How can you consider him a "great orator" when his speeches are all cut-and-paste?
And it was pretty much rubbish. It was so bad the media can't spin it positive. The talking heads are depressed because their boy in the White House is looking like the SCOAMF he is.
It's nothing but platitudes and empty rhetoric, and it's already been plainly told; it's stopped resonating. That old aphorism about "going once too often to the well" comes to mind.
* * *
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is still blaming Bush. "Yeah, we've been in charge for 3.5 years now, but Bush screwed things up so badly we haven't been able to fix any of it!"
"That old aphorism about 'going once too oft--'" I have this strange feeling of...deja vu.
* * *
So Obama tries to lock in the hispanic vote. Even the vote that is not legal since, y'know, noncitizens aren't supposed to be voting, but since it's racist to expect people to have photo ID this is probably the best strategy that's still available to the Democrats.
That's 800,000 more votes for Democrats! Who cares about that pesky "separation of powers" thing? The Democrats might lose! Laws are for other people!
* * *
Karl Denninger says we're looking at some bad economic indicators.
...the recession is getting worse.
* * *
I wasn't going to comment on this story but Borepatch has such a good takedown of it I changed my mind.
Short form: guy who is skeptical of AGW gets fired because he is a "climate skeptic".
Then Borepatch does another post about it which is nearly as good.
I'm not Denninger; I can't make myself re-post every point I've made about something (with or without a crapton of typographic emphasis). I don't think I need to; y'alls have memories.
* * *
"Don't Romanticize the Canadian Healthcare System".
* * *
So, Limbaugh is talking about Sarah Jessica Parker's house, where an Obama fundraiser was held. It was $40,000 per plate, because Obama is a Democrat who is for the little people.
Reportedly the Parker home was decorated in "shabby chic". Do you know what "shabby chic" is? That's what it's called when someone lives in an unremediated shithole but that person is popular and rich beyond dreams of avarice and votes the right way.
Also reportedly, this wasn't good enough for the Obama campaign, so they basically redecorated the first floor. Okay: if someone coming to your house for a party has to redecorate to keep his campaign photos from looking as if they were taken in a homeless shelter, you live in a shithole. It may be an expensive house that you also paid a lot money to decorate, but if it looks like a shithole, guess what? It's a shithole!
* * *
I agree with Michael Flynn: There's no story here, and if there is one, it's not anti-Bush.
* * *
Ormus ran a few Lich King heroics with Lemonzen last night, and then did a quest chain in Icecrown...and discovered that there's stuff under Icecrown Citadel. In fact, there's a quest 'way down there, far below the surface, that you have to follow a quest chain from the beginning of the zone to get to.
People who've been there will know; those who haven't won't get it, so it's not a spoiler for me to say, "It is the beating of his hideous heart!"
It's a meme that's overdone in fantasy but it still impressed me.
The storytelling in Wrath of the Lich King is vastly improved over that of Burning Crusade. It's a shame that there is so much of it that's been tainted with lousy grammar and punctuation. Does Blizzard not employ proofreaders? I mean, people who can look at a sentence and say, "You know, this would be better if had the commas it needs!"
Ad hoc example:
"Gunman says, 'I like to shoot kids!'"One missing comma completely changes the meaning of the sentence, and the example I'm thinking of worked exactly this way. I should have screencapped it, but I was busy with other things (like staying alive) so I can't remember the exact words or situation. Point is, I had to read it two or three times to figure out what the hell they were trying to say because it really could be read either way. Only, one way didn't make a lick of sense when compared to what was happening in the game.
"Gunman says, 'I like to shoot, kids!'"
* * *
I could go on about this, but won't, because--quite frankly--it'll just descend into the usual grammar-and-homonym rant that doesn't do any good whatsoever. It's even stopped making me feel better. *sigh*
Yes, like our President I tend to repeat myself a lot. The difference is, I don't have a cadre of people going around getting tingles up their legs and effusing about how brilliant of a blogger I am and how they scarcely deserve me. I'm not getting paid for this and my work here has no effect on the economy or world politics.
I may be a SCOAMF myself, but at least I have the decency to confine its effects to a narrower demographic.
* * *
I haven't done any real drawing for quite a while. I'm not even sure when was the last time I did any; it might have been when I was in the nuthatch. And even that wasn't really serious.
Nonetheless, I managed to scratch this out the other day (or last week?) while waiting for dungeon finder to put me in a group:
This is Ayumu Katsura, who's one of Subaru's two best friends in Hokkaido. I purposely made her look a lot like (but not identical to) Azuma's Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga from Azumanga Daioh specifically because I wanted Subaru's other best, friend, Hotaru, to always call her "Osaka". (And of course all such teasing is always accompanied with the riposte, "Stop calling me 'Osaka'!") As a native of Hokkaido of course she doesn't speak in kansai-ben and her personality is pretty damn far removed from that of Azuma's Osaka; she's actually pretty sharp and emits a fair amount of snark. She's neither listless nor spacy.
One of the big problems with Chicory is that about 80% of the story I wanted to tell is used by Hanasaku Iroha--at least the first half of it. After ep 13, that series goes in a totally different direction, and the conflict comes from a different source than in my story. Still, the ethos is right, and the setup is right; if I were doing any of my manga for publication I couldn't put Chicory out there now as it would look like I was copying Hanasaku Iroha.
(Kind of how Michael McCollum's Antares series looks an awful lot like a copy of The Mote in God's Eye. They're two totally different stories, but because there's a resemblance....)
It seems like the supporting characters always try to take over, though. In American Dawn (to which I admit I'll probably never add another page, absent getting a wild hair in an unlikely place) Sayoko Igarashi began to take over the plot even though she was supposed to be a supporting character. I'm having the same thing go on with Osaka, though I'm having more luck keeping her contained. She's trying to get more "screen time" but since most of what I'm doing these days is just character sketches and studies it doesn't have any effect on the plot.
But this did give me an opportunity to think a bit about the summer uniform worn by girls at the public school they attend. It's a departure from the long-sleeve shirt with necktie and calf-length skirts worn in winter. (Let's face it; Hokkaido is cold in winter.) The summer uniform features a short (almost mini) skirt with a polo shirt (sans tie) and on very warm days the neck can be unbuttoned.
The skirt is probably a solid color, though I haven't decided what color. (That can wait for animation.) (Heh.) The summer and winter uniforms will use the same color skirt; the shirt will be white, I expect, and the tie with the winter uniform will either match the skirt or be a color that indicates what year the student is. (Haven't decided that, either.)
(The winter uniform also has a v-neck sweater which can be worn over the top of the shirt. This'll probably be some neutral color like tan or cream, or light grey.)
As for the guys' uniforms? Blazer in winter, sweater vest optional, button-down shirt with tie. In summer, polo; always wear long pants. But I haven't drawn any guys in this series yet (with the exception of one doctor) so I haven't needed to pin it down.
This is why I'll never be a serious manga artist, by the way. I don't draw things I don't want to draw, which means I can't draw guys worth a shit. I've done...okay...with three male characters so far:
1) Hiroaki Kasahara from Megumi's Diary. When you're doing a love story that's neither yaoi nor yuri you need a girl and a guy. I can sort-of draw this guy consistently even though he's pretty much "standard guy I draw".
2) Evan K. Bishop from American Dawn. I don't know why I can draw him, except that he's an antagonist and therefore more interesting than most guy characters in manga are. He's a pervert and a bastard, but at least he's drawn consistently. (I think it's mainly the hair that does it. But I'll take what I can get.)
3) Chuck [what's his name] from Magical Angel Selene. Kind of "standard guy" but not too bad. It's not as impressive when you realize that there are about five pages of layouts for this series. Argh etc.
All the others? Blech. Inconsistent, and largely undifferentiated.
The obvious answer to this problem is to write a pure yuri series set at a girls' school. Maybe I can do that with Sunshine Bird...if I ever do anything with the idea. (That even fits with the discussion at the end of this post.)