Kit's Blog

Comics: When did they stop being funny?

     So I'm back from Japan, but I won't make a big deal of it besides say that I'm home. Anyway, right after I got home, there was a big pile of sunday comics waiting for me. As I read through them, I realized something: Not one of them made me laugh. Sure, there were a few chuckles here and there, but nothing like the days of Calvin and Hobbes or Farside, and I think I've realized why.
     Most comics seem to now adhere to the strategy of appealing to a group, namely a political group or an age demographic. Most of the time, in order to appeal to this group, the comics are not funny. I found two poiniant examples of things that recently became a part of the comics page, but actually are not normally funny.

So, Prickly city makes me sad just simply because all of it's jokes are either about pbs and npr, or they make pale pantamimes of Calvin and Hobbes like humor. What does this include? Mainly just them jumping off cliffs with umbrellas or having very "deep" sounding conversations followed by a complete disregard for it. They try, but normally they just make really right-wing jokes. Something which wouldn't really bother me if they were funny.

Case and point: left-wing jokes suck too. Doonesbury can be funny, but the point is that in general, really political jokes don't have much of a home in the comics page. They're not funny, they're making a point; If you could do both at the same time then I wouldn't care, but both of these people fail at it.

Pearls Before Swine makes a good point here: who gives a fuck if you appeal to a demographic? Be funny assholes. Though to be fair I didn't get much of a chuckle out of this one either, but Pearls Before Swine has gotten a few good laughs out of me with the "Angry Bob" series:

Man I miss the "funnies" being funny and not just angerly political.

One more tour thing before I get back home

     So here's something you guys will like, it's another tour thing. This one the code is a little more poor, but it runs a tad faster. You also get to choose which way to go! Woo! Excitement! This place was the '70 Expo commemoration park. I don't really know what it is, but whatever. It was big and cool. Here's the link to the virtual tour thing:

NOTE: 113 pictures! Not slow internet-connection friendly!
Walk through a park!

After you've gone through once try going through again clicking REALLY REALLY FAST! It's mildly movie like when you do it right. Unfortunately, you can only click really fast if you're using firefox (as far as I know).

Some random Japanese TV

     So in Japan, Volleyball is really popular. This being said, it also means I end up watching quite a bit of it simply because my host parents do. Yesterday while watching, I saw a commercial which really made me smile. Check it out here. The song I don't understand at all, but the words at the end translate to: "Such peace I've never seen before." (This part comes from someone else, I can't read it) And the voice-over says: "'New enjoyability, Heiwa." (That part I got on my own). So what else is happening? Not a whole lot. School here started again, but it's only 3 classes a day. Unfortunately, the clubs that I normally bum out in haven't happened for the last two days, so I've just sort have ridden my bike really, really far. What have I seen? Sometimes a lot, sometimes practically nothing. But you'll probably see some pictures eventually.
     In other news since I normally only have one or two classes each day, I spend at least an hour in the morning on the net. As with most schools, they have quite a bit of blocking going on, which I, of course, have been trying my best to circumvent. What have I managed to do? Nothing. I am just as incapable now of getting on my email, aim, or any good websites now as I was when I started. They only have Flash 5 too so even scuzzstuff doesn't work (some games)! But I found something that's really great as a aimexpress substitute: terraim. No install, 1 exe, and in the settings you can make it store information in a file instead of the registry if you don't have access. Why can't I get through, I hear you cry. Because the connection is directly firewalled, so all ports are blocked save for 80.
     And as a final note, counter-culture (one of my favorite webcomics), is ending! Could someone please back-up the site for me in case I don't get back before it's gone? HTTrack should be easy enough for anyone to use and get it for me. Basically? Brian: Download this for me. I'll be on AIM tomorrow morning (that's tonight to you) and I'll walk you through it.

A quick walk through Japan

     So the other day I was in Kobe, and I thought: I should make a mini-slideshow thing to show these guys what a brief walk through Japan is like. So I walked all the way up this big hill in Kobe to a temple, then at the temple, I walked all the way up the stairs, and walked behind the shrine at the top. There I found more stairs! I walked up those and found another shrine! And behind that?! A little walkway through a garden with more stairs! Which led to some little unstable platform with an awesome view of Kobe. Unfortunately, I need a little longer to get it working... Sorry... Check back later today...

--Edit: So after many hours of slaving... It's UP! HOOOORAY! Sorry the "high-def" isn't very high-def at all. Later today (today my time, tonight your time), I may upload the ultra-super-ridiculous quality pictures, but I can't do that here (Abeno highschool). Anyway, watch for the comments!
Check it out! It's Japan!

--Edit 2:
     Some more pictures:

Why, it's a vending machine with kitkatbars! I must buy some!

Here it comes...

Yay!

Because I ain't eatin' no pocky for women!

Unless it comes from a POCKY VENDING MACHINE!! But it was out of order...

A Negima game?! Crazy! (But man, $70? A lot for a game...)

This was right before I actually got on one of these. It went all the way up the mountain!

Something I thought Alex would like (tell him to look Jack!). Side note to Alex: I bet I could've asked her how to wang chung.

Because I thought you guys would like something that actually looks like it's from Japan. This is at Nanzenji temple. They also have a very cool aquaduct here.

And just so that you know, they may look bad quality, but that's because I didn't want them to take up all the space on my server. I have a really nice new camera which I got here in japan.

Spam

     So I said there'd be an article which unfortunately could get written because I didn't have access to a Half-life using machine. Instead I have a random monty-python video and a short little ditty about spam.
     So pretty much everyone who has been on the internet for more than a month has gotten some spam before. I, being no exception to this group, have gotten much spam. But nowhere more prevolently than on my blog. For the most part you guys don't see the hundreds of bogus posts I get regularly, because I have systems to take care of it in the backround, but even today I had another 13 spam posts that weren't caught by my systems, but you guys DID see the first time when I was unprepared (see here). Imagine that that still happens everyday... about 6 times. In a nutshell? I get a lot of spam, and today on Wikiedia the featured article was about spam. It turns out that spam is named after a monty python sketch, which is now provided on my site, here. Sorry that I don't have too much else to say, but today is just that kind of day.