Hah.

I buried the stuff underneath the good news, and nobody noticed at all. Tonight's umpiring shift was a real work-friendly session, with two forfeits and one game of two that needed to be played (the lightning was moving in. No rain, though, and it's died down while I was watching the basketball game with some of the neighbors and their friends. What looked like a good storm fizzled out... either that or just hasn't got here yet. Either way, more work tomorrow - apparently when I ask for money from the memeplexes, they give it to me - by giving me more hours of work than I've ever had.

Although, if I'm supposed to Question Authority, does that mean I have to be skeptical of the existence of the Divine? Maybe, but when she shows off stuff like the Cumming First Methodist Church (worksafe, and real, too!), it's really hard not to believe Goddess has a sense of humor.

greyweirdo's been in a foul mood lately. There's the rage about comic book women which led to a more general rage. And that rage probably wasn't helped any by this cute and fuzzy story of what Marine recruiters will do to meet their goals. The few, most certainly, but this is definitely not the proud. Maybe the foul mood is because I haven't sent him the CD yet? Well, if I have time and can get to the post over the weekend, I'll toss it out, okay?

Living here in Ann Arbor isn't cheap. So while there's no way such a thing would be installed in our house, my eyes did scan the waste oil furnace with some interest. If all of that works as planned, and it really does produce a goodly amount of heat, that would be quite the efficient and cool thing to have. At least until all the waste oil runs out. Then we'll have to switch to something renewable again.

Anyway. Time for bed. And don't go looking at the drawings page, okay?

And I've managed to survive another week.

Although tomorrow I'm going to a funeral to start the day, so it probably won't get off to the most excellent start, but from there, all things are possible.

I caught up to my own backlog of drawings to scan in - there's some okay ones. Maybe a good one somewhere in there. I may also be saying things are worse than they are. I honestly don't know. So there's a considerable amount of new pieces there. If I'm this prolific (and this shameless), I'll probably have to find some image hosting somewhere. Actually, I'd like my stuff to be that good. Since it was an on again-off again sort of day at work, there were quite a few sketches to be scanned in. The only problem with doing it in pen is that the mistakes have to be edited out. (Pencil smears when transported to and from workplace, so I don't usually use it.) So what you guys get sometimes looks better than my originals. Go ahead and check things out.

In case you didn't hear that right, give your stereophonic speakers a checkup. Then, why not do some compositional driving of your own? (Yep - use the gas, brakes, and steering to control tempo, volume, and articulation of the various notes. Sounds kinda cool.) The school website has an article of their own. Just think - you can find out what it would feel like to do Mozart at 180MPH. No? Not exciting? Ah, well.

An interesting idea of content distribution crossed my browser today - the ransom model. Basically, dangle a preview of an object that you'll release to the public for free - if your fans can raise enough ransom to free it, that is. It's met with at least one approval, and for content like the game that was used, it's an excellent idea - you don't have to worry about bootlegs or unpaid copies - you made what you were going to make off of it and now you don't care. This does put a bit of an onus on the content creator to accurately price their ransoms - and then on the fans to raise the money to release it. If the legions are good enough, you get the cash and they get the stuff. You might also hook a few newbies to chip in a buck or two out of curiosity or hype.

Been scouring the Web for a bit of Alister art (from Last Exile) to see if I can't find some reference material if I should decide to draw her. Or copy-draw someone else's work. (I dunno. I think I screw them up enough that they can be considered mine.) Or something. The copyright laws on doing fanart of fanart must be fun. Of course, I could very well be in problematic territory as it is, by doing arts of other people's arts and trying to replicate them. Ah, well. If anybody asks me to roast 'em, they'll probably just return to my private collection and disappear. Ah, well. The search continues.

Well, a little more looking around, and then to bed. I have to go pay my respects in the morning. Amuse yourselves while I'm out, all right?

Or maybe you can ponder some things that I found useful - both from avowed liberals. First, rain_luong strikes with an excellent quotable statement: "If people want to hear liberals being bashed, they don't need me to turn and frag my own. They just need to turn on their televisions." This is in relation to a post about how he's rather annoyed at how conservatives claim that liberals should be "fair" and attack their own as well as the conservatives. Well, if this is battle lines, the only way the liberals are going to take ground is by presenting a united front. The conservatives have taught that much. And when the power base seems to have stabilized out a bit, perhaps the liberals will begin to weed out their own extremists and place them on the appropriate part of their spectrum. Right now, even with the conservatives claiming they're the ones under siege, the liberals have FAR more people breathing down their necks in a bad fashion. This may seem like a generalization, as well, but it seems to me that liberals, while they may marginalize and compartmentalize themselves, they learn from each other rather than ignoring each other or forcing something down someone's throat. That's not to say they aren't aggressive about converting people to their ways, but they appear to be of the opinion that if you make the decision yourself, then you'll be more likely to stick with it and be an effective team player. Again, that may be a generalization.

And beyond this - wicked_wish plants a beauty of a corollary. It's all the reasons why she hates families, moral values, and America. I find myself in quite a few of the same positions as she does, along with the regular conversations I had with a revolutionary socialist, I'm probably dangerous to all of you, at least by those standards. But should the FBI come asking about my habits and such, you'll cover for me, right? At least long enough to claim asylum somewhere else? Anyway, I've rambled enough. I should hit the bed. Hard. But this reminds me of something else to do before I go completely sacked out.