Car shopping, mainly. If you've been following this blog, you'll notice that car troubles have been a recurring theme. Also, if you follow this blog, you'll notice that I'm not too good at writing about things promptly, so the car is slightly worse than you might otherwise believe. That, and there's not much I can do to make it sound entertaining when I get a new set of tires.
Anyhow, something in the car - we think it was the radiator - exploded. There was a loud popping noise, followed by steam. There's a hole in the hood liner, about a foot in diameter. Does the car still run? Probably, but since it has already exploded once, I'm not inclined to check.
So our weekend was spent looking at cars, rather than working on comics. You start out with a field of hundreds of options trying to find the best one. Now I've got a handful of choices that are, at worst, decent. We still need to actually go buy the car, but I feel better about it, and feeling better about major decisions is progress.
Unfortunately, it's the kind of progress that takes several days to do correctly, and we've spent our entire weekend this way. Comics - including a new 100% Cat - are inked but we won't be able to get them scanned, colored, and lettered until tomorrow at the earliest.
So we're very sorry, but there are no comics because something in our car exploded.
You Say it First: So whose fault is this?
| Ms. Taylor | 113 (24%) |
| Mr. Taylor | 10 (2%) |
| Grandpa Taylor | 4 (1%) |
| Patrick | 63 (13%) |
| Brisbane and Kimberly's | 2 (0%) |
| It's complex and multiple people contributed. | 154 (33%) |
| I don't know, man. It was like this when I got here. | 125 (27%) |
I think, personally, that it is complex and that if Mr. Taylor, Ms. Taylor, Patrick, and - back in the day - Grandpa Taylor had done things differently, they might not be in this particular mess. But, knowing them, they'd probably be in a different yet similar kind of mess.
Secondly, you're reading Precocious, right? I've been enjoying it for some time now. Chris Paulsen, the cartoonist, drew Blue last week. Go check it out and read his comic.
Thirdly, I've been playing Bastion a lot over the last month. It's a great action-RPG. I'd been meaning to write something about it for a while. Then I saw that it's included in the latest Humble Indie Bundle. They've got four games bundled together. You name your own price, and what portion of that goes to charity. And if you donate more than the average amount (currently, about $7.75), you get Bastion too. What's Bastion about? It's about rebuilding a world in which everything has been destroyed. Professional game reviewers explained it better than I could, which is why they're professionals. While I adore the mechanics, the game is about tone and atmosphere, and it's astoundingly good at that. I've been meaning to tell you to get it for a while now, and this is a very good chance.
Also, you get Psychonauts. I've had that game for years and never got around to playing it. It's by the guy who brought you Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and the first two Monkey Island games. I've heard enough good things about it to tell you that you can't go too far wrong here, especially since you could just choose to pay $1. You also get three other games, Amnesia, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, and LIMBO. I do not know anything about those games. Yet.
Fourthly, poll results.
How was your Mother's Day?
| I ran away when I was ten years old and haven't seen her since. | 8 (4%) |
| My mother disappeared mysteriously and I'm still trying to fix the problems that caused. | 3 (1%) |
| My family and I don't really talk anymore. | 17 (8%) |
| My mother ran off to Canada to escape parking tickets, then she died. | 12 (6%) |
| My parents had to leave town suddenly because of business, leaving me in the care of my evil grandmother. | 3 (1%) |
| My mother is an alcoholic and we're not on speaking terms because of my lifestyle. | 14 (7%) |
| I had a lovely morning brunch with her, my dad, and my brothers. | 72 (35%) |
| Our mom didn't feed us enough tasty noms. Burr. | 24 (12%) |
| We had a lot of fun together and sold a lot of flowers. | 9 (4%) |
| My mother has, mysteriously, never been mentioned. You'd think she would've shown up by now. | 41 (20%) |
The answer key is, of course, Blue, Kimberly, Brisbane, Tipper and Snickers, Avery, Gabby, Joy, Brent and Brenna, Cerise, and, well, almost everyone else. I'm glad a majority of you chose the happier options.
Did you do anything fun for Halloween?
| Yes, and I wore a costume | 129 (33%) |
| Yes, but I didn't wear a costume | 59 (15%) |
| I wore a costume but didn't have fun. | 34 (9%) |
| No costume. No fun. -_- | 172 (44%) |
I have no comment here, except that I really, really need to post these things more often.
Who's your favorite zombie?
| Ghoulia Yelps | 13 (2%) |
| LeChuck | 45 (9%) |
| ReDeads | 26 (5%) |
| Rob | 26 (5%) |
| Rod Argent and/or Colin Blunstone | 208 (40%) |
| The ones from 28 Days Later | 17 (3%) |
| The ones from Night of the Living Dead | 25 (5%) |
| The ones from Resident Evil | 38 (7%) |
| The ones from Thriller | 103 (20%) |
| Zombie Darkwing | 21 (4%) |
And the clear winners are, of course, The Zombies. They're best known for "Time of the Season" and "She's Not There", but their final album "Odessey and Oracle" is a masterpiece of ornate psychedelic melancholia. It's one of my favorite albums and it's amazingly good.
Second place is the zombies from Thriller, whom you should all be familiar with.
Rob Zombie apparently directs movies now. I know him as the guy form White Zombie.
ReDeads are those horrible things from the Legend of Zelda games that jump out and grab you. Those things give me the heebie-jeebies.
LeChuck is the villain in the Monkey Island series, which are almost certainly the best games that I own but haven't played.
Ghoulia Yelps is from Monster High. Isabel likes it, and she appears to be in the minority there.
Anyhow, I feel bad about leaving off Reg Shoe, of the Discworld series. Totally forgot about him, despite him being pretty awesome in Night Watch. In my defense, everyone was awesome in Night Watch. As you can see, there are a lot of categories of zombies but very little in the way of individual zombies. Such is their nature, I suppose.
Roguelikes are some of the earliest computer games. They're a form of old-school High Geek that I'd heard about for the longest time but never played. You are an adventurer in a randomly-generated dungeon. You need to get to the lowest level and kill the boss. It's turn-based. You level up. You have attributes and hit points and an inventory. They've still got a very enthusiastic following that made them sound appealing except, well, they look like this.
So I never figured I'd be able to read the glyphs. I have no idea what's actually going on in the screen there. The games are complex and full of easter eggs, which is very old-school High Geek. They're also unforgiving with a very steep learning curve, which is also very old-school High Geek. So I always wanted to play it and be one of the cool geeks, but not enough to actually devote the time to figure it out.
So I was pleasantly surprised by Dungeons of Dredmor. It's got graphics. It's got random dungeons full of random stuff that may or may not prove helpful. You can see screenshots here. Note the character sheet with six primary attributes and eighteen secondary attributes. It's complex. You'll get a lot further if you pay attention to them. But you can get away with taking a large sword and hitting things with it, at least on easy mode.
Anyhow, I've spent a while playing it and I've enjoyed it. If you missed the bundle last year, it's available for $5.
Who's your favorite vampire?
| Alucard | 204 (38%) |
| Barnabas Collins | 33 (6%) |
| Bill Compton | 6 (1%) |
| Blade | 61 (11%) |
| Count Strahd | 7 (1%) |
| Duckula | 46 (9%) |
| Grandpa Munster | 85 (16%) |
| Hsien-Ko | 30 (6%) |
| Miyu | 41 (8%) |
| Vampire Darkwing | 27 (5%) |
We'll catch up on the older polls as things go along, but for now, part two of the vampire poll. Alucard is the clear winner here. In Castlevania, at least, he's the half-vampire son of Dracula. That makes him a Dhampyr according to some traditions. I think that Alucard should be considerd an Eripmav, but that seems to be the minority opinion.
Bill Compton is from True Blood, which was adapted from the Sookie Stackhouse books - I figured that he was the symbol of the modern resurgence of vampires and would've done better than 1%. He even lost to Count Strahd, who was a major part of the Ravenloft setting in D&D.
Barnabas Collins was the lead in Dark Shadows, which I'm led to believe was a soap opera with monsters. They're making a movie based on it, and if it got fewer votes than Hsien-Ko (a hopping vampire, from Darkstalkers) that may be a bad sign.
In retrospect, Duckula and Vampire Darkwing may have split the comedic vampire duck vote.
Vampire Princess Miyu is a manga and anime. I've got a few of the comics but haven't gotten around to reading them. I've had them since, well, back when they printed manga in comic books instead of just collections.
Secondly, poll results! Who's your favorite vampire?
| Dracula | 165 (26%) |
| Count von Count | 60 (10%) |
| Marceline the Vampire Queen | 65 (10%) |
| Angel and/or Spike | 82 (13%) |
| Lestat | 49 (8%) |
| Mordney Present | 2 (0%) |
| Count Chocula | 37 (6%) |
| Edward Cullen | 4 (1%) |
| Sally von Humpeding | 21 (3%) |
| Bunnicula | 146 (23%) |
How can you tell we do furry comics? Well, Bunnicula got second-place in our vampire poll. That's a better showing than I had anticipated. I really liked those books when I was in elementary school, and I have no intention of revisiting for fear it won't be as good as I remember it being.
Speaking of which, I'm surprised Sally von Humpeding (of the Discworld series; she shows up in the more recent City Watch books) got as many votes as she did; I figured she'd have even less name recognition. I considered putting Otto Chriek (the photographer in The Truth) in instead, but I honestly didn't care for him.
Count von Count is The Count from Sesame Street. Marceline is from Adventure Time. Angel and/or Spike are from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, depending on which Angel and Spike you voted for). Lestat is from Interview with the Vampire (and I can't for the life of me remember if he was the one they interviewed or what the other vampire's name was). Bunnicula is from the Bunnicula series of books. Dracula is from everything; I declare that it's Dracula from Castlevania because dude, Castlevania. Edward Cullen is from Twilight. I don't think I need to explain Count Chocula. And Mordney Present is, I think, too complicated for me to properly explain.
Anyhow, we've got