Sometimes humour is universal

Posted on | June 1, 2011 | 1 Comment

Watched this earlier today and it still cracks me up. Some poor newscaster had a hard time reading a story about a pot grower in BC who had 13 bears protecting his grow op. Not sure where the station is, but it’s a Russian language broadcast. I’m with her – “What the hell was the pig doing there” and “Why the F@ck where [the bears] sitting?”

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Bravely going where no cat has gone before – pen & ink sketches

Posted on | May 26, 2011 | 3 Comments

At long last, I’ve begun to sketch again. I’ve been trying to draw buildings, but they really aren’t ready for prime time yet. I seem to have a problem with getting things aligned properly – things tend to list to the right on most of my drawings. Not sure why but it’s quite annoying.

I’ve wanted to do pen and ink drawings for .. well .. yonks. It’s one of those things that I was a bit to afraid to try because I was worried I’d be wasting my time and money. I’ve gone to the art store over and over and looked rather longingly at the various nibs and inks. In the end I’ve always put them back on the shelf. About 2 weeks ago I decided to take the plunge. I purchased a bottle of black ink and a couple of nibs and tried them out. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, no major catastrophes, but the sketches were very heavy. No delicacy or shading so I felt a bit discouraged. I read up on different types of inks and techniques and decided I needed one designed for drawing. A return to the art store was called for.

I love trips to the art store. All those pencils, inks and papers … I sometimes worry the staff think I’m some sort of a kook because I love running my fingers over different types of paper and mutter “ohhhhh” – it’s like porn for an artist. Anyway, I picked up 2 bottles of Winsor & Newton semi-transparent inks – Nut Brown and Peat Brown. I didn’t want plain black again. When I looked at my first attempts, the black looked so harsh. The browns have warmer, earthier tones that suit the little song birds I like to draw. The semi-transparent promised to be lighter and flow better which would make shading less onerous. I also picked up a few more nibs; something makes me think I’m going to be a bit brutal on them, so I will never have too many. I also grabbed more pencils, many, many pencils. Some women can never have enough shoes, I can never have enough pencils.

This evening, I sat at my desk scribbling on paper for about an hour, testing the nibs and how the ink flows. The ink was a revelation! It’s light, easy to use and lets you shade beautifully – from subtle outlines and shadows to darker edges. I kind of chewed on my lip for a bit debating about using the ink on one of my pencil sketches but was torn. What if I buggered up the picture? I really like pencil on paper and didn’t want to lose any of them. So I cheated a bit. I took one of the sketches I had scanned earlier, opened it in Photoshop and set the opacity to @ 25%. I grabbed a sheet of paper designed for pen and ink drawings, trimmed it to fit my printer and hit print. Worked like a charm! On the paper was a faint outline of the original pencil sketch which was a perfect guide. I propped the original up in front of my and put nib to paper and here you have my first complete pen and ink sketch, a lovely little chestnut warbler done in Peat Brown ink:

From Catpaw's Art work – birds

Printing a faint image onto specialty paper worked much better than I thought it would. Great way to practice and get the feel of pen and ink.
Here’s the original pencil sketch from ’09:

From Catpaw's Art work – birds

I want to run down to the store and pick up all the other colours, but I’ll have to contain myself. Practice with techniques and then reward myself later. But first, I need to solve the mystery of the missing black ink bottle. I forgot to put it away earlier in the week, something I don’t normally do because Cat loves to rustle around on my desk and take naps on it. Anything that doesn’t meet with his approval is summarily ejected from the desk. Damned if I haven’t seen the darned thing in 3 days now.

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Phony tech support phone calls

Posted on | May 24, 2011 | Comments Off

Pop over to my Tech Support blog and read up on fake calls hitting Toronto. I’ve dealt with a couple of customers who have received calls and this is an explanation of what they are and what to do.

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Here, let me adjust that date one more time

Posted on | May 23, 2011 | Comments Off

It was no surprise the world didn’t come to an end on Saturday. Well, unless you are Harold Camping and his band of delusional followers. Camping was “flabbergasted” to find he was still on earth Sunday. He just couldn’t understand why he wasn’t sitting on God’s right hand side in billowing clouds of heavenly glory. I’ve been waiting with baited breath to hear his grand excuse as to why God didn’t call him to heaven – other than the obvious. He didn’t disappoint.

Tonight, Camping said the Rapture had actually occurred – it was a spiritual judgement, not a physical one. Nice slippery move on Harold’s part – never apologise, just say it happened, you just weren’t aware of it, then move the date. And here I thought I had a simple case of heart burn on Saturday night. It was God telling me I was going to burn in Hell. Ah yes and Old Harold moved the date on us again. The real end of the world, the absolute best before date, boom the world is gone date, bye bye you heathens, burn in the fiery pits of hell, will occur on October 21. Harold’s motto should be “why let a good apocalypse go to waste”.

In a display of the most cynical, rapacious kind, Camping’s radio station, Family Radio, is on air tonight appealing for more donations from their faithful – yes give till it hurts, cause Harold sure as shit isn’t. I listened for a bit and then felt like putting my foot through my computer. The announcer was blathering on about how expensive it was to bring the word of God to the public and how it cost money. Problem is, Family Radio isn’t bring anything to the public but terror. Like a modern day Orson Wells, terrifying the gullible with tales of the END, Camping is still spinning tales to his audience. The difference of course being, Wells was an entertainer not a con artist.

I think it’s time people saw Camping, and those like him for what they are – terrorists. They prey on the sad, the unhappy, the desperate and the mentally vulnerable. It doesn’t matter whether Camping believes the nonsense he is spreading – he’s arrogantly despicable. Believing only you and a select few will be saved and condemning good people for no other reason than they don’t believe the same as you is pathetic. I feel sorry for those that believe him. They are going to live in terror for months to come, waiting, only to be disappointed again. They’ll wonder what they did wrong to be denied entry to the promised land rather than dealing with the realities of life. In the meantime, they’ll give more and more money to this most unworthy of causes. They have my sympathy; Harold has my contempt.

Hubris, Harold… look the word up.

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I’m sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse

Posted on | May 23, 2011 | Comments Off

Oh dear god, I’m speechless..

Charlie Sheen has been offered $3 million to be the face of a dating website.

The former Two and a Half Men star — who infamously set up house with two “goddesses,” Natalie Kenly and Bree Olson, earlier this year — has reportedly been approached by Establishedmen.com to front a forthcoming marketing campaign for their service, which matches rich men with “needy” women.

http://www.toronto.com/article/686291

This little bit of information typifies everything that is wrong with the Hollywood mystique. It celebrates a drug addled idiot who revels in misogynistic blatherings. Before anyone writes a defense of Sheen, saying he loves women – they are “goddesses” to him – get your head out of your ass. Women are there to prop up his bloated ego. They are tools to be used, abused and discarded when they don’t suite the role any longer. He has nothing but contempt for women. How about respect? Or is that not part of the Sheen vocabulary?

Any company that wants him as their spokesperson has told me everything I need to know about them. Women are purely decorative chattel. Basic arm candy to pad an ego. And yes, I’m both dismissive of women who go for this and deeply torn over them. They flush decades of work for equality down the toilet by falling for the Hollywood myth that you don’t need anything but youth and good looks to be a success.

But there is a much darker side to this. The site preys on the vulnerable and the desperate – it will match “needy” women with “sugar daddies”. I grew up with girls who thought if they aged, their lives were over. One friend was obsessed with non-existent wrinkles and kept proclaiming “we’re so old” before we were 25. Ripe for the picking – and an abusive relationship. This is a dating site for losers who want compliant women. They can hold their money and power over the heads of any woman that gets involved with them to force acquiescence – Don’t do what I want? Fine, I’ll find another “sugar baby”. Using terms like sugar baby (that is what the site calls women) infantilizes women – “don’t you worry your pretty little head over anything, let the man take care of everything”. This is a dangerous trap to fall into. Having Charlie Sheen as the spokesperson for establishedmen.com should be warning enough. The idea oozes contempt and cynicism. Caveat Emptor is the word of the day.

Okay.. so I wasn’t speechless.

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Misc ramblings on this Rapture Eve

Posted on | May 20, 2011 | Comments Off

Oh look! It’s May 20 and tomorrow is Rapture day.

Unless you are in New Zealand where it’s already the 21. Well, well, New Zealand is still with us! So that means either Kiwis are all athiests and going to Hell or GASP! the Rapture is another hoax. This highlights a glaring flaw (among many) that Harold Camping (the un-utterable fool that started this current end-of-the-world stupidity) seems to have overlooked. May 21 starts at different times through the world. His time table is very US centric. Does this mean God is an American?

Oh wait, I’m wrong. According to the Campites, the Rapture starts at 6 pm sharp. But they don’t say which time zone. So does this mean we’ll see a gradual drifting away of people? You know, to ensure there isn’t a huge line up of Evangelicals at the holy gates. Hate to have them get rowdy in the line up.

Another question that is plaguing me, will they go up fully dressed or will they leave their clothes behind? Will we see piles of pants and shirts scattered throughout the city. Does this mean, and my retinas are already burning out with the thought, the long line ups into heaven will be filled with … oh good lord … naked Christians. Will fig leaves be handed out in the line up?

I’ll lay a bet that the Family Radio network employees (the company that is vigorously promoting the May 21 farce) collect their pay cheques today and buy groceries for the week. I’ll also bet not a one of them canceled vacation plans either. I wonder if they think it’s amusing to terrify the sad and the gullible. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a class action lawsuit could be launched to drive the station into the ground. Alas, you can’t sue because people were naive enough to listen to the station. Using phrases like “We have learned that the precise date of the cross was April 1, 33 A.D.” is nothing more than numerology hocus pocus. There is no proof – infallible or other wise. I think Camping pulled the numbers from his ass and is sitting there laughing at his followers. By the way Family Radio should also be sued for mangling reason and the English language. “Another Infallible Proof” doesn’t even approach coherence.

Ah, but you and I know Camping and his band of jackasses will be forgiven for getting the date wrong. All the loyal followers will come up with some excuse as to why the Rapture didn’t happen, and they’ll wait breathlessly for the next drivel from Camping. He predicted the Rapture sometime in the 90s and golly gee, he was wrong. His followers still blindly follow him.

On the positive side, May 21 has created an endless stream of comedy that has kept many of us in stitches all week. Plus after tomorrow, hopefully I can read some of my usual sites without seeing the endless “Will the world end on the 21″ questions.

Zombie Apocalypse is coming – the CDC says so!
The Center for Disease Control ran an article on their blog this week that caused a wee bit of a stir. Well, okay, a big stir. Someone at the CDC has a healthy sense of humour and knows how to get the attention of a young audience. Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse talks about preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse and proved so popular the website crashed because of the number of visitors. The point of the story was to hammer home the importance of emergency preparedness but with wicked humour.

Alas, a few people have taken the zombie threat as real – after all the CDC says they exist, so they must. Humour and satire are lost on the terminally gullible. With all this Rapture talk and end of the earth nonsense floating around, it’s a small wonder people haven’t been building zombie shelters for real.

By the way, according to mythology surrounding May 21, when the Rapture occurs, the world will be wracked with a massive earth-wide quake. Since it’s already the 21 on the other side of the world, and no quake has occurred, so I think you can safely assume, neither the second coming nor zombies will occur. Besides, it’s a long weekend here in Canada and nothing will get in the way of the first offical BBQ weekend holiday – not even Zombie Jesus.

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