report against Howard. She isn't titillated or flattered by Anthony -- she's just had her overall trauma increased. Now, she can't even cook dinner right. The face we see in panel 1 and 2 is blank. The world has worn it out.
So... Lynn Johnston took a path none of us expected. She actually treated this like it'd happen in the real world.
In the real world, someone like Anthony might be dumb or upset enough to do what he did. And in the real world, someone who's had that many emotional blows in a short amount of time... well, withdraws. Pulls back. Just gets tired. Liz hasn't had a chance to react yet, and now she's overwhelmed.
And there's even some humor in today's strip, which is remarkable all by itself.
I'm impressed as Hell by the way Johnston has handled this. I'm impressed that she was willing to eschew the romantic or the super resilient heroine route with Anthony's protestations, and instead just have Liz be profoundly affected and drained. I'm impressed that the repercussions of what's happened will move forward. I'm impressed that yes, Howard's actions still mean Liz has to endure Hell. It's not simple over. And I'm impressed that Johnston managed to put a punchline in.
This is how it's done when it's done well, people. This is how sensitive and ugly subjects make it onto the newspaper page.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:48 PM | Comments (6)
August 17, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Wow. I get to trash the New York Times. And I'm not even a conservative.
So, the New York Times has a piece on webcomics. And the best thing we can say about the article is nowhere in it were the words "Pow, Zap, Sock! Comics Go Onto The Web!" Don't laugh -- the last serious, in depth piece on webcomics I saw in a mainstream newspaper (well, on the mainstream newspaper's site) was on USA Today, and it ended -- coverage of the Small Press Expo, if I remember correctly -- with an interactive question. "WHAT SUPERHERO WOULD YOU BE! Write us at...."
However, Sarah Boxer's article is pretty poor, all told. Not because her conclusion is necessarily wrong or her thesis is bad. No, it comes down to this: Boxer's research would barely qualify for a Freshman Comp essay, much less a piece of journalism in a newspaper of record. She seems to have drawn her information off of several Comics Journal articles, read Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, and looked at the Web Cartoonists Choice Awards.
Well, at least she dipped her toe into webcomics before declaring it a failed experiment.
Her conclusions are threefold -- one, that infinite canvas doesn't seem to be a revolution. (Which is no big shock.) Two, that the better Flash gets, the more the resulting Flash Comics resemble animation instead of comic art. (Also true.) And three, there's no good way to make money on the web -- why, people are actually selling subscriptions.
Yeah.
And she quotes Gary Groth a lot. Which is like trying to talk seriously about Evolution versus Intelligent Design, and quoting a lot of William Dembski in the process.
Not that I really expect she spoke to Gary Groth (though she quotes him as though she had). The Fantagraphics blog points to a series of articles on the Comics Journal website where Groth and McCloud sparred on the state of Webcomics. (Articles, I would add, from some years ago.) I don't know if she solicited Groth for quotes or not. From the tone of the article, it's clear she didn't solicit McCloud. Or go in depth into what Webcomics are, what's been successful artistically, what's been successful financially, and why.
She argues she couldn't read Narbonic -- whose name she clearly got from the WCCA -- because it's behind a subscription wall. That's potentially a good argument when comparing Narbonic's merits to, say, Nukees, since Nukees is free-supported-by-advertising. But her implicit comparison is to print, not other webcomics models... and when's the last time you got an issue of Eightball for free? When's the last time you picked up any Fantagraphics book for free? Hell, when's the last time you could pay three dollars and get the last six issues of Eightball for free?
(You could arguably go to a library and possibly -- possibly -- read Eightball for free. You can also go to the Modern Tales site and read several Narbonic storylines for free. And you can also purchase two volumes of Narbonic in print. Maybe not at your local Barnes and Noble -- but I check the graphic novel section of B&N every time I go in, and there's not a lot of Eightball back issues there either.)
The effect is an article on webcomics written by someone who hasn't actually read the comics in question. (She mentions only one webcomic unreservedly positively -- Count Your Sheep. Which she could read for free. Nice to know the Times won't spring for a three dollar one month subscription for her expense account. And also nice to know that she didn't bother to check around for... oh, I don't know... Webcomics resources to use in research.)
Of course, in talking about making money -- and the failures of webcomics to fulfill that promise -- she manages to not talk about PvP, Penny Arcade, Sluggy Freelance, User Friendly, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Something Positive, or much of anything else. In other words, she doesn't know the first thing about the debate of commercial success in webcomics, much less the topic. She doesn't know the Keenspot model versus Modern Tales versus Blank Label versus independent sites. She doesn't know the argument of advertising support versus merchandising support versus subscription versus micropayments. And it's not like it's hard to find evidence of those debates. Just going to Scott McCloud's website would do that.
Finally, she misses a key, crucial point about the artistic side of webcomics. A point vastly more significant than infinite canvas, or Flash. A point which, believe it or not, directly touches on Gary Groth's opinions of us.
Webcomics frees us from Gary Groth. Just like they free us from DC, Marvel, Image and all the rest.
I know -- we're not supposed to lump Gary Groth in with the establishment. However, for decades Fantagraphics has been the eight hundred pound gorilla in the Independent Comics Scene, and Gary Groth in particular has been the arbiter of what is "truly worthy indy" versus the unwashed and unworthy. And, as with all such things, once you become institutionalized you stop really being indy. Groth and Fantagraphics have done tremendous things for the art of cartooning -- anyone who denies that is flat out wrong. Fantagraphics brought us Los Bros. Hernadez. They keep Crumb in print. They keep Dan Clowes in print. And they bring back the treasuries of truly great comic strips of the past. I owe Groth several drinks for The Complete Peanuts alone.
But... I don't read a lot of the Fantagraphics comics line. I don't like a significant portion of the Fantagraphics comics line. I respect those comics, but that's very, very different from liking them.
And sure, I like some of them. I groove on Love and Rockets. I sometimes go through cravings for R. Crumb. I get a hoot out of Angry Youth Comics. But they're not my bread and butter.
And when my only serious source of independent comics was Gary Groth's company, I spent a lot more money on men and women in spandex punching things. Because they didn't hold me.
But these days? I read very little in spandex, and a ton of independent comics. Independent comics that are funny, and poignant, and rich, and deep. Gag-a-day four panel strips and graphic novels one page at a time. And Gary Groth doesn't get to decide what's good and what sucks about them, any more than DC or Marvel do. I get to decide, and those comic creators get to create.
Does that mean there's reams of crap out there? Sure. Of course it does. That's the price of doing business without a significant entry barrier. But it also means there's glorious work out there. Do you think Fantagraphics would have printed Narbonic? Or Yirmumah? or Something Positive? Do you think Scott Kurtz would have an Image book today without the web?
Do you see a Fantagraphics logo on Same Difference and Other Stories? Because I sure don't. And if you don't realize that Derek Kirk Kim's on the threshold of being what Dan Clowes was for the '80s and '90s, you're not paying attention. And where did he come from, get his audience, build his reputation and then break out into print all over the place?
Oh yeah, right here on the web.
Which is also where I discovered James Kolchalka. Who also isn't published by Fantagraphics, I would add. (I wonder if Top Shelf Comix has taken the print indy crown away from Fantagraphics in general, these days. But that's another essay.)
Thousands of people read a comic strip I write, three times a week. Thousands of people. Do you think Gary Groth would publish Gossamer Commons? It's so not his kind of thing it's funny. No one probably would, right now. But we'll have a good shot at a book publication the way things are going now.
Tens of thousands of people are reading this essay. Tens of thousands. Do you think, a year ago (specifically, a year ago this Saturday) Gary Groth would give me a Comics Journal column? Do you think he'd give me one today?
Of course not. And why should he? Why should he publish my comic strip? Why should he publish any of the stuff I mentioned? He clearly doesn't like it.
But I do. And a lot of you do too. And we get to read it.
And that's a Hell of a lot more impressive than animation or canvas size.
It'd be nice if Sarah Boxer had figured that out.
C-, Miss Boxer. Coherently written, but poorly researched. Next time, know your topic before filing.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:06 AM | Comments (91)
August 16, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Seriously. How does one manage to miss the hole that many times?
So, I'm typing this at FedExKinko's -- a place that once upon a time I worked at, before FedEx made the whole "we're going to go public someday" line they fed us in the 90's bunk. It's still essentially Kinko's, though instead of either blue prison shirts or (my store's policy) good work shirts and ties (ignoring for the moment that we worked with equipment that makes a tie a life-threatening proposition) they get to wear kind of nice rugby shirts now. So that's a step forward.
I'm here to get my printout of Truth & Justice bound. I've also ordered a Print On Demand copy, because... well, because I wanted to. I do crap like that. But having printed it two-up to a page, I figured doing a spiral bind was a good idea.
So here I am, in a day when we had an office outing, including mini-golf. I had never played before. I was doing quite well despite that, until we got to the paddlewheel hole and I came in with an 11. Par 2. I shoot an 11.
Things decline from there. I finish dead last of our office, at a "can you even see" score of 31 over par. Bearing in mind the best player was 7 over par, and the average was about 15... yeah, I suck hard. But it was a heap of fun, and beat actually working by a long shot.
And I'm here. At FedEx Kinko's. Which once was "the new way to Office," and I get my now wire-bound book. And I thumb through it, and hit the advertisements at the end of the book. I see the other Atomic Sock Monkey works. And I see some banners for Something Positive, Warehouse 23 and Rhymes with Witch (which is Milholland's non-S*P merchandise site). And then I notice an ad for Greg Holkan's own webcomic, [nemesis]....
And I blink three times, because there's an ad for Gossamer Commons sitting there.
It had honestly never occurred to me that, since Greg is as much a part of Gossamer Commons as I am, of course he'd advertise it as part of his free ad space in the back.
It's... oddly tangible. Oddly real, to see the ad sitting there, with Keith and Sonata. It's one thing to see this stuff on the web. And I supposed if I'd noticed the ads in the back of the PDF, that'd be another. But to see it in print in front of me....
It feels significant, somehow. Like the bomb could drop tomorrow but there would still be tangible evidence that once there was a webcomic that features fairies and slackers and Jazz music. And I had no idea it was in there.
(And, accordingly, it had no impact on my opinions. I love this game. I've been working on some short stories that have super hero type characters in them, and this is the most flexible system I've ever seen for just... I dunno, designing those characters effectively.)
And I feel good today, physically. All in all, after a long day or four, full of stress and headaches and annoyances... today feels like we rounded a corner. Today feels downright good.
And I feel like I was due.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:31 PM | Comments (7)
Eric Burns-White: Okay, CBC day is over. However, Peejee constitutes Canadian Content.
(From Something Positive. Click on the thumbnail for full sized backstory!)
It's interesting, the mail I sometimes get.
See, people like to engage in the dialogue, and that's cool. I do too. And they like to point stuff out that perhaps I haven't noticed. And I like that too, because sometimes I honestly haven't noticed the stuff they're pointing out. But sometimes, I notice a little more than they do, because I have less of a life than they do.
And so, when I see a strip like today's Something Positive (for some value of "today." It's technically August 9th's strip, but Milholland's always good at getting caught up with missing strips), I feel a sense of dread, because I know I'm going to get five or six letters on a basic theme: "oh wow -- check out Something Positive today! It's great! Randy's clearly getting ready to introduce new characters and so he's laying groundwork! I bet he doesn't think we'll notice."
They're heartfelt e-mails, and it almost breaks my heart to send back that no, he laid the groundwork long ago, and you didn't actually notice. This is one of the things Milholland does best, actually. And he does a lot of things well.
We have a picture here, with old friends long forgotten. Like "Tom," and "Carrie," and "Mikeala." (Well, Carrie's not actually in the picture, but you know what I mean.) Taken from a couple of years before the start of the series. Only, we've heard Tom's name before. I think we've heard Carrie's name before (and possibly even in connection with breaking up with Tom.) And Mikeala's name has come up before too -- if I remember correctly, she's one of the string of girlfriends who cheated on Davan. (I think she was Bedside Diplomat in this string of scenes from Davan's past.)
The thing is, it's entirely possible we will get a string of strips set in '99 or 2000, showing us how this rag tag group of adventurers found their footing, with a black haired Peejee and a Davan not quite so worn to the bone by God's hatred of him. Much the same as we see occasional strips of high school with Scotty and Rose. Or twenty years before that, letting Faye and Fred's history grow.
Something Positive isn't linear. It's like a collection of stories, told around a theme. It's frighteningly close to something Garrison Keillor would write, if one cuts out anything heartwarming and teaches the Lutherans of Lake Wobegon to say "fuck." And as excited as people get when he adds "something new" to the fabric... I get more impressed when I realize how deeply he's buried the threads he's now exposing.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:26 AM | Comments (11)
August 15, 2005
Wednesday Burns-White: [w] They could also rerun old episodes of The Parka Patrol. God, I miss The Parka Patrol.
It occurs to me that the CBC Radio One managers are missing a tremendous opportunity here.
I've heard horror stories about the care and feeding of older radio shows, so it could be a hit and miss endeavour, but now strikes me as the perfect time for the managers to be hauling out old favourites from bygone eras. Even at random. I realize that there's been some antagonism towards the concept of Beloved Radio Personalities at Radio One in recent years, but the trend seems to be headed back towards them.
What sparked this, oddly enough, was listening to the tail end of 50 Tracks on the Vancouver feed just now. This is an atrocious show. It's filler. The original concept was that Canadians would suggest a bunch of purpotedly seminal pop songs from various eras, an on-air panel would discuss whether or not they were seminal, and then the audience would vote to further cement seminality. At the end of the series, you'd have a list. Woo. The concept was played out more than once. As an interactive endeavour, it's possibly engaging and intriguing to the right people. As a series of reruns, ages later? It's atrocious. Not even the infectious Jian Ghomeshi saves it.
What I particularly want to know is why Peter Gzowski's vast back catalogue of material hasn't been pulled out. Gzowski's following continues even today, and much of his work is either timeless or historically well-placed. Just the pieces enshrined in Morningside-related CD releases alone, many of which were circulated in the months following Gzowski's death, could be assembled into a couple of best-of specials; even more material was unearthed for the various memorial specials which aired. Failing that, do recordings of his later interview series, Some of the Best Minds of our Time, still exist?
Even beyond that, there's still stuff from the prior generation of Radio One personalities which would be wonderful to hear instead of the muzak, or the clumsy Radio Two show Disc Drive. Gilmour's Albums? A few hours of Alan Maitland's best interviews, or of his readings as Fireside Al? Some of the better episodes of Ideas as hosted by Lister Sinclair? Some of the Humline segments from Basic Black? Heck, why isn't the CBC grabbing temporary broadcast rights to the various Royal Canadian Air Farce best-of-radio albums (scroll down; three of them are online for free)?
It's a waste. Now's the time for management to get the listeners on their good side; it strikes me that a fantastic way to do that is to exploit Radio One's rich heritage. Even just going back over the past fifteen years would be worthwhile on that level.
Besides, I miss Morningside something fierce.
Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 9:28 PM | Comments (8)
Eric Burns-White: We should do a blogger's panel show. Wil Wheaton could host.
Weds and I chatted last night, and talked about our shared nostalgia for Canadian television and Canadian radio. (Or as she refers to it, "television and radio." I, being American, don't see it quite that way.) We're from opposite ends and sides of the St. John river, which means that the same way she got to see WAGM out of Presque Isle and WLBZ out of Bangor, I got to see CHSJ ("the New Brunswick Television system") growing up in Fort Kent, Maine. In any case, we both agreed that it was going to be a very CBC day here at Websnark.
I, naturally, can't speak to CBC Radio One at the moment. I'm not a daily listener like she is, and while I know from the National, it's been a while. And of course, Weds has much greater depth and knowledge of the subject, and can write about it better. However, the lockout has me feeling nostalgic, and so I'm going to throw in my own two cents about the CBC. For interesting and in depth analysis of the CBC, of the replacement managers, and of... well, stuff, go back and check Weds's stuff. Me? I'm going to talk about panel shows.
Oh, there's so much I could talk about, as a kid growing up and watching CHSJ as one of a very scant number of options in Northern Maine. I could talk about Casey, Finnegan and Mr. Dressup. I could talk about the Friendly Giant. Or the weird "Wizard of Oz" cartoons or the stop action puppet based "Adventures of Pinocchio." Or the sheer surreal pleasures of Barbapapa. But I'm not going to. There are better folks to talk about that. Weds is one of them.
But panel shows? I know from panel shows.
For those who don't know, a "panel show," on television and on the radio, is essentially a fake game show. I say 'fake,' because typically the people competing aren't actually getting any prizes -- they're the same celebrities or near-celebrities every week, perhaps with a 'guest star' or two. Oh, sometimes there's a person who's trying to trick them for some nominal prize, but it's hardly the same thing as a quiz show. In America, the seminal panel shows were To Tell The Truth, where the celebrity panel would try to figure out which of three people ("Number one -- what is your name please?" "My name is Rich Beetle." "Number two? What is your name please?" "My name is Rich Beetle...") is really the person described to them by the announcer, and What's my Line, where the panel asks questions to try and figure out what the guest's job is. There used to be a lot more of those panel shows on American television and radip -- I've Got A Secret, The Name's The Same, Information, Please, and many others -- but they all featured the same basic thing: an affable moderator and three or four affable and witty panel members, who brought wit and banter to somewhat banal problems.
To Tell The Truth and What's My Line clung to life the longest, but by the seventies and eighties, the panel show was more or less dead in America.
But not in Canada.
I remember a wonderful, cheesy as Hell panel show from my youth, over on CHSJ. It was called This Is The Law! It featured movie skit goofiness where a guy dressed up as some kind of policeman depending on where this skit took place watched a goofy actor pantomine something, generally innocently, and follow all of it up by walking up and putting a firm hand on the hapless crook's shoulder. To this day, I think of "putting a hand on a crook's shoulder" as the International Symbol for 'You're Booked, Punk.' Then, the panel would cheerfully debate what obscure Provincial law the hapless crook had broken. It was ridiculous and goofy and I loved it.
The seminal panel show on any television network -- even more than What's My Line or To Tell The Truth, was the very Canadian Front Page Challenge, of course. Pierre Berton, Gordon Sinclair and others served on a panel where they would question guests about what news story they were a part of. Once the news story was guessed, the panel (all journalists) would then interview the guest about the story and get in depth. It was the longest running panel show of all time -- and the longest running non-news CBC program -- going close to forty years in production. In fact, when SCTV did its absolutely brilliant satire of the CBC on one of its episodes (most notably by running the same Hinterland Who's Who segment seven times during the 90 minute episode), they threw in Front Page Challenge, including specific parodies of Berton, Sinclair, Betty Kennedy and others. It nailed it. Utterly nailed it.
Today, panel shows are mostly gone. You still hear them on the radio -- My Word was a British wordplay panel show until just recently, and it spawned the American public radio knockoff Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, but they're pretty well gone. The CBC doesn't even carry many any more, I'm led to understand. And that's sad to me, because in a way, it was a format uniquely suited to Canada, where a dry wit remains valuable and intelligence remains a popular hook for television.
That, by the way, might have been the panel show's undoing in America. Somewhere along the line, we stopped being entertained by funny smart people saying clever things. Somewhere else along the line, David Hasselhoff became a television icon. I'm not saying these things are related. I'm just saying.
Now, if you want me to compare brilliant Canadian shows with anemic American ones, liquor me up and get me comparing Saturday Night Live (of any era) and CODCO sometime. Now there was some hardcore funny.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:16 PM | Comments (37)
Wednesday Burns-White: [w] Odd nostalgia fit
One of my earliest television-related memories is of watching Three's Company reruns in the mornings, before kindergarten. Oh, that Chrissy --
Wait. That's not it.
One of my other earliest TV-related memories is of watching static images. CHSJ had its own labour dispute many, many years ago (one of several, I think), and they had never been particularly assiduous about running actual moving video content during non-program time to begin with. Time is highly subjective when you're four, but I remember sitting in front of a grainy, oversaturated picture of Mr. Dressup for about half an hour one day. It would, if I concentrated hard enough, become an actual episode of Mr. Dressup.
It may or may not have turned into The Friendly Giant. I'm not telling. It was certainly a frustrating experience, but I was damned if I was going to switch over to CBAFT Radio-Canada.
Understand: CHSJ wasn't CBC owned-and-operated for the longest time. As with everything else in New Brunswick that wasn't Crown property, McCain-owned, a reservation, or incredibly bloody useless, CHSJ belonged to the Irvings. It wouldn't become a real CBC station until 1994, when it was magically transformed into CBAT. There was never any guarantee that you'd get any particular show that ran on "proper" CBC stations, or that it'd be on at the same time as anywhere else in the Maritimes. A quick riffle through the region's TV Guide could be deeply disappointing.
I never knew if the cards were a CBC-affiliate thing, or just a particularly localized kind of crap. I knew enough to realize that this didn't happen much on other stations; the ATV affiliate ran Interlude, a series of incredibly tedious nature montages set to insipid instrumental music, and most of the American stations ran, well, commercials, or pictures of their (inevitably hideous) station logo. WAGM in Presque Isle may have had the cards at the time; they existed in a sort of nebulous everything-affiliate state, running non-CBS shows a week late like some sort of UHF dollar theatre, so I wouldn't have put it past them.
The placeholder cards, which often ran in place of actual programming, were wretched. Had it been ten years later, one might assume that they had gone through a colour photocopier roughly two dozen times before having a logo slapped atop them and going in front of the camera. The skin tones on the WKRP card alone spawned nightmares. I have sharp recollections of a deeply discoloured Kermit the Frog.
It's an odd thing to flash back upon, of course, while the manager reading the hourly news on CBC Radio One botches the report for the ninth time in a row.
Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 3:43 PM | Comments (19)
Wednesday Burns-White: [w] I am the face of my country / Expressionless and small
The temporary newscaster cut in late, his introduction reduced to a simple "--we fry."
Frank Fry isn't a bad newsreader. He's no Bernie MacNamee or Judy Maddren, but he's more listenable than Bob "CBC! Rrrradio!" MacGregor. Even so, he's a little bit uncomfortable with his presentation. His voice is masked, but still tight and uneasy.
The thing is, this isn't his job. Fry is almost certainly one of the managers who have taken over programming for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as of 12:01 AM today. The CBC's contract negotiations with the Canadian Media Guild ran up to the last available moment, then broke down. Producers, technicians, and presenters have been locked out of CBC offices across Canada, and are now picketing. (Workers at studios in Moncton, New Brunswick, and the province of Quebec are still around; they belong to a different union. Radio Canada International remains unaffected for similar reasons, although they obviously can't rely on any new programming from the CBC until this is over.)
The CBC website has been stripped down. It's not as bad as it was during the Toronto blackouts, but it's pretty bad. Subsites dedicated to individual shows are completely missing; don't expect to watch old episodes of The National online this week. The Arts section, which had recently undergone a fantastic turnaround from clunky to vibrant and engaging, now looks like a half-dismantled Blogger template. News is plainly all wire reports, all the time.
CBC Radio One has always made for fascinating listening when regular programming is suspended for one reason or another. The trick is to come in early, when few people are expected to be listening, and nothing is actually happening yet. In the wee hours of the morning, after the first bombs fell on Baghdad, Anna Maria Tremonti and Bernie MacNamee filled time by swapping anecdotes about Saddam Hussein's bizarrely customized bed. When the Toronto blackouts fell, Andy Barrie walked several hours across an utterly darkened city to reach the studio, and told us all about it as the morning show began. During times of conflict, Michael Enright has been known to find some of the strangest emails from listeners, and to read them without comment.
Today, the quiet bafflement came during the replacement morning show. Unable to generate any regional programming whatsoever, Radio One is reduced to a single national broadcast for the drivetime broadcasts, not unlike those aired at Christmastime. (The music is arguably better today, at least when it's not fourth-rate jazz.) In between blocks of two or three songs, a sweet-voiced manager abased herself. "I'm sorry. I know that I'm not who you expected to hear this morning," she'd say, then explain that there was a lockout and the managers were running the show. "Most of us actually started out as producers," she mentioned, but it didn't seem convincing. The poor woman. One wonders if, as the lockout continues on, she'll get to develop any patter.
We already knew the situation from the brief news reports, and from the hourly apologies. Every hour on the hour, and also at the half-hour should recorded programming break, Radio One and Radio Two run a prerecorded apology for the unavailability of "regular progreeeaaahhhming." This, I explained to a friend by email this afternoon, is how you know it's a Canadian labour dispute: they apologize. At length. Repeatedly. Every hour. And then, if they get a chance, they apologize some more, just to be on the safe side.
It's not a dire programming situation, at least not from the listener's perspective. Outside of the drivetime music shows, the reruns are arguably more engaging than much of the regular summertime programming Radio One had been offering. Shelagh Rogers is in her element, shortly after her much-needed move to Vancouver. Full episodes of Quirks and Quarks are on instead of highlights. There's a strong likelihood of Grooveshinny reruns. Hell, they're running Richardson's Roundup instead of Tetsuro Shigematsu. (Unfortunately, Sounds Like Canada is still being padded out by the confessional sonic-collage mishmash OutFront. Even during a lockout, we can't get away from that condescending bitch who believes that we care if she has a story to tell.) As with the television schedule, major news coverage will be handed over to the BBC World Service.
Even so, it's the little things. Losing Radio Overnight, say, which is a ridiculous move when you can't generate your own shows. Or the general sense that no one is really home anymore. The hockey and Canadian football will run on CBC Television without any commentary whatsoever, should the lockout last that long; the silence in the face of ambient noise is alarmingly similar.
The National Research Council Official Time Signal was wrong today. This never happens. At the sound of the long dash, following ten seconds of silence, it was 1PM -- 1:30 in Newfoundland. Except for that this was on the Ogg Vorbis feed, which pulls from Toronto. It seems obvious that the signal is running at 1PM in each major time zone (Newfoundland is not a major time zone); the resources to air it synchronized, in the usual fashion, plainly aren't there right now.
Still, until all of this is resolved, it will be 1:30 in Newfoundland five times a day.
Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 10:59 AM | Comments (25)
August 14, 2005
Wednesday Burns-White: [w] Life has never been the same since Shaun of the Dead.
I don't understand a single word that these people are saying.
It might have been the lager. Somewhere down the line, a major brewery bred a herd of donkeys for maximum bladder capacity and output. How all these people have gotten drunk on dilute uric acid, I have no idea, but they were shambling everywhere.
They staggered around before the monitors at Waterloo, colliding with me as though my powers of invisibility had finally made themselves manifest. When their trains were called, they bolted in lurching packs. Fast zombies, subverting the genre. Fast zombies with severe bleach jobs, all straw and eyeliner. Fast zombies in low-rise jeans.
Low-rise jeans, and briefs.
Briefs.
In between glimpses at the monitors -- if I run, and I catch the 23:15 to Portsmouth Harbour, will it take me to the right one? -- waiting for the inevitable announcement of platform nineteen, I tried to unravel their conversation. Occasionally, I made out an assortment of terms for the female genitals. It seemed obvious that these people are having entire conversations consisting of terms for the female genitals; the ambitious among them will occasionally reference the male's.
It's finally happened. I'm twenty-nine, and I'm already too old to understand English anymore.
For no apparent reason, I found myself dueling insomnia earlier this week by reading websites about borderline personality disorder. One symptom which kept jumping out at me? A tendency to suddenly drop rude, inappropriate non sequiturs into the conversation. How would I tell if any of these people are borderlines? I wondered.
Thankfully, I had my iPod. And, once I mounted the 23:30 to Reading, the tiny hutch next to Passenger Assistance turned out to be empty. I could temporarily escape the consumption of my brain through frequent proclamations of "twat!" I could watch the decelerating zombies try to work the door to first class.
Jamming their thumbs around the glowing, pressure-sensitive mechanism, the door's opening simply eluded them. Some, coming back the other way, pressed themselves against the frosted glass for minutes on end. No one should learn their button-touching skills from early seventies adult pulp novels, but apparently that was all that remained: darting and jabbing, clumsily missing the target.
Inevitably, one of them began to miss by miles. He strafed back and forth for a moment, incompetently dancing to his own internal half-speed Sisters of Mercy album, prodding the air. The door has no forcefield trigger, I thought, before the zombie dribbled ectoplasm on the carpet.
Three times.
I am, in fact, serious when I say ectoplasm. You owned this toy as a child; you dropped it onto your He-Man toys, or your Ghostbusters figures, and never could get it out of the upholstry. It was flourescent green, the devil's own non-toxic phlegm. This is clearly the sum of the zombie's humours, and this one spluttered his in the fashion of a disillusioned geyser.
I got up and moved down the train, triggering the door with a simple, fluid motion. Pushing through first class to the next empty car, I couldn't hear the Argyle Park song for all the cries of "Twaaaaaat.... twaaaaaaat..." around me.
Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 7:59 PM | Comments (20)
