One better than the one we're doing now!

From a strictly numerical point of view, next year will be one better than the one we're doing now.

I'm all about this!

By all traditionally observed units and measures I failed at 2014. I don't often go in for traditional though, unless it's something that I like, but even then I'm not exclusively traditional, it's just in amongst everything else in the grab-bag that I have grabbed.

So I'll take my +1 thanks folks.

I'm not unhappy with 2014. It saw the beginning of some projects that I hope to continue/finish, a couple of which are things you can (and may have already) see(n), I discovered that you can cook cookies in a wok, and Scott Bakula is once again the lead of a Donald P. Bellisario TV production (where he belongs).

Panda is the star of his own comic now. That's new for him. He's having a good time with it. We both are.

The people who've known Panda the longest have been aware that this was an idea back in the early days of our partnership. They've heard me talk about it to varying degrees over the last few years, and also probably heard the umming and ahhing that went along with the ebb and flow of my enthusiasm for the project.

The drawing, which was the original deterrent, has ended up being far easier than I imagined. I'm not totally terrible at it. Stuff looks like stuff, which is the goal. The writing jokes in a neat three panel format, on the other hand, is something that I need to work at.

It's still a weird process for me. It's different. They're not really one-liners. They're interactions that sometimes contain one-liners, but they need to have these breaks in them. There is a pacing thing on which my grasp needs to be mightier. I often say them out loud, and I've realised that that's not working. It's a different system of delivery. Something that I've never really thought about before.

I'm enjoying the whole process, so there's a good chance I'll keep making them.

There is this other thing over on another part of the internet that I am doing with my old friend, maverick_boxer. That is not his real name. Clearly. He has another name, but that is the one he is using for this thing that we're doing. This thing called Failure to Launch, and it's a specific kind of thing that is pretty different from what I do here. It's one of those let's play shows that all the tubers are doing these days.

If that's the sort of thing that interests you, take a gander. If listening to me talk a whole lot of nonsensical shit while my friend tries to explain how a computer game works sounds like your cup of tea, you should definitely take a gander.

I might try and find a way to tuck it away somewhere here on The Glue, so that you can stay informed. Sort of a cross promotional thing. For now though, it's over on the InterTubes.

I hope you're still reading to enjoy the flavoursome juices that United by Glue will be bringing you in the coming year. I look forward to smuggling these things deep into your brain for the purposes of mirth. 

Oh, I just thought of something. 

Porpoises of Mirth and a Happy New Year!

The Unseasonal Delay of Construction

Strip Search Gives Us Sequential Art for Summer

I am going to preface this by saying that I am not really big into reality TV. Well, I love documentaries, and I sometimes watch the news, but that stuff that they make where people compete in a bunch of really artificial competitions and there is that 'gaming' process by which a competitor can be eliminated by conniving instead of through a lack of talent or skill. I don't like that. It's kind of nasty.

I also hate it when someone who is clearly very good at something and is still really young refers to the show as '[their] last chance'. I think that people should be eliminated immediately for that.

I am also going to preface this by saying that I have a really poor concept of the passage of time, and as a result am reliant on temporal landmarks and the general geography of life to remember when it was that I actually did something, or something was done unto me. This is hard when I do something on my own. That limits it, because the people involved are great indicators.

Actually, I can just go and look this one up. Gimme a sec.



I'm back.

So, it turns out it was mid last year.

'What was last year?', you might ask, which would be totally valid at this stage, because I have not at all been forthcoming with details yet. Strip Search (like in the title) would be the short answer to that question.

Now, before you get all like, 'What kind of reality TV are you watching? Is nudity the key component that is missing from The Block for you? Or perhaps it's the televised invasion of privacy and personal space that you enjoy', the show is not at all about the quest for bodily secreted contraband. It's not about that at all.

It's about comics! Which is also implied by the title. The title was pretty thorough, but what it didn't say was that they are webcomics. It wasn't that specific.

I like webcomics. I have for a long time. This isn't a recent thing for me. I was introduced to PvP by finding it left open by another student in a computer lab back in high school. That was 16 years ago!

Strip Search is a webcomic reality show where the winner got to be a part of the Penny Arcade machine. They got them some money too, but being a part of the aforementioned machine is huge.

Maybe I need to explain Penny Arcade first. No, look, let me just say they are the wizards at this thing. By just about any metric you might want to use, they are the winners of the webcomic game. They are the dominant species. Apex predators. Without the predatory behaviour though. They kind of do the opposite when they made Strip Search. It's their show, and it can be found at their internet.

There is more to the show than the personal interest I have in the subject matter. It has greater appeal than that, and that greater appeal comes from the people involved. They're nice. There is some good natured griefing, but they're all really nice to each other. They're respectful, and they want to be friends. They play their game that they're playing, but instead of being like Monopoly, it's like like something else. Some other game. A game that doesn't fray and tear at the very fabric of society. A game that doesn't ware through the basic foundations of civility and decency.

Monopoly is poison.

Strip Search is the opposite of that, which makes it the opposite of a lot of other reality TV.

You know what it's like? It's like It's a Knockout. Do you remember that? The one that ran in the 80s? Everyone was so positive. They're just glad to be there. It's like that, but with drawing.

You can watch it. It's online. Still. Even though it's about 18 months old. Maybe it will be forever. Who knows? And, unlike shows like The Block in which viewers don't really get an opportunity to benefit from the product of the show, we all get to benefit. A lot of strips have come out of the show. Not just form the winner, but pretty much everyone on the show benefitted greatly from the exposure, which means more tasty comics for us.

I'm going to do a separate post on the strips resulting from, and related to the show, so look out for that in the lead up to Christmas.

The Unequivocal Importance of Safety

Hayao Miyazaki Movie Season on SBS

I assume that most of the people who read my blog are aware of the incredible work of Hayao Miyazaki. I feel like this is a fairly safe assumption with me and my parents making up three of my total readership of four (yeah, I read my own blog).

I don't need to sell him to you. That time has passed. The guy is crazy internationally revered for his contributions to his medium, and popular culture as a whole. You don't need me to tell you that. Maybe you do. Maybe you aren't really aware of the defining influence that this guy has had not only on animation in his home country, AND the international relationship with that animated output of that country of his home, BUT ALSO mostly responsible for a very different sort of broad range appeal than you would find in, say, a Disney Pixar film.

Maybe you need me to tell you those things.

Maybe you also need to be told that starting tomorrow night (Saturday, 2014-12-06) SBS 2 are running a Hayao Miyazaki Family Movie Season.

My Neighbour Totoro	1988	Saturday, 2014-12-06, 5:55pm
Kiki's Delivery Service	1989	Saturday, 2014-12-13, 6pm
Spirited Away	2001	Saturday, 2014-12-20, 6pm
Howl's Moving Castle	2004	Saturday, 2014-12-27, 6pm
Ponyo	2008	Saturday, 2015-01-03, 6pm

It's a good selection of his films. I mean, they aren't necessarily the five films that I would choose if I was trying to force my love of his films onto my friends and family, but they've included films from the late eighties and the the entire naughties, which are the two periods in which his popularity went through it's greatest growth.

In case you didn't notice, they're on Saturday nights for the next 5 weeks.

I'm not sure if they're going to end up on catchup, so if you don't have access to them in any other form, it might be worth your time to tune in.

Erik Wernquist's Wanderers

There is something that burns deep inside me for this sort of thing. A part of me that will sit in awe when I see things like this.

And, short as it is, Erik Wernquist's Wanderers is my favourite science fiction film for a very long time.

It is this perception of space; a habitable, working, and usable space that has reenforced the foundations for which everything else that I love about it is built. It is this awesome and incredible thing that accommodates and allows all those fantasies of space persist. Because where the fantastic yearn to be possibilities, this boundless neighbour into which we must engineer ourselves is a promise.

The Unequalled Nutrition of Custard