Tuesday, March 28, 2006

it's NOT what you think



click to enlarge.

alternate: [1024x768 version]

any questions along the lines of WHAT? WHY? HOW COME? WHAT THE HECK? will be totally ignored and NOT be answered.

there is a story behind this. a story i will not tell you just yet, but once you know what the story is, you'll know why zoro is all sweating, why franky is being the idiot that he is, and why vivi seems to be infatuated by zoro.

and no, this is NOT zoroxvivi <_<

Sunday, March 26, 2006

i like it hot, please



unlike popular beliefs (or at least mine), hot water does not kill bacteria, let alone sterilize anything. it takes more than that to sterilize shit. silly me.

done entirely using that set of mangaka pen i bought last week. here's a few things i noticed while drawing:

1. if you shake the pen too hard, ink will drip.
2. regular 24lbs 92brightness paper is probably not good enough for these pens, as i almost screwed up the paper while shading.
3. ink does dry.
4. you get thinner lines when outlining, but they're way too thin, as you can see for yourself

i think i'll go back to using microns for comic strips. i'll use those pens for... something else <_<

on a happier note, i'm very happy with how kiki came out in this comic strip. i think i've improved slightly when it comes to drawing girls, and i've also managed to achieve a bit of a consistency with kiki.

Friday, March 24, 2006

i tried to look away, but i kept looking back at you

i wish i could put up a picture for the title instead of just words.

back home in glendora again. this must be the most i've been home over a fixed period of time within the last 4 years. i think i will use this weekend to draw more stuff. i have to keep drawing so that laziness doesn't take over the only part of me that's still working properly. the day i get too lazy to draw will be the day of my demise. and if that day should come before i die, kill me.

i finished reading monster. it was good. very good, infact, so let me tell you how i managed to get myself into reading monster.

i was at the bookstore, trying to waste the twenty-eight minutes i still have left before i have to go to WLH 2120 to watch demonstration of the projects that my physics friends made over the course of 10 weeks. i saw a dude reading FLCL, so i thought i'd pick it up and see what's so good about it. after the first few pages i lost interest. the artwork just didn't interest me.

then i saw monster.

the horrible thing about campus bookstore selling manga is the fact that most of the manga in there does not have the first volume in stock. that is very retarded. which idiot would pick up volume fourteen of a manga and suddenly get interested in reading the whole entire thing?

(upon making such a thought, i realized i've managed to offend a lot of people without even intending to do so)

monster was the only one manga in the bookstore with volume one in stock. this is probably because the damn thing had just been released a month ago, but i didn't know that, so that was not my problem. i picked it up and started reading. i finished the book during the demonstration i was talking about earlier. i believe i was despised by my peers for not listening to what was presented and was reading book instead, and it didn't help that i was standing in front every time there's a project being presented.

i wanted to read volume two. i told ocean about this and he said he still had 1-9, scanlated, in his harddrive, so he uploaded them for me. the next thing i know i pulled another all-nighter reading that manga. the sun was out when i finished volume nine. that was when i made a post two days ago.

mira told me she has the rest, so i asked her to send them to me via msn. that took forever, but i managed to get up to volume 14 this morning. after reading fourteen volumes, i just couldn't stop. it's like cocaine. i needed my fix or i will die in pain. i IM'd vilda and chang. vilda said she has it at home, and chang said he had to dig up his CD. i MADE chang dig up the damn CD, and i made him send me the chapters. but i had to go back to LA and i knew i would not be able to concentrate on driving if i didn't at least get volume fifteen. at the same time the transfer via msn was going at about 10k/sec. i was desperate, but then chang and vilda both directed me to an irc channel that apparently hosted 15-18. so i went there and got few MBs per second.

now i am happy because i finished the series, but now i want another monster. human beings are never satisfied, aren't they?

i find myself reading monster as an ironically funny thing. over the course of a year, i've had people telling me to read monster, but i've always responded with "ok" and never actually went and read the thing. this i've done many times to many people. for some reason, it has been very hard for me to believe in other people's recommendation. whenever people say "you're gonna love this," the first thing that came to my mind was "how would you know? you can't read my mind, you don't know how i think, and you don't know what i like." and not just that, usually reading a manga that is recommended by someone else makes me dislike the manga a little bit. maybe i have a taste that i don't believe anyone else has. whether this taste is a good one or a bad one, no one can judge. after all someone else's bad taste is just bad because it's different from your taste. a taste is completely relative and subjective.

maybe i should start trusting people.

or maybe not. i find it hard to believe anyone because people around me had always been telling me lies. the people that i did trust in the past turned out to always disappoint me. the people who seemed sincere, only acted so because they wanted something from me. the skeptical view of life is true: the only person you can trust is yourself.

especially when the satisfaction from finding a good manga by yourself, without the help of other people, makes the manga twice as good. it's like being able to solve a physics problem all by yourself after spending three nights working on it. asking someone for help might reduce the time you spent by a significant amount, but the satisfaction you get is only the satisfaction from getting it done, and never the satisfaction of being able to solve it.

and come to think of it, i think i'd rather live with people telling me "see? i TOLD you!"

i'm weird like that.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

zen



they say to practice patience one must be subjected to tasks that require patience. so can i go find someone to kill now?

MONSTER

damn. damn. damn. damn.

never in my life have i read a manga that is so thrilling i almost pulled another all-nighter for it.

i need more. give me volume 10-18.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

OMG OMG OMG



THAT'S ME! THAT'S ME!! seriously! apparently i bugged him enough that he felt obliged to put me in there.

read the entire comics here.

Monday, March 20, 2006

damn eggy



the cutest girl i've drawn in my entire life turned out to be a doodle on msn messenger with a mouse. what is this world coming into?

and this is how i woo girls

rated M for mature

eggy, chang, and i had a doodlechat, which ended up being a practice on how to draw girls.

read part 1 first, then part 2.

some softcore nudity involved. viewer discretion's advised.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

howdy, mr. feynman?



6 hours of quantum electrodynamics was definitely too much for one day, i had to make fun of something to keep myself sane. i apologize for making fun of a dead man, but i just couldn't resist. i still have the utmost respect for you though, mr. feynman. you're a great physicist with a good sense of humor.

that said, he looks like he's thinking "i can POKE you with this chalk!"

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

canker sore is a good thing to have

when you really need to pull an all-nighter and caffeine keeps failing you. all you need is a little salt from the kitchen and a little courage to rub it on the canker sore.

pain keeps you up better than caffeine can.

and no, i'm not a masochist.

wish upon a time

i wonder why i always catch the 1.11 on my clock, but never times like 22.22, or 11.11, or 00.00, or 12.34, or 13.57, or whatever other sequential number you could think of.

maybe it's because i get into my panic mode around 1am and am therefore constantly looking at the time, thinking "OH CRAP IT'S 1AM ALREADY."

speaking of which,

...
...

OH CRAP, IT'S 1AM ALREADY!

i should go do my slides, final project presentation at 2pm tomorrow... or rather, today. bah, it's already today.

on a side note, have you ever noticed how the sentence "oh crap, it's already tomorrow" is always wrong, no matter how you look at it, while the sentence "oh crap, it's already today" is always correct, no matter how you look at it? if you don't agree, think about it. you'll never gonna arrive at tomorrow, because once you arrive at "tomorrow," then it's already been called "today." so if you want to be correct, always say "oh crap, it's already today." however, the sentence then loses its impact, because no matter when or where you say it, it's always today and never tomorrow.

some wise words from the conversation between dentarthurdent and slartibartfast:

"what does it matter? science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but i'd far rather be happy than right any day."

"and are you?"

"no. that's where it all falls down, of course."

Sunday, March 12, 2006

god's wife

look what eggy and i are currently drooling at:







if a mangaka gets to have a wife like chiaki inaba, what the hell am i doing with physics?

dear oda,

please forgive eggy and i for whatever unholy thoughts we had, have, and are going to have tonight about your wife.

i think eggy's words just about summed up all of our thoughts: "oda... i used to respect you... now i'm freaking jealous of you."

a tri-lemma

i was running low on my irish creme, toffee nut, and vanilla caramel creamers, so i went to get new ones at albertson's. to my surprise, they have creme brulee, chocolate raspberry, and cinnamon vanilla creme. i spent a good fifteen minutes in front of the creamer section staring at the three different kinds of creamer, contemplating which one i should try, but then people started looking at me like i was some kind of a retard and when one of the albertson's dude poked my back telling me that they're closing in 5 minutes, i knew i had to get all three and decide later at home.

so i did. but that didn't solve the problem.

just twenty minutes ago i had problem deciding which one i should try first. the old ones are completely gone now so i have no choice but to pick one for the coffee i was making. with the water starting to boil, i was running out of time, so i talked to sam.

he suggested to flip a coin.

dumbass. there are three options. not two.

he suggested to assign two of the choices to head and one to tail.

good idea, but that wouldn't be fair to the creamer now, would it? whoever gets singled out and assigned to the tail will get eliminated first, and that would cause a major creamer riot in the kitchen. that begged the question: how do you decide on which one's going to be assigned the tail?

he suggested to flip two coins. assign one choice to 2 heads, one choice to 2 tails, and one choice to 1 head and 1 tail.

again, not fair. the outcome of the probability would be 1/4 for 2 heads, 1/4 for 2 tails, and 1/2 for 1 head 1 tail. things could get messy and sticky if we don't deal with these creamers fairly.

he suggested a die. fair enough, but i don't have one.

at this point sam was about to grab me, toss me to the nearest wall, and stab me to death, so i told him i'd figure it out myself and he could just go shower. and then the most brilliant idea came to my mind, and no, this is not to use all three of them at once.

i closed my eyes, opened the fridge, and picked one randomly. chocolate raspberry it was, and no riot ensued.

the chocolate raspberry creamer literally tastes like chocolate raspberry. which is a good thing, i guess.

on a side note, it's amazing how i am suddenly able to cook because i'm giving up meat for lent. usually anything that i cook (when i have the willpower to) would taste less decent than that one frozen corndog in the freezer, so i gave up cooking and settled for the corndogs instead. but in the past two weeks i've not been eating meat, i've been cooking and they have been quite decent. i guess it's good to know that i still have some sort of a survival skill. here's a tip on making decent food when you're not eating meat. this goes from an idiot meat eater who can't cook to all the meat-eaters out there. you vegetarians won't understand how hard it is for us meat-eaters to give up meat:

1. veggie stir-fry: go to your local grocery store, and get just about everything you can find in the vegetable section. stuff i've been using thus far is cabbage, coleslaw, carrot, tomateo, garlic, shallot, mushroom, and broccoli. and get any stir fry sauce from the sauce section (or look around and see which one has the coolest looking packaging). cut the garlic into small pieces if you have patience, or if you don't, just hulk-smash them into smitherens. cut the shallot (half of it) into small pieces and toss them and the garlic into a heated frying pan (use olive oil) and stir. count to twenty and then toss everything else in. pour in the stir-fry sauce and stir. eat with rice.

2. quesadilla: buy some small/medium-sized flour tortilla bread. put shredded cheese, coleslaw, and mushroom on one tortilla bread, then let it sit on a frying pan (no oil) under medium heat. cover it up with another tortilla bread, and then wait until the bottom one is brown-ish, and flip. the cheese should stick the top and bottom tortilla together. if it doesn't, then you need to put more cheese. do it brute force.

and those are basically what i've been living off of the past two weeks.

really, that wasn't too harsh

people like me should never get any award.

not just that, but people like me should also never be praised, complimented, or anything along the same lines. we should probably be left alone and unknown since we tend to get caught up in the moment and think we're all the world would ever need.

like a few days ago when i inconsiderately offered a drawing to someone in exchange for her to stop doing whatever she was doing at the time and play a stupid guessing game with me. she replied with "i don't need your drawing." a reply i very much deserved. at the time it was more of a stab in the liver than a simple smack in the back of the head, but a stab definitely worked better. anyone who thinks a simple drawing is worth THAT much needs to be killed to make this world a much better place.

i still have a lot to learn in life. i think i will take down those plaques just so i don't let things go to my head anymore. silly me.

silly, silly me. really, who NEEDS a drawing?

Saturday, March 11, 2006

season's a-changin'

another week, another crackpot comic.



weather in SD has been super-weird lately. wonder if it'll snow or hail. that'll be cool.

now i just hope i don't get hardcore christian campus crusade people after my ass after this comic is printed on monday, screaming that it's god who controls the weather, and not twetawet.

run, twetawet, run like the wind!

on a side note, if you've been paying attention carefully, you can so totally tell how much influence one piece and hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy have given me. the scorching heat scene on panel three is thanks to oda's arabasta desert scene on chapter 162. there's so much you can learn from odacchi.

Friday, March 10, 2006

san-gatsu

i like march. it allows me to flip my calendar to



and yu hasebe



what do you call two drunk idiots who thought they're spiderman?





crotch-shot. i should be able to blackmail him using that somehow. at least they have faith in friction. it's hard to find people who have faith in friction these days.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

return of the big jug



oh how i miss this baby.

if you love chocolate

this one piece addict came across a chocolate addict.

normyk, i will be linking your chocolate blog from here.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

it takes two to tango







1st place now. too bad i still don't get any money.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

lookit, little alvin



look at that little twerp, he's got the menacing look of wayne rooney. this is the first time i saw a baby who is more handsome than i am.

Friday, March 03, 2006

how ideas came about

whenever i run of ideas for a comic strip, i've always blamed it on the fact that maybe i'm just not "in the zone," or that i'm not in a "funny mode."

but that's wrong. there is no such thing as a "funny mode" or "the zone." when we run out of ideas, what you need to do is one thing: go out with some friends and look around. because if you want to find something that you can exaggerate to the extent that it becomes funny, you'll never be able to find it when you're sitting alone in your room staring at a piece of paper.

i'm currenly giving up meat for lent, so when katie asked me to go eat with her at souplantation, i didn't even think once before i said yes. $10 for all-you-can-eat salad, plus pizza, pasta, and soup was definitely well worth it. too bad i'm not arvin. nonetheless, the trip to souplantation has supplied me with plenty of ideas for new comics. thanks katie, you're a good muse.

gotta write them down before i forget.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

oh SCHNAP.

more update. seems like the decisions are gonna all arrive soon.

~ caltech - DENIED
~ university of minnesota
~ university of washington
~ UC san diego
~ UC davis
~ UC irvine - ADMITTED
~ UC berkeley
~ UC santacruz - ADMITTED with fellowship
~ UC santa barbara - DENIED

scoreline is 2-2 now.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

sorry, out of order

laundry.

he hated that doing that.

in fact, he hated that doing it so much the only thing he hated more than that doing it is folding it. but this problem has been solved long ago, when he purposely sought apartments with huge closet space and purchased an overwhelming amount of hangers, so that instead of folding it he could just hang all of his clothes. so that solved this particular problem... for a short period of time. he then also developed hatred toward hanging clothes and in the end would just leave his clothes ignored on the floor. but it still wasn't as bad as doing laundry itself.

the only problem with not doing laundry is running out of clean underwears to wear. flipping them inside out and doing smell test do work, but only for a certain period of time. this world would certainly be a much better place to live if the government supplies everyone with a free, unlimited supply of underwear so no one will have to do laundry, ever.

that might be the reason why communism failed; they did not give their citizens free underwear supply.