Listen.
librarycomic.com
One of my frequent torments: babblers who bury their question or inquiry in incessant yammering.
Listen.
librarycomic.com
One of my frequent torments: babblers who bury their question or inquiry in incessant yammering.
All these books, most of which are discounted; not your topic, not your genre.
Freedom of choice makes my head thick and dizzy. Survival is the culling of choices. To choose I must choose to forsake possibilities.
Closing in. There are those you have read before so many times their impact is lost in the deep ruts you have made through them; the comfortingly familiar terrain now smothered in mists of ennui; a journey too easily made, unchallenging.
A collection; a rockpool of remarkable creatures to examine as they go their separate ways. I add it to the catch.
Books are judged not just by their covers, but their blurbs, first words. One woeful volume gives away the plot twist inside the cover. Another clanks spastically into predictable life, the new glossy shell betrayed by the chattering clockwork and hissing steam-pipes inside; a lie, nothing truly new here, some fine old story got its original brass fittings torn off and replaced with cheap parts.
A garish shell, an unpromising blurb, the psychic stench of old formulae, undead sequels, and in one case, a spectral, grim presence of a stony-faced evangelist intent on dragging his victim’s souls to heaven.
Sometimes there’s a charm in the mass-produced, flimsy, cheap-and-cheerful, the bulldada that despite its triteness and evident wrote-by-numbers formulae still assumes it can be taken seriously. We love to hear the old stories repeated endlessly, over and over, lullabies for the mind.
A familiar name; time for a punt; sometimes even a trusted author can sonambulate through a work.
Bestsellers, bestsellers, are you bestsellers because of pedigree or because of some publisher’s faith in self-fulfilling prophecy?
I can’t sit in front of the computer all the time, devouring slabs of fanfic or downloaded PDFs of this-and-that. A book I can read, laying on my bed before finally passing out in a haze of heat and as near to no-mind as I can get.
There’s something shameful about being unable to finish a book; at the same time, there’s the grim realisation that sometimes you cannot go on; the scenery is all wrong and there’s a great cloth patch in the sky; or maybe the language is like scree slopes, speargrass and stinging nettle; or the characters are misshapen horrors in black and white hats.
For better or worse, the choices are made, time to take them home. These books will pass, and unto the library they and I will return.
I never really got into Rosenberg’s previous opus Goats, but this comic is simultaneously topical, surreal and consistently funny.
Every Friday there’s another episode of an ongoing story, the first famously being Sciencemaster Adler and his mysterious fan. Or fans. Or maybe they’re not fans but are sentient vegetable people. (Mind you, this is a multiverse, so maybe there’s sentient clothing accessory people as well, but that could be heading into the Douglas Adams Territories.)
How To Suck At Your Religion by The Oatmeal
This is long but excellent
Most people don’t have faith in their god/s. Just brand loyalty. And artificially inflamed brand loyalty at that.
So I went to this “zine make and swap” event tonight, at the Wellington Central Library. I was late thanks to traffic and driving around streets that were black mirrors, looking for a park.
Still, I dropped off my copies of Bemusement Park #1 and dicovered that it’s easier and more fun to cut and paste than to grovel in Scribus. There was also much collaging and destruction of withdrawn library books and magazines. All I need now is an editorial and BP#2 can be scanned into PDF format for printing!

As seen on Rosscott Inc., then Boing Boing. And now here.
I can’t even imagine how awful political comics are going to be the next few days.
ghxstglasses asked:
dresdencodak answered:
I’d start here and then just go chronologically http://dresdencodak.com/2009/04/19/onald-creely/
When you’ve caught up to the latest page of Dark Science, then I’d recommend going and starting at the beginning of the archives. I’ve found this is currently pretty much the best way to introduce new readers to the comic!
Dresden Codak is one of those must-read comics.