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What do I do when I'm bored? As far as goofing around on the web, anyway?
I like to check the news at The Seattle Times and/or The Seattle P-I. I usually check both every day, but as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
genebreshears points out, the big headlines have been a bit depressing lately. However, the story about a student who spent 41 hours of his Spring break in a Walmart was amusing.
I check Engrish.com on a regular basis. It usually makes me laugh, and it's updated with something new nearly every day. In fact, it really falls into the same category as the comics that I check up on during the week.
The only comic I check every day is PVP Online. It's a 7-day-a-week comic and is almost always amusing and well-done. I also check out /Gu five days a week (it doesn't update on the weekends). It's sometimes funny, but frankly it's rarely laugh-out-loud funny. The artist Woody is a very good artist though. I suppose I watch it out of habit more than for how often it entertains me.
Comics that I follow that are updated 2-3 times a week includ The Wotch, The Wotch: Cheer (a spinoff about the cheerleaders at the same school), Okashina Okashii, El Goonish Shive, and New World Comic. Some of these are better than others. I've been following The Wotch for quite a long time, but recently got into El Goonish Shive, which has been around long and apparently inspired Anne to start up with The Wotch. Okashina Okashii is something I read for a while, stopped reading for a year or two, and recently started reading again. I haven't gone back to read the stuff in between that I missed -- it's not really thie kind of comic that develops much of a plot over the long term, but in the short term it's amusing.
Alien Loves Predator is only updated once a week on Mondays but when it's on the mark it makes me laugh as hard as anything I follow. Nodwick is also updated just once a week, on Wednesdays, and might be my favorite of all of the online comics that I follow. He updated Full Frontal Nerdity at the same time, and posts a once-a-week blog with cool links, which I sometimes steal for my own Live Journal.
WTF Comics is another that I follow and like a great deal, but it gets updated irregularly -- usually several times a month though, which is more than I can say for the last comic on my list, Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuki, which was only updated 2 or 3 times in 2005. But hey, she's already got a third update for 2006, so maybe there's hope.
Probably in the same category as the comics I read online is the fake newspaper The Onion, which is updated weekly.
I check a few others sites. CBS Sports sometimes, my old EQ Guild forums a few times a month. I visit The Second Life forums pretty regularly, although I don't get involved in the big debates going on there, I just check a few forums for anything interesting and see what's new in "new items for sale". But it seems silly to read about a game when I'd rather just play it. ^_^
Occasionally I track down scanlations of manga that I like. Currently that includes Momoiro Sabbath, a comic I collected years ago, and Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, something I picked up on recently. For the most part, the comics that I get interested in through scanlations, such as W Juliet or Gacha Gacha wind up getting picked up by one of the major English manga publishers, and then I can just buy the manga volumes.
The plan for tonight is to sit on the couch and watch For Your Height Only, which arrived in my mailbox this morning. Still waiting for the books I ordered to arrive, and for my last month's check to arrive...
Edit Okay, I've watched For Your Height Only. It would be hard to describe how bad the movie is... if it weren't for the fact that there's a three-foot midget beating everyone up, it would just be bad as in boring bad, but as it is, it's pretty hilarious. And pretty plotless. The entire plot could be summed up this way:
1. "Mr. Giant" the mysterious head of the Filipino crime syndicate, captures a (presumably) American scientist who is the inventor of the "N-Bomb". With the N-Bomb, Mr. Giant can conquer the world, or so he says. The scientist refuses to cooperate, saying that "that bomb is only for your government, not for you!" Why the Americans would be giving the latest and greatest weapon of mass destruction to the Phillipines is a subject no one in the movie tries to explain.
2. Weng Weng, known as "Secret Agent 00" (seriously, EVERYONE knows him as Secret Agent 00 -- all the bad guys call him that, he even introduces himself to strangers by saying, "I'm Secret Agent 00!" So where's the secret?) begins attacking the local bad guys, who all work for Mr. Giant. At first he just beats them up and foils their pathetic attempts at crime, but when they capture his girlfriend-slash-only-other-freakin-agent-the-good-guys-can-afford-before-the-final-assault, he gets mean. He spends at least 30 minutes running around killing bad guys. I'd estimate he kills at least 50. And mind you, I'm not talking about advancing the plot while killing bad guys. Killing bad guys IS the plot.
3. 00 finally figures out where the bad guys are (on Hidden Island! No I'm not making this up!) For some unknown reason he uses a jet pack to travel to the island, then calls in reinforcements (we finally learn that the Secret Agency has other agents -- a whole squad of them -- and where have they been for most of the movie anyway? And why are they following Weng to the island by a good hour or more?)
4. Weng confronts Mr. Big, who turns out to be a full head taller than the super-spy secret agent (that would make him about 3' 8" I'm guessing). He's all alone in a room, for no apparent reason. He makes some threats, they fight, and he dies. Seriously, the super villian of the movie has less than eight minutes of screen time before he's dead -- up until that point he was just a disembodied voice that came out of a mirror-slash-secret-communication-device-of-evil.
5. Weng and all of his Secret Agent friends kill about 50 more bad guys, who all wear goofy black shirts with red circles on the front (not quite bull's-eyes, but they might as well have been) and goofy red berets. These are apparently Mr. Big's elite bad guys because all of the others were just normally-dressed thugs. The elite bad guys specialize in running out into open spaces where they can be easily shot. Seriously, we're treated to at least 10, maybe 15 minutes of bad guys in identical goofy outfits running out into the open in groups of 2-4 and then dying. Over and over. When I say that about 100 bad guys die in this film, I don't think I'm exaggerating.
Anyway, that's the plot. There's goofy gadgets of course, including a barbershop quartet hat that you can throw to kill people. And bad dialogue. Lots of that.
I like to check the news at The Seattle Times and/or The Seattle P-I. I usually check both every day, but as
genebreshears points out, the big headlines have been a bit depressing lately. However, the story about a student who spent 41 hours of his Spring break in a Walmart was amusing.I check Engrish.com on a regular basis. It usually makes me laugh, and it's updated with something new nearly every day. In fact, it really falls into the same category as the comics that I check up on during the week.
The only comic I check every day is PVP Online. It's a 7-day-a-week comic and is almost always amusing and well-done. I also check out /Gu five days a week (it doesn't update on the weekends). It's sometimes funny, but frankly it's rarely laugh-out-loud funny. The artist Woody is a very good artist though. I suppose I watch it out of habit more than for how often it entertains me.
Comics that I follow that are updated 2-3 times a week includ The Wotch, The Wotch: Cheer (a spinoff about the cheerleaders at the same school), Okashina Okashii, El Goonish Shive, and New World Comic. Some of these are better than others. I've been following The Wotch for quite a long time, but recently got into El Goonish Shive, which has been around long and apparently inspired Anne to start up with The Wotch. Okashina Okashii is something I read for a while, stopped reading for a year or two, and recently started reading again. I haven't gone back to read the stuff in between that I missed -- it's not really thie kind of comic that develops much of a plot over the long term, but in the short term it's amusing.
Alien Loves Predator is only updated once a week on Mondays but when it's on the mark it makes me laugh as hard as anything I follow. Nodwick is also updated just once a week, on Wednesdays, and might be my favorite of all of the online comics that I follow. He updated Full Frontal Nerdity at the same time, and posts a once-a-week blog with cool links, which I sometimes steal for my own Live Journal.
WTF Comics is another that I follow and like a great deal, but it gets updated irregularly -- usually several times a month though, which is more than I can say for the last comic on my list, Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuki, which was only updated 2 or 3 times in 2005. But hey, she's already got a third update for 2006, so maybe there's hope.
Probably in the same category as the comics I read online is the fake newspaper The Onion, which is updated weekly.
I check a few others sites. CBS Sports sometimes, my old EQ Guild forums a few times a month. I visit The Second Life forums pretty regularly, although I don't get involved in the big debates going on there, I just check a few forums for anything interesting and see what's new in "new items for sale". But it seems silly to read about a game when I'd rather just play it. ^_^
Occasionally I track down scanlations of manga that I like. Currently that includes Momoiro Sabbath, a comic I collected years ago, and Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, something I picked up on recently. For the most part, the comics that I get interested in through scanlations, such as W Juliet or Gacha Gacha wind up getting picked up by one of the major English manga publishers, and then I can just buy the manga volumes.
The plan for tonight is to sit on the couch and watch For Your Height Only, which arrived in my mailbox this morning. Still waiting for the books I ordered to arrive, and for my last month's check to arrive...
Edit Okay, I've watched For Your Height Only. It would be hard to describe how bad the movie is... if it weren't for the fact that there's a three-foot midget beating everyone up, it would just be bad as in boring bad, but as it is, it's pretty hilarious. And pretty plotless. The entire plot could be summed up this way:
1. "Mr. Giant" the mysterious head of the Filipino crime syndicate, captures a (presumably) American scientist who is the inventor of the "N-Bomb". With the N-Bomb, Mr. Giant can conquer the world, or so he says. The scientist refuses to cooperate, saying that "that bomb is only for your government, not for you!" Why the Americans would be giving the latest and greatest weapon of mass destruction to the Phillipines is a subject no one in the movie tries to explain.
2. Weng Weng, known as "Secret Agent 00" (seriously, EVERYONE knows him as Secret Agent 00 -- all the bad guys call him that, he even introduces himself to strangers by saying, "I'm Secret Agent 00!" So where's the secret?) begins attacking the local bad guys, who all work for Mr. Giant. At first he just beats them up and foils their pathetic attempts at crime, but when they capture his girlfriend-slash-only-other-freakin-agent-the-good-guys-can-afford-before-the-final-assault, he gets mean. He spends at least 30 minutes running around killing bad guys. I'd estimate he kills at least 50. And mind you, I'm not talking about advancing the plot while killing bad guys. Killing bad guys IS the plot.
3. 00 finally figures out where the bad guys are (on Hidden Island! No I'm not making this up!) For some unknown reason he uses a jet pack to travel to the island, then calls in reinforcements (we finally learn that the Secret Agency has other agents -- a whole squad of them -- and where have they been for most of the movie anyway? And why are they following Weng to the island by a good hour or more?)
4. Weng confronts Mr. Big, who turns out to be a full head taller than the super-spy secret agent (that would make him about 3' 8" I'm guessing). He's all alone in a room, for no apparent reason. He makes some threats, they fight, and he dies. Seriously, the super villian of the movie has less than eight minutes of screen time before he's dead -- up until that point he was just a disembodied voice that came out of a mirror-slash-secret-communication-device-of-evil.
5. Weng and all of his Secret Agent friends kill about 50 more bad guys, who all wear goofy black shirts with red circles on the front (not quite bull's-eyes, but they might as well have been) and goofy red berets. These are apparently Mr. Big's elite bad guys because all of the others were just normally-dressed thugs. The elite bad guys specialize in running out into open spaces where they can be easily shot. Seriously, we're treated to at least 10, maybe 15 minutes of bad guys in identical goofy outfits running out into the open in groups of 2-4 and then dying. Over and over. When I say that about 100 bad guys die in this film, I don't think I'm exaggerating.
Anyway, that's the plot. There's goofy gadgets of course, including a barbershop quartet hat that you can throw to kill people. And bad dialogue. Lots of that.
