A momentary diversion...

Wow! It’s been a while! There are so many things I could mention in this blog post:

I could mention the awesome Beautiful Girls concert I went to last week, but since there’s only this one dude who reads this blog - and I’m fairly sure he was at the concert - there’s little point.

I could pull a news story at random from The Australian’s web site and use it to illustrate how silly the Government and/or The Australian is. But that would be too easy, and I promised not to talk politics.

I could mention this game, but I think it’s just too addictive for you guys to handle.

I could talk about what a beautiful day it was yesterday, but when I start blogging about the weather I know it’s probably time to turn in my keyboard and join a hippy commune.

So instead of any of that I’m going to share with you the wonderful story of my first purchase over the Internet. Yes, tech savvy as I am, up until about a month ago I’d never actually bought anything online. This was mainly due to the lack of a payment facilitator, a deficiency which has now been resolved in the form of a Visa debit card.

Wanting to test out said card, I went post haste to the Achewood site, where I ordered all seven volumes of the Achewood comics in print. Transaction was effected through PayPal, and just a tip for all you non-Americans: don’t choose the ‘I want PayPal to rape me by way of their ridiculous exchange rate’ option. Choose the ‘I’ll take my credit card’s mystery rate’ option. Your card might still rape you, but at least there’s a sense of adventure about the process.

After I’d placed my order, the wait was an anxious one. Would my delivery reach Australia? Would it get through customs? Would Australia Post use it as a football in a game of parcel soccer (a sport I imagine they play in their warehouses)?

Then, on Monday, I got a note saying that the comics were waiting for me at the Post Office. Hooray! I retrieved them, took them home and read the first of the seven volumes straight away. Achewood is one of those series where the characters are really developed – it’s often hard to get the humour if you don’t have the back story. As an experiment, check out this comic, with the explanation that Lie Bot = George, and Philippe is basically a small cute child.

Achewood is gaining a lot of acceptance. One of the characters wrote an article recently for the Sydney Daily Telegraph (funny, funny shit), and they’ve been featured in Time magazine.

Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd, is also a big fan: "[n]ot satire, not parody... Achewood is my current favourite thing. My friends are divided between those who love it, and those who stare blankly at each last panel like a horse being presented with a banjo. Those latter friends are under review. Sometimes I look in their eyes and I feel I never really knew them."

So jump on the bandwagon. Read Achewood from the start. Your brain will love you.

All my guys, stoned, on the baseball field

I don't really have anything interesting to report about my life, so as a substitute I will strongly urge you to go and check this here thing out. It will be the funniest thing you'll see on the internet today, and will count as doing one interesting thing, if you are trying to follow George's plan of doing three interesting things every day.

Actually, if you've just gone to that link, and been having of the thought, that's not funny so much as weird, what I meant to say about a paragraph ago was that you have to give it a couple of comics for the story arc to kick in. This comic, Achewood, which I've mentioned before, is like Heroes - you need some time to mellow into it. Click the little arrow button to jump to the next comic, and keep going for about ten comics, or until you catch up to the current day.

Let me know your thoughts.

The facts of life

For a while now, Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) has had a penchant for detailing recent acts of bestiality. He also holds opinions on copyright law, and expresses said opinions from time to time. So his latest post is, I suppose, the inevitable next step. He’s likened violating copyright to having sex with someone else’s goat. I for one think that comparison needed to be made.

My favourite writing dude

There are a lot of authors that I hold in the greatest of esteem. If I had to pick a favourite it'd probably result in a four-way WWF-style cage match between Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stephen Donaldson and James Clavell. The two 50s sci-fi writers would probably have an edge because they've been dead for a number of years and would therefore be possessed of some super zombie powers. Though, come to think of it, when you hold people in great esteem, you probably shouldn't exhume their corpses and reanimate them to amuse the lowest elements of American 'society'.

Even hypothetically.

Anyway, I feel like I'm losing the thread of the original point I wanted to make. And that point is this: most of the authors that I admire write in a style that I could never hope to emulate. I'll never have the effortless knack of 'clear glass' writing that Asimov does; nor could I build tension or evoke sympathy for an anti-hero like Donaldson.

But then there's this guy, Chris Onstad, who's responsible for what I think is the cleverest writing I've ever seen on the 'net. He's the creator of the Achewood comic strip (awesome in its own right), but like a lot of online comic writers I actually enjoy his blogs even more than his comic strips. His style is idiosyncratic, but I can't help thinking it's achievable. I could write like that if I really wanted to, and made repeated concerted efforts. At least, that's my theory. So have a read of his stuff, particularly this amusing little golf memoir, and revelations about his ancestry

A final thought: what a dynamic, thriving little blog this is turning out to be! My favourite alliteration for today is "predeliction for this particular pleasantry". Possibly the best thing that Alice has ever written; my earnest hope is that she somehow managed to slip that phrase into her thesis.