Curses, Foiled Again!

What can you do when it's two in the morning, your back hurts when you sit down, and you can't sleep? Take some tinfoil, a cup, a camera, a microphone, and a hand- and viola! You have… Rapture in Tin Foil! (It's a stop-animation movie. Click on it. You know you want to.)

I would have transcribed my little "doo doo doo"ing into piano music if I had the time. Unfortunately, I wasn't that bored. I've tried demos of programs that transcribe sound into midi files and they're not quite up to snuff. Or maybe I just can't stay on pitch long enough to get it right.

For anyone who's had a problem using title cards with Windows Movie Maker: (You put a bitmap image in front of your movie and your finished .wmv only has a few seconds of the image, followed by a static image of the first frame of your movie.) Make your picture into an avi first, then use that movie instead of the image. This usually works.

TTFN
Tony

Do the Robot

Ah, Illustration Friday, she is upon us once more. Here are some robots I scribbled in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. Their names are, respectively, Guiltbot, Grapebot, and Dryerbot. I thought of making them in 3ds max, but I really should work on finishing False Idols. I suppose I'm about halfway done. There's nothing like procrastination.

TTFN
-Tony

An Animation for the Sensitive

A fun thing you can do when you're a shut-in is make animations! My latest, Oroboros, can be found here on YouTube. Enjoy!

(Note, if you're in an office, be sure to turn up your volume REAL LOUD.)

TTFN
-Tony

Thoughts of Cosmic Importance

Why oh why couldn't Quake 4 have used Quake's gothic motif as opposed to Quake 2's Sci-Fi one? The original Quake is still my favorite in the series, even though it's technically light years behind the sequels. I miss my Shamblers and Vores!

Who came up with this whole Easter Bunny thing anyway? The best I can come up with is that 2000 years ago, a bunny was unable to reproduce and came to Jesus to be healed. Sadly, Jesus had been in the sacramental wine (his own?) and although he cured her, she wound up laying eggs. A few archangels tried to fix this problem, but the best they could do was turn the eggs into chocolate. (This was before the evil Peeps revolution of 245 AD, when a group of baby chicks joined the leagues of Satan. God’s punishment was to turn them into marshmallows.)

On being true to thyself: In the words of Bill Cosby (on heroin use) "…but what if you're an asshole?"

If God can do anything he wants, why couldn't he just let people into heaven in the first place? Why did he have to come down in human form and get nailed to a tree for his troubles?

If you can think of some more, please let me know.

TTFN
Tony

Intollerance & Satire for All!

Happy Good Friday to all! In my childhood, this day was spent in church, or outside watching the Catholic School kids act out The Passion Play- though not with as much enthusiasm as Mel Gibson's production. (Maybe we would have payed more attention if they had.) Those of us who went to public school and had to go to CCD only got to watch the spectacle.

As Joe is in CCD himself now, he comes up with great questions. For example, last Sunday they told him about Passover and the 10^th plague. So, of course, Joe wants to know who had all these first born sons killed. Now, what am I supposed to tell him? That (according to the Bible) since the Pharaoh didn't do what God wanted, He killed off all the first born male Egyptian children? That God- the same God that I've been telling him is synonymous with love- is the original terrorist? Either I'm right or the Bible is.

Speaking of religious terrorism, what did you all think of South Park in the past two weeks? If you didn't see the two-parter, it was about Comedy Central's refusal to air images of Mohammad following the whole Danish cartoon affair. The ending of part two featured a (fake) terrorist-made cartoon, in which Jesus shits on George Bush and the American Flag. The whole point of this was to show what hypocrites the media are when it comes to allowing Jesus to be desecrated as opposed to being tolerant of other religions (in this case, Islam.) The funny thing is that every episode's opening titles contains the cartoon of Mohammad from "The Super Best Friends." (He's on the right, in the middle.) I guess Comedy Central didn't notice.

Lost amid all the furor is a landmark reached by this episode: It is the first time in television history that President George W. Bush was actually portrayed in a good light. Amazing.

Well, anyway, have a good Easter/ Passover/ whatever.

BEWARE THE PEEP UPRISING!

-TTFNTony

Illustration Friday: Spotted (next in the dictionary after "speed")

This is probably why I haven't seen the word "moon."

Why I Shouldn't Watch the News

Some kid in the Bronx who turns two tomorrow was put in scalding bathwater by his mother's boyfriend. To make things worse, the mother waited six days before bringing him to the hospital, so all of his burns are infected now. Can someone explain to me why people like this can't just be put against the wall and shot?

Illustration Friday: Speed

Yes, it's another Illustration Friday animation, Speeding Through the Cosmos! (<< CLICK THERE.) A quick little jaunt around some of the Solar System at warp speed, with high tech sound effects to boot! Of course, you can see all of my YouTube movies by clicking HERE.

I sit up a little more each day, I can stand up for a little more each day. If I could only bend more than 1/8 of the way, or walk better, or… in time, in time. The scary thing about all this is the suddenness of it. Being disabled in any way wasn't anything I was prepared for. Thank God I had my wife, my parents, and my father-in-law to help us, or I'd be completely screwed. The people in the disability/ compensation department at Local 3 have been as helpful as they can be as well. So I thank God for everyone who's made this as easy as it can be.

I haven't been keeping up with the news every day, so there's nothing new to rant about. If anyone has any suggestions for ranting, please forward them.

TTFN
-Tony

Free Speech for Some

While zipping around YouTube.com, I had the misfortune to come across a posting of Michael Moore's animated fecal matter from Bowling for Columbine, "A Brief History of the United States of America." Like all of Michael Moore's… well, I'll let you read my comment for yourself (I have to post the comment here, because the schmuck who posted the video actually deleted it!):

"Typical of Michael Moore, this doesn't actually ACCUSE anyone of anything. It merely makes it SEEM like all NRA members are white racist murderers. If you just take the worst points of history and string them together without cause, nothing can be defended. This film also polarizes all whites (killers) against all blacks (peaceful). (Obviously, only white suburbanites are gun-toting murderers. The whole gangsta/rap culture must be the fault of all those evil whites who ran from the cities.)"

Now, if you look at the other videos this hypocrite has posted, they include a comment taken out of context by President Bush, and a news item about AIDS and Bayer. Of course, this guy is allowed to post whatever he wants, (to be honest, I agree with the statements made in the Bush and AIDS videos,) and I can safely assume that his thinking leans a bit to the left. But obviously this "liberal" attitude doesn't extend to free speech- as least as far as anyone disagreeing with him!

Hell, I didn't even delete the comment of the loser who posted on my Special Effects Lesson video that his version was "more entertaining." (It's not.) I admit I've deleted a comment or two here when a poster talked about someone else's personal business, and I can't swear there are some other circumstances where I wouldn't decide to delete someone's comment. It just amazes me that to post these controversial videos, this guy obviously thinks he's such a freedom fighter, a rebel, a voice that can't be silenced against the evil right wing empire. But in reality, he's such a coward that he deletes a dissenting comment!

Enough ranting- g'night!

TTFN
-Tony

Epilogue: May 30, 2006

Someone else has posted this piece of tripe on Youtube. While I might not agree with him, at least he has the testicular fortitude to allow opposing comments and debate his position.

Scribblings & Dribblings

Yes, you've got that right. It's 12:19 in the morning, and I can't sleep, because being out of work due to the fact that my back is about as useless as a water balloon, I've been keeping bizarre irregular hours.

Jen's asleep. Mandy's asleep. Joe's asleep. I can sit here for a little bit. There's pain in the root of my spine, but it's not bad. What'll be bad is when I get up and hobble to bed. But I'm sick of it, sick of lying there with only the voices in my own head for company. The voices that don't even say anything interesting, like, "Kill, kill all those who worship the false idol, Cool Whip!" or "Aren't the Moon-Penguins trying to destroy humanity through the Liberal Democrat / Conservative Republican media machine?" No, they don't say interesting things like that, I have to think them all by myself. Or maybe I'm like Stephen King, and I'm just a medium for what the muses type through me. (So don't blame me when I write crappy endings to series that have taken me twenty years to finish, (The Dark Tower) or when I write myself as a character into my own books. Oh, to be so famous as to be able to publish ANYTHING…)

But I digress.

I must state here and now that Jennifer has been a right angel taking care of me through all this. She has been everything to me, and I love her and thank her. AWWWWW.

Anyway, I'm off to bed to lie there, stare at the ceiling, and see if I can alter the universe through mental applications of quantum physics, Qi Kung, and playing Nethack. Cheerio.

TTFN
Tony