The new year has been eventful so far. I solved the GAMES Magazine contest, "Mystery Cross III," so quickly it seemed like an accident. I've made a discovery about incompatible polyomino decompositions, and I hope to write a paper on the topic. I read A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, and he's really funny (think Dr. McNinja). I'm planning on reading more of his books.

Well, here's the first part of that story I mentioned last time. For now, it is titled with a bad pun. Enjoy.

( Shock )

If you're specifically looking for Nucleus, it's probably two entries below. It's annoying, but I'll have to keep redirecting (nonexistent) visitors until Ed edits his entry. (Since I don't want to edit this later, I'll allow that this might have happened.)

I don't generally play video games except for fighters (Super Smash Bros.), and it's not something I excel/exercise at. However, after playing Portal: The Flash Version and seeing my brother had borrowed The Orange Box, I decided to try it. Long story short, I beat it in about nine hours. (I'm sure that has a meaning, which is why I said it.) It was pretty fun, though I won't be investing more time into video games.

Anyway, I just finished reading the fan fiction Dire Peril. If you are a typical human who happens to use the Internet, then I'm sure you don't care. But if you are a typical Internet user (which I swear means something else), you might want more context. The fanfic takes place in the world of Exterminatus Now, a webcomic based in the setting of "Sonic the Hedgehog" with the caveat that none of the characters of the latter appear in the former, thus avoiding issues of copyright infringement between the latter two. (This is, I think, exactly the point where it would have become a run-on sentence.) Potential issues between the former two (EN and DP) are mitigated by the front-page endorsement of the fanfic by the webcartoonist(s). (It might be relevant to point out here that Scott Ransoomair linked to Zero Punctuation, so blame him.) So yes, I think the title is supposed to sound ironically dippy. Anyway, if you think that Mobius would be fun with all of the "Sonic" characters replaced by variously foul-mouthed and abusive Inquisitors and daemon-worshipers, have at 'em.

One more thing. I'm trying to write a furry story, not based in any particular universe, and I thought I was having a good time at it. However, it seems to be turning into a novella, and my... "pretty boy" brother logged me off of my account (on what's sort of a communal computer) before I could save the first half of the second chapter. I hope to be able to showcase it here, probably starting next entry, but this is a new kind of frustration. I'd like to think I can deal with it, although I have stayed up past midnight to get to this irritating point. This will be a problem, because we're entertaining family friends in a few hours.

(Edit: Figures. Three days after I posted an essay, not only have the comics moved, invalidating thirteen of my links, but for more than a week after, I can't be bothered to change the links. Well, at least deleting one of those included parenthetically isn't too hard. Edit 2: The links should now direct correctly.)

Ah, politics. A subject I don't particularly like talking about. And yet it's practically unavoidable when talking about the work of one rhjunior.

Mr. Hayes, as you may know, has three webcomics: Nip & Tuck, Goblin Hollow (formerly "Under the Lemon Tree"), and Tales of the Questor. The first two are frequently conservative in their view; the third, not so much. I bring this up because the current story in "Nip & Tuck" has a somewhat different direction.

A bit of background: about a year ago, Nip (the brother without the hat) was hired to be the lead of a movie nearly sight unseen (on both ends-- the director didn't put much thought into the selection, and the actors don't see more than a few pages at a time). Some weeks into the filming, Nip gets his hands on a director's copy of the script and discovers the movie is an offensively, flamingly liberal piece of garbage.

(An aside here: this movie idea is obviously based off of "Syriana," the only movie I truly regret not walking out on. I have managed to walk out on "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" because I didn't care for the central concepts. As for "Syriana," the plot didn't make any sense. Hey Mr. Gaghan! You're supposed to connect everything before it's more than the audience can handle! I mean, "You're the Canadian"? What the #$*!!?)

Anyway, unable to escape the movie, he hatches a cunning scheme to completely hijack it. The result is a movie poised at the opposite political extreme that parallels George W.'s war in Iraq rather nicely. So, politics.

In fast-forwarding to today (mid-July 2006, actually), we see that Purloined Letter, the guys credited with that revamped film, has a new movie out-- sci-fi, hyperdrive, evil empire, and such. The premise is that a resistance against the oppressive Interstellar Federation has just lost a war thereagainst, and the rebels have been taken back into the IF in an uncomfortable manner (also click next). Among the space battles, we see that plenty of just-plain-folks have been unfairly affected by the war. It's clear, by the way, that we're supposed to sympathize with these characters, the lead and the kiddie sidekick.

"Rebel Cry" strikes me as considerably more liberal than "Man on the Border" for coming out against that war, but then, something similar has been said about "The Phantom Menace." So what's going on here? Is the story (an unabashed B-movie) generic enough that it slipped under Ralph's radar? Does he have some twists that will drive me away? Do I just not understand politics? What?

Let me just say this is not a political blog. I only left the last entry up for about two weeks because I couldn't think of how to follow it up. Post Lambert's response and comment further here? I already offered to discuss it here, and while he certainly visited my blog, he decided to respond only in e-mail. So I'll just give y'all (y'none?) this:

At a recent press conference, President Bush spoke out against the end of Daylight Saving Time this coming Sunday, saying, "If we fall back now, the terrorists win!" The President refused to support this claim, stating, "If we start backing things up, the terrorists win!" When someone in the audience challenged him to a game of Counter-Strike, the President ran crying off the stage.

I technically failed the 24-Hour Comic challenge, completing only 7 1/2 pages from noon to noon. That's about 1/3, or exactly 5/16, of the quota given. Counting panels out of a hundred gives 38%, which is a bit better. My rate when awake was nearly a page an hour.

However, I think what I have done shows promise, so I will post and, if at all possible, finish my work here.