More Chest Bursters!

All right, the response to my recent "Tongue Burster" design (see below) has been so positive that I've decided to create variations on the basic theme and have officially opened a "Chest Burster Designs" section at my Barry's World store (click the image on the left to visit the new section).

What can I say? I saw the original "Alien" at the tender age of 12 (ayup, I went to see it with my mother, but in her defense it was on the recommendation of a friend and neither of us knew it was R-rated until it was too late), and I have been a fan of the series ever since. The first movie was a terrifically (or should that be "terrorifically"?) effective scary movie. Granted, the special effects are a bit dated and it suffers a bit upon repeat viewing (especially when you can freeze-frame the DVD player), but it still ranks up there as one of the scariest movies in my book. [As an aside, the recently released "Directors Cut" that came out on DVD is a marked improvement, if for no other reason than the fact that many of the scenes with sub-par special effects were trimmed to the bare bones.]

The second movie, "Aliens" wasn't quite as scary, but it was a rip-snorting action adventure story the likes of which hadn't been seen very often before. Real adrenaline-pumping stuff there, no doubt!

The third film, "Alien3," has a pretty bad reputation among fans, but I have to admit that I quite liked it. I felt it really returned to the basic themes explored in the first film (primarily the fact that a bunch of unarmed people had to go up against a hideous unstoppable monster), and was therefore a lot scarier than the second film. Sure, I was upset that two of survivors of the second movie didn't make it into the third movie, but that didn't ruin the film for me.

As for "Alien Resurrection", well, it had excellent production values, great special effects and really good acting. Sadly, there was just way too much silliness (breath-opened doors?) and logical inconsistencies for me to enjoy it as much as the other three films. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from watching it 3 or 4 more times on DVD since I first saw it in the theater...

Happy Earth Day!

In honor of Earth Day 2006, allow me to present my latest "Surreality" design, called "Canned Earth."

Wouldn't it be nice if Earth came in a can and we could get a new one when we've finished ruining the one we've got? Sadly, there's only one Earth, so it's important to take care of it.

Of course, it's easy enough to say, but a lot harder to actually do. And, unfortunately, we really need a world-wide concerted effort to really make a difference. And that's not going to happen until we start thinking like a global community and not just a bunch of independent sovereign states.

*sigh*

Somebody really needs to invent a clean, renewable and cheap energy source that all the developing countries can quickly start using so they can avoid the mistakes the currently industrialized nations have made.

Hey -- a guy can dream, can't he?

No, I don't need a reason....

Lately, I've been coming up with a variety of designs for my Barry's World Store that are targeted at specific audiences and, to be honest, are just attempts to sell something [anything!]. Every once in a while, though, I just can't resist the urge to create something wacky and surreal for no other reason than the fact that the idea makes me giggle. Hence my latest creation, which I lovingly refer to as the "Tongue Burster" design.

Does it serve any socially relevant purpose? Does it have any particular meaning? Is anybody likely to actually buy it on a t-shirt, hat or mug? No, no, and probably not. But when it comes right down to it, none of that really matters. I create art primarily to amuse myself, and actually selling my art (while certainly nice) is an afterthought. Fortunately, I'm not doing this for a living, as I certainly would have starved to death years ago...

My president invaded Iraq, and all I got was higher gas prices....

All right, I don't have a particularly long commute to work (9 miles each way) and as a result I sometimes go 2 or even 3 weeks between fillups. Which is to say that I don't always notice when gas prices are going up until it's too late. But yesterday I just ended up paying $3.00 per gallon at the local station. Excuse me? Hello? What the heck is up with that?

I mean, last year everybody was blaiming rising gasoline prices on hurricanes Rita and Katrina and the damage they caused to the oil production facilities down in the souithern parts of the U.S. Personally, I thought that was a bit of a crock, since gasoline prices had actually risen significantly in the months prior to the hurricanes whenever there was a "threat" of hurricane damage, but when no damage occurred the prices never came back down. In other words, if the prices were already raised "just in case" of a hurricane and never lowered when there wasn't a hurricane, how on earth could they then justify raising prices even higher when there really was one?

I'm not sure what the latest excuse is this time, to be honest. Whatever the current rationale is, however, it's a stunning reminder as to how the Bush administration has failed once again. Whether you happen to be a Bush supporter or not, I think just about everybody concedes these days that the real reason we invaded iraq was because we wanted to get our hands on a cheap and plentiful supply of oil. Weapons of Mass Destructions? Ties to Al Quaeda? Saddam's human rights violations? Preventing the expansion of terrorism in the Middle East? All either outright lies or rationalizations after the fact. The truth is that the administration thought that we could get away with invading Iraq under one pretense or another and that, once there, we would be able to control their oil fields.

So much for "Mission Accomplished," eh?

Thinking positive!

So anyway, there's this little web comic site called Something Positive....

OK, so it's not little. In fact, it's a very popular site that's been up for a number of years. It's run by a guy in his early thirties named Randy Milholland, who was born and raised in a small town in Texas but who now lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and stars a guy in his early thirties who was born and raised in a small town in Texas but who now lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and has mostly wacky and surreal adventures with his friends and co-workers. The strip is only semi-autbiographical (apparently it started out a lot more autobiographical at the beginning and then drifted).

I first discovered Something Positive a couple of years ago and instantly became entranced (I think it took me 2-3 days of solid reading to make it all the way through the archives). Part of the appeal, of course, was simply the fact that the bulk of the storyline is set near where I live and it's always cool to recognize local restaurants and landmarks. More importantly, though, was the humor of the strip which doesn't seem to have any sacred cows whatsoever as far as I can see. Anything, and I do mean anything is fair game for abuse and ridicule. Although I don't find every single strip hillariously funny (especially the strip where he randomly killed off the main character's mother), the vast majority leave me with a smile on my lips.

So, why am I telling you about all this? Because yesterday I ran my very first ad on the Something Positive site. It cost me $40 to run the ad itself, plus an extra $50 to have the artist design the ad for me using one of his characters. You can see the ad to the left, with the character "Mike" wearing a t-shirt with one of my designs. The ad did generate a significant amount of treaffic to my store, and I even sold a bunch of t-shirts as well, but to be honest it was worth the $90 just to see one of his characters wearing one of my designs. I mean, how cool is that?

The world's cutest image

All right, I'll admit that I didn't intend to create the world's cutest image. It sort of just happened, you know? A happy accident, if you will.

I was over at Worth1000 and decided to enter a contest called "Mamsects and Insmals." The point of the contest was to create animal/insect hybrids. For reasons I don't recall, I decided to see if I could combine a cat with a butterfly. The rose was an afterthought, basically to hide the body of the cat that really didn't go well with the rest of the picture.

Sadly, the image didn't do all that well in the contest, mostly because it wasn't technically very challenging compared to many of the other entries. But, without exception, every single person who commented on it said it was the cutest thing they had ever seen. So, even though I didn't win, I did, at least, manage to create the world's cutest image.

Hmmmmm.... Good thing I didn't try putting a butterfly's head onto a cat's body....

My very own ticket to Hell

Heh. I think on every single message board I've ever visited, it's the same. Somebody posts a sarcastic and/or non politically correct message and ends by saying that they'll take their ticket to Hell now please. Preferably first-class and aisle seat, and definitely one-way. Not that I would ever make such a comment [Who, little old me? Never!], but I thought it would be fun to go ahead and create my very own "Ticket to Hell" design for my Barry's World Store. At first I was going to make it look like an airline ticket so I could include text about the ticket being one-way, first class and with an aisle seat. Unfortunately, after looking at few real airline tickets I realized that the relevant text would be way to small to read from more than a few inches away. So, instead, I decided to go with this design instead. It may not be as complicated, but I think it gets the point across nicely. Plus, I was really pleased with how real it looks.

So... What do you think?

It's a sploodal world, after all!

Sploodal is one of those weird words that seems to suddenly appear out of nowhere and instantly become part of our public consciousness. A meme if you will. Other examples would be words and expressions like "phat" and "the bomb" that everybody uses and understands, and yet nobody is really sure where they came from.

Theories, of course, abound. It is generally agreed that "sploodal" first appeared in northern Europe sometime in the late 1990s, and one theory is that it derived from the Norwegian word "sblødl" (a rather mild, yet tasty, firm white cheese). Why a Norwegian word for cheese should come to be associated with all things cool, hip and desirable, however, has never been adequately explained, except perhaps for the suggestion that it was originally used ironically and that non Norwegian listeners simply didn't get the joke.

Another theory is that the word is actually a shortened form of the phrase "split poodle", which is slang for a particular sexual position, the details of which I won't go into here (feel free to look it up if you must, but this is a family friendly blog). Although this theory does appeal to our more prurient natures (remember the theory a while back that the word "nice" originally meant "sexually promiscious"?), one major flaw in this theory is that in almost all cases the word has, in fact, been spelled "Sploodal" and not "sploodle". It is possible, of course, that the spelling of the final syllable was purposely altered in order to make the word's origins a bit more obscure to one's parents, but I think that's stretching things a bit too much, personally.

One final theory that has been making the rounds lately is that the word derives from "splood," which is an obscure term describing a certain type of "ornithological dejecta" (that's bird poop to the rest of us). This is almost certainly a coincidence, however, since the term really is truly obscure, even among ornithologists, and no evidence has ever been presented showing how the term might have crossed over into the mainstream.

Regardless of the word's origin, it's clear that sploodal has officially entered the language as the current "hot" word of the decade. Whether it will become a permament part of our lexigraphic landscape (along with such winners as "hip" and "cool"), or eventually fade away (like "gnarly" before it), remains to be seen. Only time will tell. But in the mean time, I'm going to have one sploodal of a good time!

Nutrition Facts

OK, so I'm always trying to come up with new designs for my Barry's World Store that are both humorous and original. I was eating breakfast the other day when, for some strange reason, I was struck by the "Nutrition Facts" label on the side of the cereal box. My weird little brain being what it is, I immediately thought how cute it would be to have a nutrition label giving the recommended daily allowance for the ingredients that make up "little boys" and "little girls" [for anybody who isn't familar with the old sayings, little girls are supposed to be made of "sugar and spice and everything nice," whereas little boys are made of "snips and snails and puppy dog tails"].

This wasn't the most difficult design I've ever come up with, but it did take a while to get to the point where I thought it looked just right. I had to leave out a lot of stuff that is really on the nutrition facts labels (like calorie count, amount of fat, etc.) but I think the end product still looks like a real label.

And then, of course, I went ahead and ordered a toddler t-shirt with the "little boys" design for my 14-month-old son to wear. Hey -- if you can't use your children to advertise your products, what use are they? Just kidding! Well, mostly....