Virtually sweaty

There's a new page available at the Character Development blog.

One of the oddest little online games I'm addicted to is a Football 'roleplaying' game. The RP elements are minimal, but you do get to guide the development of your character in terms of their stats. You also get to play the games in real-time, on a virtual pitch, with other players.

I have two characters. They started out in New Zealand, but were soon snapped up by East European sides. So twice a week now I get to conference call on Skype with the players for a Romanian virtual soccer team.

There's a lot of chat in ... well, I'm guessing Romanian ... that I don't understand, but we communicate well enough to organize an effective off-side trap.

The other day my wife sneezed nearby and several accented voices said "Bless You".

My wee daughter was watching me play once and loudly announced that "This game is boring!" Peels of laughter from Romainia, Brazil and Scotland could be heard (It is a international squad).

The world really is getting t be a smaller place.

Now excuse me, I have to virtually run my arse off defending one side of a virtual football pitch.

Status update, or where is the nutty ninja?

Finally, we all seem to be over the parade of colds and bugs that have gone through the extended family. Sending a child to Kindergarten this time of year seems like a great way to expose your family to a wide range of diseases. I don't see little kids there anymore, just virus factories with cute smiles. Unclean! Unclean!

As a result, not much writing got done in the last six weeks. I did manage fifteen episodes of a four-panel comic strip that will hopefully turn up on this blog in a matter of weeks. They say write what you know, so it's a strip about a struggling writer. I also managed about two-and-a-half Straitjacket Ninja six-pagers, this blog, and some random stuff that may end up as bits of other things. But all-in-all not a productive period.

I did spend a bit of time working for cash, and at bit less time adding data to a large database I'm putting together. Yes, I do databases in my spare time. Shoot me now. Even worse, it's a combat calculator for role-playing (yes, that D&D type of stuff with elves and monsters and geeks, although not D&D in this case but rather Rolemaster).

Simon says he'll be around in a day or two to drop off the latest Ninja artwork, and as promised I'll post one inked page when it arrives. He too has been a busy lad, working on band posters and the like. You can check them out on his MySpace site.

There just aren't enough hours in the day ... I blame the government and daylight saving. Just what are they doing saving days like that in the summer. Is there a day surplus now? I bet there is, and they are hording them all. I say a day refund is called for. Vote for me for dictator and I will refund all those saved days. A sunrise in every pot. I promise I'll be a benevolent dictator ... at least for some of you.

From one topic to another

In 2001 Dean Kamen -- who did not play Superman, but thought he was one -- was touting his lastest invention to the press ... the Segway. He claimed that the Segway would "be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy". Sales figures of 50,000 to 100,000 units were predicted in the first year alone. The world was going to be revolutionized.

As of March 2009, only 50,000 Segways had been shipped ... less have been actually sold. Segway Inc. has been silent on its financial performance. The Segways were too expensive, too geeky and gimmicky, and in many countries their legal status was ill-defined ... if it was a motor vehicle it had to stay on the road, not on the footpath or cycle lanes.

The Segway failed in all respects except one ... it has become a pervasive part of popular culture. Hardly anyone in the world has one, yet we all know what one is. If someone gave you a Segway I doubt you'd say; "No!" Like me, you happily parade it around the block, letting friends and neighbours have a go, then find a permanent home for it in the closet next to the exercycle and the Commodore 64.

Many people dream of changing the world for the better. Dean Kamen may have failed with the Segway, but he'd already invented the AutoSyrine, an insulin pump, and an all-terrain electric wheelchair. Dean's father, Jack Kamen, was a comic-book illustrator, who was particularly known for his work with EC Comics . His editor once said he "gave Kamen those stories where the All-American girl and guy are married, and then chop each other to pieces".

EC Comics gave us the Crypt Keeper, Mad magazine, and more recently the homage to horror comics that was in Alan Moore's Watchmen, Tales from the Black Freighter, which has been made into a animated short-film. EC also gave us, accidentally, the restrictive censorship of the Comics Code Authority, thanks to the engineered public outcry against some of the EC stories.

The Code included rules that seemed to be directly targeted against EC alone, such as "[n]o comic magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title" and "[s]cenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited". Ironically, without the heavy censorship of the CCA we may never have had the underground comics explosion of the late sixties. Pushing against, and trying to go around, the Code actually produced some of the best work in comics.

Oddly enough though, the Code rule that "[f]emales shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities", never seemed to be enforced in superhero comics. So there you go, I managed to segue from a failed mode of transport to overly endowed women in comics. Why do I always seem to end up there?

If it's a book, can I flip to the end?

I joined Facebook today. People have been telling me I should for a while now. So, I'm there. What is the point of it all? Someone tell me, please. And while you're at it, can anyone tell me what the appeal of Twitter is? These new-fangled things, like electric light, motorized carriages and sliced bread, are just so confusing to an old curmudgeon like me.

It has been a productive week, writing-wise. I finished two Ninja six-pagers (episodes 17 and 18) and have started work on a third. Plenty of silly puns and dated pop-culture references.

My brain is almost coherent enough at the moment to contemplate more other stories, so I've been writing down notes and random thoughts. The burlesque girls story is fully formed in my head, and itching to crawl out through my nose and onto the paper. There's an old-fashioned adventure story with aliens, dinosaurs, and a princess that I started over Christmas that needs to be added to.

There are also a bunch of old prose stories that have been sitting in drawer for years that are asking to be transformed into comic scripts. These include a story about fairies, another about a man who keeps reality in check, and something that has way too much sex and violence in it but may just get written anyway. So my keyboard is getting a workout at the moment.