The X-2 suffers a landing mishap… which is apparently investigated by a ’76 British punk band.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
X-1
A drawing of the Bell X-1, the first plane to break the sound barrier*. First flight in 1946. Design inspired by a rifle bullet because that was the only thing anyone could think of in 1945 that was supersonic.
*a German pilot claimed to have broken the sound barrier while diving in a Me-262 in 1945, but nobody really takes the claim seriously.
I’ll be drawing a lot of planes in the near future, as a warmup for the next biggish project.
Rockefeller Center
Another drawing done with my new Wacom tablet, using a picture I took as a guide.
OTTO is on indefinite hiatus
So, this is one mid-level-upsetting part of a larger, extremely upsetting situation: I’m stopping production on Otto, Protector of the North Woods. Or, more accurately, I stopped a week ago and won’t be starting up again.
What’s the deal? Well, frankly, the deal’s a pretty severe bummer. Some really, really tragic shit happened in my family last week. Bad enough that I’m still reeling from it, and probably will be for a while. At this point, I’m not really capable of creative work. But even after this upset eventually eases, the upcoming Otto storyline is largely about depression and suicide (in some ways, the whole strip is), and that’s not an area of my brain that I think would be healthy to spend a lot of time in right now.
I don’t know if the strip will eventually be revived or not. I know that eventually I’ll pick back up with some sort of creative work, but at this point I have no idea what that’ll be. Keep an eye on this space, I guess, if you’re the sort who cares.
Wall of Sound II
A drawing of a photograph of a sculpture.
Heroes (rough mix)
Heroes– wherein I take the David Bowie classic to strange (and terrible) places with my Kaosillator.
This is a very rough draft mix; I’ll probably need to bring some things up, take some things out, and add some tracks. But it’s too weird and to large in my mind not to put it out somewhere.
Like the American single version, I cut out two of the opening verses, but a different two than the ones Bowie cut– I think this one makes the narrative of the song a little clearer.
Eschaton Lite
This was originally housed on a side page of my Nowhere Band site; I realized recently that it makes a lot more sense for it to live here.
THE RULES OF ESCHATON LITE
rev 1.4, 2.9.23
GOAL
The purpose of this document is to produce a playable version of the game Eschaton as presented in Infinite Jest. As we’re making several departures/simplifications from the version laid out by David Foster Wallace, we’ll call this version Eschaton Lite.
Eschaton Lite simulates a Cold War nuclear exchange, using tennis balls thrown around on a large gamespace representing a polar-projection map of the Northern Hemisphere. Blocs made up of nation-states and treaty groups will flex their nuclear muscles at each other over a strategic prize, and all hell will inevitably break loose.
(for those who care, the departures from the full Wallace version of Eschaton are as follows: Wallace Eschaton is played on a space consisting of 6 tennis courts, arranged 3×2, and missile launches are conducted by lobbing the balls with tennis racquets; Lite’s space will generally be smaller, and balls can be thrown rather than racquet-lobbed. Additionally, Wallace Eschaton calls for heavy use of computers both before and during play; Eschaton Lite will put pre-game decisions at the Ump’s discretion and use a combination of Ump discretion and pencil-and-paper for in-game computing).
For purpose of example, this document will refer to a game scenario set in 1984, wherein the US, NATO, USSR, Warsaw Pact, and Israel will deal with a crisis in East Berlin.
The Replacements doing T. Rex
I think this is a case where it’s good that I didn’t hear about this back during my peak years of Replacements superfandom… I didn’t really properly appreciate T. Rex back then.