Willisburg.org

I rummage around in the messy chunks of grey matter strewn about from the past week.

Hi! How are ‘ya?

I grab a shotgun and proceed to attempt to reassemble my brain…

…tragically, I pass out from blood loss before I can pull the trigger.

Heck of a week. Heck of a week.

As you can tell, the server move went smoothly except for one glitch… a glitch I have yet to figure out how to fix. My databases are still in Swedish. Go figure. I guess it’s bork bork bork-ed.

I’ll give you a couple minutes to stop moaning in disapproval over that last joke before forcing you on….

….

…you finished? Good.

As promised, a snippet of artwork from the preparations of PTSD… err… Yes, I changed the name. I liked the Post Trauma idea for a while, but it just didn’t roll off the tongue. Before the initial mulling, I was tossing around using American (something) as the name but couldn’t think of anything. After scrapping the Trauma and thinking again, I went back to the original train of thought. American… American… American… and then I became either one of the most stupid or brilliant people in the world. Before proceeding further, I’m shamefully unaware of Harvey Pekar’s work. Additionally, I’ve never touched a copy of American Splendor in my life, and have never seen the film either. Additionally, I was also unaware of this interview as well. My Googling failed me. And yet… the name… the name of the movie based on the comic based on the life of Harvey Pekar floated in my head… completely detatched from reality… and the name sitting in my head, only attached to a film I never saw and never made a connection to…

You probably see where this is going…

While typing this up, I asked Nazlan why she never stopped me at the time. She said, “I thought you were paying tribute.” I smacked my forehead.

Someone, somewhere, is likely going to scream in favor of revoking my artistic license… I’m not sure I’d fight it.

Rhyming and word play bounced around.

I charged ahead. I spent a couple days feverishly preparing… teaching myself the basics of PHP and SQL.

I started preparing advertising channels.

I bought the domain.

My forehead quickly comes to rest on the sharpest part of my desk.

American Blender went live on July 26. My excitement over getting back into the creative artistic cartoonist way of life has turned to dread. I want to do it. I need to do it. Despite the potential association, the name is funny. I’m at quite a dark point in my life, and the Blender is giving me purpose again. I’m standing my ground… and I’m suddenly thinking about how much one can potentially do damage control in an “about” page.

I’m standing my ground and forging ahead. I just hope this isn’t my worst idea.

And now, due to the inspired haiku from Holly today, I present a haiku of my own as a closer to today’s post:

Before I ride off on today’s tangent, let me first say hello to any of the new people trickling in from The Literary Assasin. Thanks for the permalink, Holly.

You wouldn’t believe the memory dredging that’s gone on in my brain this evening. Came across this article at C|Net.com.com.com.com about the supposed top ten “web fads.” After going over the list, I realized that these writers haven’t really been paying attention during the past decade and half of it is total crap and the other half are a mix of true Intarweb legend and very flash-in-the-pan but memorable-none-the-less stuff.

After muttering and complaining about it all, I decided to be a tool and build a list of my own. As the list grew, I realized that to do the subject of Internet memes any real justice, you need to break it down into four true categories: Audio, Video/Flash, Websites and Running Gags. Guess what? I did just that. One word of warning: many of the sites that are going to be linked in this post can be constrewed as not safe for work. I will attempt to flag the NSFW stuff, but it’d likely be best to just wait until you got home first if you must click on everything.

While making these lists, I focused more on the memorable stuff that’s mostly stuck with me. I don’t claim this to be a be-all-end-all list, it’s just the crap that’s been floating through the ether that’s crossed paths with my web-browsers over the years. You’ll noticed I’ve left out Baby Cha-Cha (though amusing, does not qualify in my opinion as an Internet media fad or meme as it crossed over into mainstream media… plus it really annoyed me due to overexposure), Ellen Feiss (HA! HA! She’s stoned and on TV going BEEP BEEP BEEP! *rolls eyes* I got the joke, I just never found it funny), Homestar Runner (because it’s a sustained entertainment feed and not a flash in the pan), and the infamous Goatse.cx (simply because it’s legendary in its own right). I’ve mentioned them because they deserve to be, but they won’t make the lists. You’ll note that there’s only five audio memes, the reason being I’m lazy and it’s all I could think of that wasn’t already tied to video. I know I’m forgetting stuff out there that might warrant being in the listed ten for each, but that’s what the comments function is for. Remind me.

I’ve been around the block a few times and seen my fair share of random madness these past ten years. Now I’ll refresh everyone else’s minds and/or expose the latecomers to all the crap that’s come across my radar. So, for your amusement, I present in no particular order the top 35 of the more impactful Internet Memes in the past decade. Yay!

The Running Gags:
The now legendary All Your Base Are Belong To Us.
Mr. T/Bill Shatner/(insert name here) …ate my balls. NSFW
The infamous 9/11 Tourist Guy.
Admiral “It’s a trap!” Ackbar.
“You’re the man now, Dog!” (or the mirror at the NSFW site YTMND.com page generator.)
Bunny with a Pancake, or Oolong the Rabbit.
Lowtax’s Space Robot Bonanza! chat session, better known as “The Terrible Secret of Space.” Pak Chooie Unf! Both sites NSFW.
The Oralse.cx Cliche Kitty.
The Icy Hot Stuntaz. NSFW
The always classic Domo-Kun.

The Websites:
Mahir kisses you.
Bert is Evil! NSFW
Bonzai Kitten pet body modification.
“I lost my frog. Him name is Hopkin Green Frog.” (one of those memes that becomes heartbreaking when you find out the truth)
The hypnotic Zombocom.
CREATION IS CUBIC, embrace the Time Cube. Not safe for sane people.
The classic Hampster Dance. (mirror listed as the original URL has morphed into some insane children’s merchandising machine)
Hello my future girlfriend.
Real Ultimate Power, where you learn ninjas are mammals amongst other things!
The Killer Japanese Seizure Robots! Not safe for epeleptics.

The Audio:
The Insanity Test. (Grandpappy to The Annoying Thing.)
The lyrical terrorist, MC Hawking. Holla.
The Arnold Schwarzenegger Sound Boards, tools that spawned some of the best prank calls ever recorded. NSFW
Kerpal’s “You kick my dog!”
Beep Delta! We be flying all ova dis bitch. NSFW

The Video and Animation:
The Star Wars Kid.
Badgers badgers badgers badgers…
YATTA! Site NSFW.
The animutation that started it all, Hyakugojyuuichi!!! Site NSFW.
Hatten baby! Hatten är din!
Gonads in the lightning! In the lightening! In the rain! …and WEEEEEEE!!!
The classic Joe Cartoon Frog Blender 2000.
The stickman ass kicking Xiao Xiao #3. Site NSFW.
Bubb Rubb and the whistle that goes WHOO WHOO! Site NSFW.
The always haunting Chin2.
Extra Bonus #11! The Numa Numa Dance.

Yeah, I know I went one more than I said I would. I’m glad I remembered it, and I couldn’t cut anything to make room. Hope you enjoyed this disturbing little trip down memory lane. Next post will bring more comics and maybe even some new sketches! w00t!

Whooo! I’ve been scanning. A few weeks ago, I found all of my old high school comic strip masters. The past few hours, I’ve been scanning… and cleaning up… and repairing… and re-typesetting due to the damaged text bubbles from the forced edits made by the high-school principal at the time. I remember being so angry back then about him watering down and ruining the jokes in “Hormonal Imbalances.” Looking back with a solid decade-and-change on the unedited originals, I realize now why he did what he did as I was pushing hard against the envelope of what’s considered “teenager friendly” content with questionable language, gratuitous violence, disrespect towards authority, references to a Monty Python song about oral sex, stolen gags from Berkeley Breathed, and Elvis jokes… and that’s just the first five I’ve scanned, cleaned up and posted. You’ll find a permalink entitled “Old Comix” that’s been added to the sidebar under “Crap Repository” for these *ahem* “gems.” Just don’t ask why the first one is in color when all the others are in black and white… I was young and apparently took leave of my mind and broke out the coloring markers on the original for the first strip a few years back. On the bright side though, it’s in color. Special treat! Wow!

For those curious exactly how true they are to the very originals, the only things I’ve changed are the spelling mistakes, added a conjunction here and there to make the dialogue a wee bit smoother, and “officially” backlog-changed the name of the primary character as apparently I wasn’t the only person in the world who had an idea for an animate chunk of glass named Shardy in the early ’90s. Unfortunately, Savage Steve Holland had apparently beat me by about two years copyright/publishing-wise… to this day, I swear it’s a coincidence as the idea sprung upon myself and my old pal Scottie on a road-trip to Ada, Oklahoma when we drove past a wrecked out pick-up truck with a shattered windshield… but I like the character too much and I don’t have to have the name, so I changed it to Chip O’Glass. Other than that, they’re in all their full, crappily drawn, rough around the edges glory. Now we shall never speak of the origins of Chip again.

Why am I posting this? A couple reasons, actually. The first being that the paper that these are on is yellowing horribly and wasn’t cared for well, and despite the sub-par illustrations I still enjoy most of them thus inspiring me to preserve them. The second reason is because I’m pushing myself hard to try and get back in the saddle artistically, and with the forthcoming webcomic being a direct growth off of my early stuff I figured it might be nice to establish its history. As I like subtle, occasional-use metahumor, I thought it best to provide the roots to some of the jokes. After all, how can a squirrel like Beauregard who has hooks for hands be truly funny unless you knew he lost his arms eleven years ago when hugging Chip during a copyright infringement hearing to prove how “non-violent” the comic was? Exactly.

Anyway, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD as it will be called) currently has ten strip outlines with two of them fully fleshed out. I’m also mulling around web designs for the PTSD site, but haven’t found anything that grabs me yet. Once I get about ten full in the can, dialogue wise, I’ll hopefully start things off if I’m able to keep the hands steady enough.

As a teaser, I’ll leave you with the names of the first five planned comics:
#001 - Engine of Terror
#002 - Deus Ex
#003 - Machina
#004 - Zoso
#005 - The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Don’t worry, the Zep reference won’t be wasted.

Can you tell I’m unemployed, stuck in the house and bored?