As you may have noticed this comic was inspired by Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I just found it so bizarre that he would do mortal combat with 7 strangers, when he could have just backed away. But then again what fun would that be?

I’m on to day 9 of my low carb diet. I’ve lost 4 pounds already. For those of you that are wondering why I started this diet, I had bet my coworkers that I couldn’t get ripped in 15 days. This was in response to a skeptical coworker who though exercise was pointless, and would take forever to see results. I assured him with proper diet and exercise one can see results in as little as 2 weeks. So far it looks like it’s working. I’ll let you know next Tuesday my results. As well as how I did it.

Danny

Yes, Badass of the Week is a real site. A recent badass was Galvarino, who’s ass was suitably bad enough to warrant a comic.

FanExpo 2010 was kind of hit and miss for me.  I have pictures! (In crappy DSi quality!)

Pluses:

• Lots of great cosplayers! Highlights include Firefox-tan, awesome Touhou cosplayers (Marisa and Flandre), and a whole bunch of other people
• I bought stuff! The Zombie Survival Guide, a Touhou doujin comic (of which I don’t know the title because it is in strange moon runes), a pocket watch (which doesn’t run =/ ), and a wooden sword.
• Dragon Quest tags! I (fully?) upgraded Stornway Inn and I’m totally pimping out with a alchemy item fountain.

Minuses:

• It was very crowded! Lots of elbowing around if you wanted to see some vendors.
• It was totally oversold! We left for lunch an hour after entry, and we found that there was a huge line up to get back in. Everyone in line was really pissed off, especially since they were still selling tickets to get in.
• Disillusionment that the Batmobile is from Minnesota.

Pro tips for next FanExpo: bring your own lunch, bring lots of drinks, and don’t leave the goddamn building.

– Alex

If you’re reading this, I was too tired from FanExpo to draw a comic. Or, I was kidnapped. Send help as appropriate.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a nice day.

– Alex

This comic is about…

the special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts. Maybe below the cockles, maybe in the sub-cockle area, maybe in the liver, maybe in the kidneys, maybe even in the colon. We don’t know. (cite)

In other news, we’ll probably be at FanExpo this weekend! (Well, just Saturday!) It’s five smaller conventions crammed together; one of those a sci-fi/anime/video game/comic book/horror film conventions. I’m going for the Dragon Quest IX tag meetups; I really want to fill up Stornway Inn for no good reason.

– Alex

Life is all about having the guts to take chances. If there is something you want to do go do it. It doesn’t matter if no one else wants to follow along, go yourself if you have to. I have never regretted taking action alone, be it starting a hobby or going to explore the city. Often times I end up meeting new people and having interesting stuff happen around me.

So if you have a dream you want to follow or a crush you want to ask out on a date, get to it. There will never be a perfect time to start that dream project and if you don’t start right away it will never become reality. No one will magically land in your lap, you have to get the guts to go and find them. Sure you might get rejected or fail at making your dream come true, but along the way you will have gained. For every defeat there is a lesson. It is when these lessons are learned, one becomes a person with new dreams and new crushes.

Just do it,

Danny

I can never resist a good deal. This pico project I got from block buster was 50 bucks, down from 200. Sure some may say I’m the victim of the anchoring effect, but this pico projector kicks ass. Too bad I haven’t used it since I bought it 2 months ago, it sits here collecting dust along with that hanna montana picture cube, that I swear I’ll get around to hacking.

In regards to the blockbusters closing, I’m shocked, yet not entirely surprised. I witnessed that shop open with it’s massive block party and free give aways. I watched it cause the closure of many local video shops, except for my favourite Queen Video which is still around. I watched it struggle to stay alive by buying and selling video games, and finally I watched it close it’s doors forever after a 30% then 50% off everything sale.

I think the real problem with blockbuster was moral stance on films, which resulted in it lacking any films worth watching. Often times they would only focus on new releases “blockbuster” films, often neglecting foreign films and ones with adult content. Then services like netflicks and hulu came around, and offered a wider range of films, and greater accessibility. People just stopped going to the store as it was less convenient then ordering the film online during work hours at your desk. Maybe if they provided incentive for people to show up to the store. It’s hard to say how they could have prevented this outcome. Why do people still go to massive book stores? They can do the same thing, and order the book online, for cheaper like amazon. I guess the difference is for books you own them. As for video rentals you don’t need to keep or touch them. Also why go to blockbuster even to buy videos, when you can do that at walmart or best buy.

Maybe if blockbuster provided a reason to go to the store, like having the stars how up to sign the movies, similar to the way bookstores do book signings. Or have a place where movie renters could form a community, like a cafe or like a preview area, giving them a reason to go to the store, to occupy the space.

It will be interesting to see what they will do next to survive.

Danny

PS. Went to Darien lake yesterday, the ride of steel rocks!

I got into an interesting discussion about the zeitgeist movement with a friend today. He was trying to convince me that this was society 2.0, that it was the answer to all of our current social issues.

Though I personally wish to better the world, once I have gain financial freedom, I am well aware that the world will take more then a few well intentioned people for it to change. People, are the problem, and as such no system that claims to be the better can be better if it contains people. Systems that rely on the kindness and vigilance of everyday man are doomed to fail. I find that people who want to live in an ideal world, often overlook many aspects that we take for granted. Evangelist of the zeitgeist movement claim that we have the technology to solve issues like world hunger. Though the technology may exist on paper or in the lab, the resources, both material and human to bring it to EVERYONE are not available. Who’s to say which project in this zeitgeist movement world has priority over these finite material/human resources? Who will work the fields, mine the minerals, fish the dangerous waters if I would not go hungry otherwise? Robots? Who will make these robots and maintain these robots? Other robots? Why do these maintainer robots give a damn about making other robots? The devil is in the details.

My point is, if you want to make a change in the world, start with yourself. Look deep within, figure out how you can improve yourself, and in that way you will change the world around you. Don’t just follow blindly some concept dreamed up by perfect strangers, which would be no different then believing in a cult.

Danny

This is the last comic of the inception mini arch. I thought it was so weird that they would just inject the sedative into people without cleaning the needles. Don’t they know that’s dangerous? More on theta waves here.

On another note, I played the mafia 2 demo today. As Gabe says it is a very pretty game. Since they only give you 10-12 minutes of free exploration in the demo, I ended up trying to take on the police by hiding out in the swimming pools, which btw everyone has in their backyards for some reason. Too bad the damn AI has laser guided auto-aim, because it can catch me peaking though the tiny slits in wooden fences, or shoot at the top of my head even if it briefly peaks above the neighbors hedge.

Danny

Drawing these comics, I turn up a lot of the promotional material for Inception. The official website has some cool prequel mini-comic with the dream stealing antics.

Also, as further evidence that there’s a wiki about everything, there’s an Inception Wiki.

– Alex

The movie Inception was missing a lot of detail, particularly that of how the dream machine really works. We’ve gone to the trouble of filling in the gaps for you above.

I’ve managed to go a whole day without playing Starcraft 2 yesterday. Sure I did end up watching my sick ass replay where I owned a Zerg player who rushed me with 30 Lings on my stoned in flank. I managed to get 2 hellions out and totally microed them all to death. At the end of the match, when I finally got my 4th hellion, the first 2 hellions had 35 kills each. The Zerg player just quit when I showed up at his base for payback.

I ended up having over 65 actions per min that game. I had to pull out my totem to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

I ended up playing today though, so I suck at keeping promises.

Danny

PASIV Device

According to the Internets, they spent $100 million dollars on advertising Inception. The film itself had a budget of $160 million. Advertisers, man.

But they produce cool stuff every now and then. Old Spice guy, the “I Am Canadian” beer commercial, and so forth. They also made a user’s guide to the Inception dream machine, which is apparently called the PASIV device:

http://www.pasivdevice.org/

– Alex