Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Kate Beaton does Darwin

Those who havn't seen the joy that is Hark! A vagrant are totally missing out, Kate Beaton is probably the best historical influenced cartoonist to date,  fantabulously (yes that is a real word) using mainly line in most of her comics to create manevolent, whimsical artwork cleverly intwined with modern humor with a dash of realism (in a round about way) 
This comic in particular has made my day a little brighter, including a pokemon reference, Science and a dinosaur-esk drawing (panel 3) 
Via: Hark, A Vagrant, Kate Beaton

If i was half as good at drawing as her i'd be a very happy man

Sunday, 5 December 2010

Let it Snow

After travelling down to Maidstone, the weather decided to bring the whole of Britain to a complete stand still through the provision of frozen flakes of joy, and Britain being being Britain was powerless, power cut out, transport came to a standstill and Facebook was barraged with Snow related statuses.
When it snows there are 2 main groups of people; those who despise it with a passion making it the immediate cause of all that is wrong with the world and those that relish it.
 Yes I have grown up (a bit) and I can see the inconvenience that it can cause, but what's the point of moaning? Especially if you've been wishing for it all year long... sometimes we can learn from children, who seem to develop an instant immunity to the cold when it snows...
I took notes (children are bloody epic at times), and then took the opportunity to make a snow sculpture, the initial plan was a camel, but as my girlfriend pointed out halfway through construction, it wanted to be a dinosaur...




yeah we totally cheated, and utilised a bench and the pictures don't really do it justice, but hey, we had fun :)

Thursday, 25 November 2010

Dan and the less than perfect haircut

Right, today I have finally got round to cutting my hair, eventually my keratin based tendril's had got so impressive, even the Triffid's were becoming to become jealous of what remains of my thinning mop of hair. Soon it will give up and give in to the 'Alsop' gene, which is really just a collective term to the genetic based cocktail of horrors that are: male pattern baldness, Altzeimers, a degenerative back and mental instability. But for now I'm fighting it, revelling in my youth, but for the sake of my safety a needed a cut.

So today a lovely lady popped round for a home visit, which is convenience at its best, and a pre-negotiated sum of £10 was reached, this immediately sounded like a bargain, and I chose to ignore the  girlfriend  nagging pain asking 'how can she give a price if you haven't told her what you want?'
Detail's! I scoffed, it will all be resolved when she gets here... how wrong I was
'So what do you want?' she asks in a sincere yet fairly quizzical tone,
 'told you so' I flaunted at my inner self 'there's nothing to worry about'
'to see' was my immediate reply (because I'm a comic genius), followed by 'but I really want to keep some length' stressing this somewhat (yet foolishly in a casual tone).
 The problem was that this hairdresser had no concept of the term 'some length', in her eyes 'short' was a length, infact any length was some form of length,be it long medium of short as hell, and this gave her a free reign, and so my hair is the antithesis of what I wanted, what I wanted was a nice fringe, long(ish) yet tidy, as is the fashion, what I got was a business man's hair cut, short and 'vague'.
The thing is, I don't seem to have much luck with hair dressers, maybe it that I'm never really sure what I want myself, although in my defence the last 'stylist' I was recommended to, was stone deaf (to my horror) and I had to describe what I wanted through the medium of interpretive dance.
My main issue is when they ask 'well is that ok?' I mean it may be 'ok' but that doesn't mean it's what you wanted, or asked for, it just means 'is it acceptable', infact the only time a hair cut wouldn't be ok is if they shaved ' i fuck babies because i'm a nazi'  into the back of your head or weaved bullet ants into your scalp, and even if you tried to complain they will say things like 'ah well its too short to do anything with now' or 'you'll grow into it'. Yes i know hair regrows, i'm not really that fussed, my hair routinely resembles a roosting site for large migratory bird's, it's just the helplessness that you encounter when you sit in a chair, at uni we used to cut each others 'biff's' and  if they went wrong, well hey there was always beer to drown your sorrows and you relished the notion that you were about to cut theirs..

Tuesday, 23 November 2010

Stuff I Like

Cyanide and Happiness, a daily webcomic
Cyanide & Happiness

Learning through Osmosis, One of the Many Uses for Anime

Ok so recently ive been on somewhat of an anime binge, somehow (don't ask me how) I have avoided becoming some form of cave dwelling creature, surfacing only to feed, but at the same time I cannot ignore the mass of anime i have had the pleasure of watching, in less than a week I've watched the entire series of 'Full Metal Alchemist' (which is bloody magnificent!) including the film (naturally), what has happened as a result however is the insatiable urge to end every ones name with 'san' which is is basically a mark of respect (from what I gather through my fairly non existent, cobbled together misguided understanding of foreign languages) because of the constant use of it (it end's everyone's name basically), in a similar way I have started referring to my brother as 'nee san' not consciously I must add, it just pops out in conversation as a result of the constant bombardment of the word in both outlaw star and especially Fullmetal Alchemist where both of he main characters are well...brothers. I cant't complain, I'm practically learning Japanese via osmosis, (well diffusion technically, as my education has hammered home the fact that osmosis only involves water). Admittedly (like pretty much every anime series I've watched) it gets bloody mental toward's the end, even Hitler join's the party! nothing makes a party like an internationally hated historical figure!
Also it's this week's anime caption....

Context...some things need it

My Dog Sticks his Tongue Out

These are prime!
and my personal favourite...
This is probably one of my most favourite things in the world, party because he looks hillarious, and party because I'm pretty sure he doesn't realise he's doing it :D

Thursday, 11 November 2010

Dan's first day of crochet. The Final Cut

Ok this is my days worth of work, I have no real idea how i done this, i just made it all up as went along after getting to grips with the basics :D
i think my next lesson is how to make real things... scarf?

in other news one of my baby mantid's got stuck in a moult, this i probably due to a mixture of cold weather lowering the humidity...sad times, I've stuck ll the others in an insulated box while i figure out a more permanently solution... although I'm limited mainly by the one power point i have in my room, in the most unuseful place ever *sigh*

Progress

Horrah i have single handedly made a poorly fitting eyepatch for stroke sufferers! behold my raw talent!

nk so it leaves a lot to be desired, the stitches aren't uniform, there are holes all over the place, BUT I have made rows which is a start...I hope 
now I have to learn to be consistent and then there are a the double stitches and colour changes to contend with. But in a miss guided kind of way i feel oddly proud, its the labour of several hours of hard sweatshop labour, but there it is :D

I respect old women, and despise meat thieves

That's it, I've taken the plunge, i now am the proud owner  of a 4.5 cm crochet hook and a shit load of wool and all i can say is that i have a new found respect for old women crochet is frigg' hard!!
My haul cost me 2.59 with a free (!!!!) booklet thats meant to make me a pro, and although it tells me how to make certain 'stitches?' it fails to teach me what the stitches actually do... all i want to do is make a scarf or something!


 I've been playing for about 3 hours now and my progress is...well minimal 
i have a very shakey foundation chain, but I can cast on and make my chain on my own now... but if i try to single crochet... well this happens
That's right, an abortion! I'm taing a tea break and having a brief reflection on my dismal performance, and will hopefully, by the very least be able to string a couple of chains together by the end of the day, this is my mission.

Also sainsbury's have apparently had a spate of meat related thefts of late:

 weird...