Festive Fester Fish

Fester Fish introduces his human girlfriend to his parents at Christmas. And then things go sideways ...

Fester Fish - Fester Makes Friends

My friend Aaron has released his latest Fester Fish episode, which he finished post-production on yesterday. Aaron is just about to enter his fourth year at animation school, then it's out into The Real World for him. Here's to a great final year, Aaron!

Ponytails For Decency

A few weeks after an old lady attacked my bookstore owner friend (Eddie of Dencan Books) with the crumpled-up ball of my work comes word of a fresh complaint.

Stockings and garters and heels -- oh my!

A number of my more recent images, printed on canvas and framed, are hung in a store window down on Lakeshore Road in Toronto. When Candi and Jim, the store owners, put them up I warned them about the Bookstore Versus Little Old Lady episode and pointed out that two of the images in their windows were large renditions of my pin-ups. They laughed and said something to the effect that "Oh don't worry: this is the Lakeshore. Anything goes here."

So apparently last Friday a dual-ponytailed young woman, 19 or 20, came into the store and waited patiently to get Candi's attention. She insisted that those pin-up images were inappropriate and should be removed from the window. Candi said "rubbish" and the girl said, "but they are in their underwear -- women and children could see them!"

Candi, displaying her stubborn and mischievous streak, retorted that there's an enormous illuminated billboard down near the Gardiner Expressway (a 6-lane elevated highway that runs right through downtown Toronto) showing a man wearing only his Stanfield undershorts and that if she could get them to remove that, Candi would remove my pin-ups.

The girl left. But will she return with a mob? Stay tuned ...

The Boss

The Boss from Alex Emslie on Vimeo.

The real UN logo

The real U.N. logo by ~JoniGodoy on deviantART

Merry Christmas!

Reindeer from Treat on Vimeo.

Pigeon: Impossible

Pigeon: Impossible from Lucas Martell on Vimeo.

Cat Diaries: The First Ever Movie Filmed by Cats!

Headline of the year?

Source: The Language Log

Ch-ch-ch-changes ...

This is very well put together. Bravo!

Symphony In SLANG

Fake Steve Jobs on Real Steve Balmer

FSJ may be fake, but his insights are real. Here's his take on the Microhoo! buyup plan. Brilliant.

[...] here's the really dark part of all this. He knows it won't work. He has to know this. He's not stupid. The cultures will never fit together. And the deal is too big. It's not manageable. And it's completely anathema to Microsoft. It's totally out of character for them. It goes against everything the company has ever stood for. Ballmer knows this, and he's doing it anyway. Because this is exactly what every old-guard CEO does when all else fails. I mean it's right there in the official playbook that you get in business school. And ultimately, smart as he is, Ballmer is an old-school kind of guy. He's not really a tech guy. He has a mindset that was formed in Detroit, where he grew up. He's a Big Three automaker kind of guy. And this is a Big Three move. It's Ford buying Jaguar and Land Rover and Volvo because they can't think of anything else to do.

So if the deal happens -- and I'm not convinced it will -- Ballmer will have bought himself maybe two years before it becomes clear to the entire world that it has failed. By then maybe Ballmer will be gone and someone else will have to mop up the mess. [...]

Link ...

Cartoon (Мультфильм)

Manic animation -- whack music. What's not to like?

Da Shatner Funk

William Shatner and Conan O'Brien remixed.

"They know. They're onto something." "Fear! Woo, woo."

First and last Canadian political comment

[Paul Martin and Stephen Harper are two dudes both vying for top spot in Canadian politics. Martin so amused me with his recent highly negative public characterizations of Harper, that I just had to imagine what further things he would tell me about Harper if I called him up personally ...]

I called up Paul Martin today and he told me a number of things about Harper that they were going to reveal, but had to pull at the last minute:

Stephen Harper habitually kicks dogs.

If you play any one of Stephen Harper's speeches in reverse, you can just make out the words, "I buried Medicare."

Stephen Harper and Osama bin Laden are drinking buddies.

Stephen Harper casts no shadow. Stephen Harper cannot see his own reflection in a mirror.

Stephen Harper is paying thugs to create a gun problem in Toronto so he'll have a good campaign platform item.

Stephen Harper bites the heads off of bats.

The Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil was originally written about Stephen Harper, but they were forced by the record label lawyers to rewrite it so they wouldn't risk obscenity charges.

Stephen Harper is a direct descendent of Jack the Ripper.

Paul told me more, but it gets much, much worse.

Moronic interrogatives

Something that bugs me a lot is the increasingly common speech impediment that causes speakers to turn simple statements into questions.

"So I was with my friend? And we were like in Starbucks? And the barista had these velvet pants?"

According to some British websites it's known as a ...

Moronic interrogative: coined by British comedian Rory McGrath to describe the use of intonation at the end of a sentence that is not a question.

I hear this daily on one of Toronto's "all-news" radio stations. 680News, unhappily, feels it necessary to interview people on the street regarding subjects about which they are woefully uninformed.

680: I'm here at Union Station and I asked Brittany why she looks so wide awake this morning.

B: Really, I'm not? I'm just on my way to work?

Aaaaargh!

It suggests that a lot of people are tremendously insecure and need constant reassurance that they aren't mistaken about ... well, most everything. "I've just said something, but I could be wrong, so please nod or smile and blink or something -- ok good, you nodded -- where was I? Oh yeah: velvet pants ..."