Late Night

So I haven't found my way to bed yet. I'm up, four strips down for the day along with some site maintenance. I was having problems with some CSS styles. I'm not exactly sure what I did wrong but they looked GREAT for links but lost my CSS formatting on all of these pages as soon as I converted them over. I ended up sticking a custom class in a file and linking it to every page then highlighting every link and applying the style on every page to fix it.

I didn't bother with the strip pages. The only changes I'm doing to the strip pages are adding meta tags since I'm an idiot and never bugged with them before now. Seriously, I learned HTML in 1995. I taught myself by looking at existing pages and figuring out what goes where. It was all done in text pad then. We didn't have fancy things like meta tags to work with so I've never gotten around to using them. So I'm sticking them in here and there and hey, our hits from search engines have gone up 200% or so since starting to put them in (yah 36 instead of 18 for the week! Whoo hoo! Big time now!), so I'm sticking them in on all the pages where I can.

The new design uses a font called FreshBot for all the banners. It is truetype and I'm not sure where I got it from. The menus were initially built in Macromedia Firework MX, then I modified them by adding more selections to them in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Yah, I'm a Macromedia junkie. I love it. I told a friend on mine that I needed a challenge a couple of weeks ago and I'm very pleased that I finally broke through the dull aching head trip that was coming up with a concept for the new look of the site.

I think it was a huge breakthrough for me. One of many lately. I've been going through a lot of changes that no one has noticed really. It has been one hell of a year and I just don't care any more. I've had my heart stepped on and broken by too many people and it finally got to the point where I'm no longer holding my tongue or stopping myself because my actions need to be in secret because it might hurt someone else. In this life if you want something you have to go for it. You have to say what's on your mind as well. Opportunities only come once and if you blow your chance at happiness then you're screwed. They don't come along again.

I've also grown a lot. I used to be the type of guy who would let someone from his past linger, months, years later. All guys do it because we're inherently idiots and we don't get the fact that at the time of most breakups most girls already have your replacement picked out. It's just a matter of how to dump you and get with him. The movie "Better off Dead" illustrates this point and is SO true to the normal female dumping male behavior and the guy's post dump clinging (though it's horribly outlandish in other situations). We cling to the past because there's nothing left for us (or so we feel), and you'll see guys looking up the numbers of old girlfriends (or acquaintances) that we realize we were still "in love with" after all the years and have our hearts broken when we realize that she's GONE ON WITH HER LIFE in the months and years since you've last spoken.

Of all things that was on last week's WWE "Tough Enough" on MTV. A guy hadn't talked to a girl he was "totally in love with" for four years. There was a weekend pass offer for two of the contestants to have anyone they chose to come stay at the house. The guy tried bribing one of the winners $2000 just for a chance to bring this girl out. Guess what? He called the girl up and ta-da, she moved on with her life and wasn't interested in talking to him -- let alone hopping a plane to be with him. He was, and is, a total idiot. But the again, like I've tried to explain, all guys are and all guys do this.

True love isn't true. Destiny doesn't play cards any more. People move on; they don't wait around forever. Romeo & Juliet don't exist. If that story happened in this day and age, Romeo would be in jail for stalking Juliet. I mean how psychotic is that story through today's eyes? Their parents say no. Deal and move on. But I digress ... in the end it all goes back to the lyric "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." It doesn't matter if she's totally wrong for you; it doesn't matter if she's your second cousin; if she's yours and she loves you -- then take her while she's here because the chance won't come along again. If she dumps you, don't linger. Let it go. You'll find more happiness in lonliness than you would spending all your time mooning over your desire to return to a bad situation. There will be more people in your life. They might not be her but if they come, take that chance and don't let yourself be held back by the misbelief that you'll be back together some day. It just doesn't happen. She's moved on and you'll be happier when you move on as well.

With that, goodnight. I'm going to go to sleep. I sleep easier knowing that I'm an idiot and it can't be helped. Now if you accept it, I'm sure you'll sleep easier as well. :)

k9

Quick Update

A quick shout out to Stef, who gladly signed the guestbook and called me mad. :) That makes me smile. Now see? How about you ...

k9

Happy Thanksgiving

In the states it's Thanksgiving Day and I hope each one of you has a great day (in Canada it's a strange day called "Thursday" but I hope you have a great one as well). I'm stuck at work most of the day as we have no big plans for the day other than the normal turkey dinner. I usually work on most holidays since my friends and the rest of the family are so far away. I think this will be the sixth year in a row where I'll be eating turkey in the glow of the computer screen during a shift. That's fine since I'm not a big turkey fan. I know, it's unamerican, but ugg. I like stuffing and potatoes, I just hate the big dry turkey. I'd rather have a pizza. I'm strange. I hate the traditional Easter ham dinner as well. Big slabs of ham. Ugg. Been there, done that, would rather have an Arby's market fresh ham sandwich. At least it comes with curly fries. :)

Today I am thanking Laura and Moopie as their recent redesigns and redesign attempts inspired me to get off my butt to redesign this site. I'm also thanking Brit for being the only person to consistently sign my guestbook. Hey way to go girl. Keep that thing alive. :) If you want to get a shout out too please sign it. Make me smile.

I put up all my crappy poetry on the site too. Most of it is intensely personal, but some was done as the character of "Johnny Bravo" (long before the cartoon came out), on the message boards of an old RPG I used to play. So if you see that name pop up, it's still me. A lot of the early stuff like "Rage" is done from a character perspective as an exercise, so if it's a bit darker than what you expect from me, well, it's meant to be. There's a lot there and should anyone be crazy enough to want to publish it elsewhere, just ask, I can be bought, especially when it's throw away poems like most of mine.

I'm about to flip to the Macy's parade to see how long it'll be on before I get bored and put in a movie. TechTV has a god awful lineup of total crap today. Who came up with this stuff anyway? The line up of b-movies and the Thunderbirds make it sound like something I've come up with in a strip. I mean seriously is ANYONE watching this drek? Or is that the point ... well, at least they could have put in "Coma" to make the day a total waste. :)

Okay. 3 and a half minutes. They HAD to start the parade with 300 teenagers lip synching and doing really simple dance steps to bright and happy music. It was like the South Park where the class went on tour to save the rainforest. I was looking for Kenny in the crowd. I think I found him. Dear god. Help me. I think I'm going to put on "A Charlie Brown Christmas" because if I'm going to be depressed about sappy holiday stuff, I'm going to do it to that cool jazz baby.

Maybe, just maybe, if I'm really bored I'll watch the rest of my Charlie Brown Holiday features (if you ever want to get me a present -- that Charlie Brown Holiday DVD set would be mighty nifty any time of year). I mean it's better than Thunderbirds reruns. Isn't it?

Really.

Isn't it?

Oh well. :)

k9

All Things Must Pass

It's after 11 PM and I have to work all day tomorrow. I spent today redesigning this site and hopefully it'll pay off in more hits. We *really* needed a facelift and this one came to me out of the blue this morning.

I like the redesign so far. On some pages it works great, on others (poetry), it's kind of "so-so" but overall, it's more along the lines of what I was aiming for with the site. I put all the focus on the faces of the people that my readers are coming to see. I also know that more than half of my visitors are from people who are linking to my pictures (with 50+ megs of pictures online it's hard not to); and while I wish they'd LINK TO ME when they use my pictures (instead of just linking to the picture), this should make it easier for folks to access the page. Maybe a few of them will stick around and read my work instead of using my site as the ultimate storage facility for obscure movie pictures.

Also, if you like the site, link to it. Tell people about it. Get my hits up. Please. Thank you.

With that, I'm going to go to sleep. I still have an "about me" page to finish but I think I'll save that for the morning.

k9

A week later ...

Just some random notes before I prepare for my evening shift at work. Working 8-Midnight tonight and I'm so not in the mood to do anything work related right now.

I put up two new strips tonight and hopefully will be getting back into the pace of doing 4 strip chunks. I'm trying for 4 a week when I have good material; 8 a week when I have great material; and well, a couple of dozen at a time when I have total crap.

In the last month or so I've done 50 strips and we're well on pace to reach strip #200 by the end of the week if I get some time (it's literally the week from hell). The subject of strip #200 has already been announced on the web but I'm not going to spoil it here. You'll just have to find it yourself.

I'm in the middle of doing some layouts for a basic site redesign. Not many changes. Well I want to do a whole new look and feel for the site, but really, umm, this site is low budget for a reason -- I don't know what the hell I'm doing with my photo editing software half the time. I will admit I'm a jack of all trades when it comes to technology and that I really wish I had some sort of graphic arts skills. We'll see what it leads to. I have a layout in my head and I'll figure it out.

Right now I must also admit to loving the new "Po Leo Yo" character. His voice is a cross between David Spade's "hip" character, Chris Rock and Jay from Jay & Silent Bob. I must make a distinction between the character of "Po Leo Yo" and Leo's normal character somewhere down the line. I'm not sure where right now but if you've ever watched the classic TV show "Taxi," you'll remember the character of Ladka (played by Andy Kaufman), had a similar personality disorder in the form of Vic Ferrari. So, come to think of it, "Po Leo Yo" is Leo's version of Vic Ferrari. If you haven't seen Taxi, then go find reruns. You're not geeky enough to get the reference and that's probably a blessing. :)

On that note, I'm out to take the Yoshi & Megan edition of the Screen Savers.

Take care all.

k9

Monday Morning -- SCARIEST BLOG EVER

Dear god, I had a Charles in Charge dream.

You know, Charles in Charge of our days and our nights ... it's currently rerunning on Nik at Nite. It's the scariest syndicated comedy of the 80's-90's (well other than the New Munsters). Mind you, it was great it's first season when it was on CBS. I remember it, honestly. I was still in Jr. high. They had Scott Baio with two little boys and a hot teenage girl. Every guy in my generation remembers the show because on one episode the teenage girl (who was all of our ages), had a sleep over party with 12 girls all in little nighties. I can tell you that most of my friends who were avoiding puberty, clearly went into puberty after that episode.

So anyway, last night I had the Charles in Charge dream. He and buddy were still at that house. Still in college. Both age 50. Charles had a haircut that was long on top but shaved on the sides and he was dying his sides to cover up the gray. They had a stack of bills and a number of $49,000 loans from the Mafia to pay off. Anyone catch on the next concept?

Yes, it was a mix of Charles in Charge and the Sopranos as little Scottie Baio moved into the Mafia don's house to take care of his family. After one episode, Buddy was buried in the end zone of Giant Stadium. It was awesome until I realized I was having a Charles in Charge dream.

I so need to get out.

Right now I'm at work, nothing going on, I'm actually copying all the site files over to a DVD-RW disc. I wanted to get rid of a number of files from the site that I haven't used and I'm not going to use, so I decided to back them up. Why? I don't know. I'm an idiot. I'm sure there's someone out there who is going to want copies of Han Choi doing product reviews from the old techlive set. Or a historical archives of all the people who aren't around any more. Sure, that's it. People are gonna want these files one day! One daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

So that brings up the issue of a DVD-RW drive. Yes, it's that time of year again, it got cold, we had our first snow (6 inches the day before Halloween), and I've completely lost my mind. I'm starting to eye upgrades for the computer. Limited to a DVD-R burner and the new ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9700 Pro once it comes out and drops in price. I ended up with a Pioneer DVR-A04. I went with the Pioneer because it's the fastest drive on the market right now and because the Sony DRU-500, which is the current fad because it does ALL the formats right now, is $100 more, half the price and out of stock everywhere.

Besides, my primary goal with this DVD drive is to convert all my old homemade VHS tapes into DVD-R discs before the video tapes degrade any more. I have hundreds of them. This is probably going to be a massive project and I probably won't give a damn about anything once it's over. Yes, did I mention that I've lost my mind? I thought so.

So, with that, I'm going to go fall over.

Story Stuff

It's late Friday night and I'm sitting here wondering what I've done to the current story line. Let's face it, having Paul Allen finally out himself and end the quasi-Mr. Burns/Smithers parody that we've been doing for a long time now is a big step for the strip. I'm not going to say it's permanent because frankly, I did it to separate the two characters in order to set up some things I have running in the back of my mind right now.

You can see that the end of last season and the beginning of this season are kind of hodge podge. There's not a running theme to every strip like the start of the last season. I guess we have a lot less going on right now than we did with the whole Martin story that provided the story line for the last couple of seasons. Then again, we have a lot more going on as well since I'm opening up and experimenting with new story lines and taking chances on characters to see where they're going to go.

Right now I'm kind of sick of seeing the Screen Savers in every strip. I know they're my bread and butter, but let's face it, after all that Martin in the last 30 or 40 strips, we need some sort of break from them. I'm trying to cut back on them, for now anyway, since my Leo character (and let's clearly establish him as a character or a caricature and not the real man), has been reduced to endlessly pushing his products on people or acting immorally. While the real Leo does both of these things, to some extent, I'm taking a break from that story line because sooner or later it becomes the issue of beating a dead horse. You can only do the gag so many times before it becomes mean.

Speaking of mean, I didn't mean to be so vicious to Cat. The point of the i-switched parodies of the parody is to break the character down to their base personas. Most of the time (like with the Martin one), they're just nonsense that I've come up with off the top of my head. With Cat I tied in a little bit of reality. Anyone who reads Leoville (or has recaps sent to them, as I did), knows that the current strip had a touch of real life to it. It was my voice speaking out for something I wanted to say for quite some time now while breaking the character down to her root persona. I know the "real" Cat crossed over into this one and for that all I can say is that a person's public actions are fair game to my parody. It wasn't done to be mean, it was done to be funny and it's actually adding to the story line as we progress.

I also have a voice of my own. I write these strips. These strips are my commentary and parody on things I see around me. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong, but either way I'm responsible for what appears here. While I do strips on suggestions of people or with people in mind (Dr. Who's return, for example), I only do them when I feel the strip that they produce will be funny and they all take my voice. No strings here, I'm the guy to sue if someone gets pissed and finally decides parody is the grounds to sue.

If anyone ever has a complaint about something here, you have my e-mail address, you have my guest book, you even now have my face on nearly every index page here so you can hunt me down and beat me in the street if you really want to. So you do have the means to change things.

WIth that, I'm out.

Goodnight.

k9

Catching Up

Just a few notes before I head to bed ...

I've done about 30 strips in the last couple of weeks. I'm really not sure what came over me. Most of my friends have been gone or silent lately so I've had a lot of time to myself. I think it started the last couple days of my vacation. Friends were sick so plans were canceled and I spent a couple of days alone, while it was nice (and I'll never bitch about being alone with no responsibilities), I had hoped to have more fun on the vacation. So I sat there trying to come up with ways to amuse myself. When that failed, I just started writing again and look what it started. I scared myself, seriously. There were times where I'd just open up 8 blank html pages and have new strips to go with them off the top of my head.

I'm trying new things. I have all this old footage to use so we're shifting focus on some of the minor characters to have them actually do something. I mean I love Sumi and Kris Kosach to death, but I had nothing for them to do except stand around yelling about monsters (Sumi) or being Yoda's gal pal (Kris). There wasn't a lot to work with so I decided to change it. I'm not going to tell you where the story will go, but this little wave of it will come to a head in season 12.

I'm probably going to kill some of the music strips that I had planned. Personally, I love them. I usually find a pretty funny segment in captures that doesn't really fit the story, but are too funny to pass on (for example, "Morgan" dancing from the Frankie & Annette movies), so I put it to music. I know, I know, that means you have to go track down the music to get the strip, but is that so bad? I mean really folks, expand your horizons, open up to some new music and you might enjoy it. Of course the Vitamin C song is demonic and I know parents who are reading probably have heard it from the Pokemon Movie CD, so to them, I apologize for bringing back the nightmares. Anyway, had a complaint or two, so they'll be back only on special occasions now.

Getting back to how I write. A lot of the new ones have been written out of sequence. For example, in the latest four, I had the Morgan one and the Dvorak one written as 11 and 12 early in the day on Thursday. I had something else planned for 11, honestly, I had literally spent 2 solid days watching TechTV (even taping it after midnight), looking for a William Shattner priceline.com commercial. I screwed up this weekend and accidently erased my capture of it, and I was desperate (of course the commercial never aired). I wrote 10 in 15 minutes right before my afternoon nap after my AOL had died and signed me out. That left 9 to go if I wanted to make my 6:30 PM ET deadline. I know, I don't really have a deadline, but I figure 6:30 is when the Screen Savers people might be browsing things before the show and might possibly fall on my page. I promised my friend Katie a Doctor Who strip, so I started it at 5:30ish, lost everything when I accidently rebooted my computer, and what you see as 9 from season 11 was done as I scrambled to make my deadline. Not too shabby, even if it's more like one of the original strips and less like the books I've been writing lately.

Ideas come to me in strange places. Patrick's line about Leo taking the King James bible and putting a Po Leo Yo sticker on it came to me in the shower on the 2nd to last day of my vacation. Leo selling out the human race to Microsoft came to me when I randomly asked a question to a friend about what side she'd be on if the Aliens came and invaded Earth. Sumi's alka seltzer swimsuit story? I had heartburn. It was going to be a boat, but, again in the shower (what is with the shower?), I thought about it and changed the gag to a bathing suit instead of a boat. Don't ask where Sumi's obsession with Kris Kosach came from. I don't think I can tell you, other than I have a friend who had a raging crush on Kris this summer and I noticed Kris has a lot more airtime on Techlive than I remembered her having. I'd probably have a raging crush on her too, if I ever get my obsessions together, but that's another mental illness for another time. :)

I don't mean to be so mean to Morgan Webb. She's just so darn easy to pick on. She's tall, she's got the body of a Valkyrie and she's incredibly gifted. Unfortunately, she reminds me of a girl I used to work with in college who I'd relentlessly torment like a little sister. I'm sure I put that girl in therapy after the four years we hung out together. I just see Morgan and she's like a little girl. What do immature little boys do to their little sisters? Why relentlessly torment them of course. There's nothing personal about it, it just snuck into the latest stories and we'll see where it goes.

Plus, if anyone has proven that he's an immature egotistical little boy hiding behind a 32 year old face, it's me.

Lastly, for some odd reason, my web cam page is getting a ton of hits. I don't know why you weird people are checking it out, but I'll be back whoring on it and making faces this weekend. Please feel free to link it anywhere and make fun of it. I know I do.

With that, I'm outta here.

k9