gary brolsma tank n spank

[PhantomCatClock]

the person i've been leeching netflix from ended his subscription

[Slurpee]

the person i've been leeching netflix from ended his subscription

tell him Gamera's coming back

[PhantomCatClock]

oh i got my certification

[PhantomCatClock]

except instead of being relieved or excited i called into work because i hate writing résumés so much that i can't bring myself to go outside

[Slurpee]

Elrond Hubbard

[RobClock]

I met Kate Beaton



She was delightful

[RobClock]

Top 5 moments of my life, managed to not horrifically embarrass myself

[PhantomCatClock]

every page generating http error 200 wtf vcr

[RobClock]

[VCRClock]

every page generating http error 200 wtf vcr

ok

[Slurpee]

I used to love Hark a Vagrant

I still do, but I used to, too

glad she's keeping busy and doing well

[PhantomCatClock]

my roommate is the only person I talk to every day who is convinced I can't get an entry level position in the field I want, but since he is a physical being and everyone else is just text on a computer, there is a lot more weight to his opinion

[PhantomCatClock]

and finally, my third wish: send slurpee back to the dimension where "film" is one syllable and alter my previous wish to add to the narrative

[VCRClock]

alright I finally read DUCKS it's excellent

Sat down and started reading, when things got heavy I had to put it down, then pick it up again to read the rest... like a lot of people, I followed Kate Beaton on LiveJournal during the Fort MacMurray & Maritime Museum eras, and I remember seeing her post photos of the giant trucks and stuff, so reading the shit that she was not talking about online at the time was shocking; she successfully beat me over the head with that

While I'm not from a "we had industry now we don't" region, as I grew up in the shadow of the Capital of Paper-Pushing Bullshit, I continue to relate to the "useless degree, just trying to get rid of these here student loans, damn this job probably isn't good for the environment or my health" aspect of it. as she mentions in the afterword, I guess the ecological shit didn't seem like such a big deal in the sport utility era (especially as most of us don't live near an oilfield), and I spent the first half kind of wondering if she was going to address that stuff

If this book had been done like some less sophisticated comics from earlier on in the autobio genre, it could have easily been strictly focused on the author's view of a single aspect of the experience, without touching any other themes, or getting into anyone else's head. Beaton has several themes, and goes noticeably out of her way to include more than one perspective on most of them -- even ecology, where it's hard to argue enthusiastically in favor of resource extraction's impact on the environment. There's the incident where Greenpeace blocks a pipe, and the direct impact is obviously on someone other than the president of Shell, accomplishing nothing.

I am left feeling negatively about certain types of people. (Beaton doesn't seem to have a final answer about whether an oilfield would turn someone like her dad into a Bad People -- like does everyone have the same chance of turning into a werewolf, or is it just born werewolves? And how many of them are out there?) I am also left continuing to feel negatively about being an oil consumer (though I think that was inevitable), and about doing shit I would think was useless/wasteful/destructive if I didn't have do it to stay fed and sheltered.

it's a good book

[PhantomCatClock]

in lighter reading, I got James Rolfe's book and while I can say an actual book critic couldn't make it to page four before burying this in the backyard, I'm glad I'm reading this. It's making me remember so much of my childhood/life that I'd forgotten, and making things that I'd written off look like maybe not such a bad idea after all.

[PhantomCatClock]

I did not send my family a Thanksgiving gift this year, and I hope they got the hint.

[RobClock]

Send them a cleaned turkey carcass

[PhantomCatClock]

no fuck them



also fine, i ordered DUCKS

[PhantomCatClock]

so now that slurpee is the only weekly regular poster who doesn't have a copy of DUCKS on the way








you two are gonna watch Chinese Ghost Story 2, right

[RobClock]

You know what really chafes my ass? Every god forsaken wikia, which has gradually absorbed the grand majority of specific media wiki pages, regardless of what you're reading about, if you're on a mobile device like say for sake of example, stoned on the couch watching the recent Dune adaptation and you want to read about how Paul's son turns into a worm and rules the ever expanding intergalactic empire for THREE THOUSAND YEARS, and an entire third of your phones screen is taken up by a five minute video related to something from an entirely different wikia, that auto plays as soon as the page loads, actually loads faster than the *text content of the page*, scrolls with the page, and has a minuscule box at the top right of your page with terrible click detection. Fuck wikia its so sleazy in just the design took that hard turn away from the mimicked Wikipedia design. That was probably a decade ago now, it's getting depressing actually remembering when all these changes turned the internet into a miserable hell scape devoid of happiness.