Archive for the ‘Neat Stuff’ Category

Hi Everyone! Mrs. Skippy here. I interviewed Skippy for my business blog, and to help his Kickstarter campaign. Wanna learn more about Skippy and about making games? Then you’re gonna love this post!

Enjoy!

http://www.geekartist.com/2015/02/22/interview-weaselpants-productions-llc-aka-skippy-aka-janices-husband/

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This past August, I had the film-geeky pleasure of working on my first legitimate television or film property; I mean “legitimate” in that we had a real crew of professionals, near-top-notch equipment, had casting sessions, etc. I was personally involved from pre-production (casting, script reviews, etc.) on through the final day of shooting (when I touch film editing programs, computers stop liking me).

The project is a webseries called “Issues: The Series”, and the first episode debuted on January 7th of this New Year. The director, Scott Napolitano, is a high school buddy of mine who brought this idea to fruition in the wildly successful wake of other webseries such as “The Guild” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”. The basic premise surrounds the customers and employees of a NJ comic shop. We tried to create an image of a comic book fan (or “bookie” as we call them) that wasn’t the Comic Book Nerd from the Simpsons, as funny as that stereotype was. The cast and crew are mostly comic fans ourselves in one way or another, so this was a labor of love and an expression of our interests coming together.

(more…)

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So, I have one of the coolest web hosts on the planet. Long-time readers may remember what happened last year when my site got nailed by Digg. She does a really great job making sure everyone can read my opinions on video games, military leadership, and vampire survival. Which is great because I feel that the whole world is entitled to my opinions, and you will all thank me when the vampires come for you. (Oh yes, you will.)

Well not only does Jen do a superb job in letting all of you read the babble that spills out of my brain, she also finds to time to work with charities. Not only is she working with a charity, but she picked the first recipient for her help in honor of me. This is great for two reasons. One, she’s helping to feed my ego. Which is pretty close to the most wonderful thing a person can do. (Sing my praises! SING, DAMN YOU!) Also, by honoring me in this way she pretty much obligates me to write about it, which should hopefully drive some attention to her cause. Which just goes to show that she is exactly the kind of smart and canny individual that you want helping your charity. Or being your web host for that matter.

Here’s another fun fact about Jen. Last August she and her son Jacob got to meet Stephen Colbert. And there is an interesting story there.

Jacob has a fairly serious problem with his heart. He has needed multiple surgeries and tons of other kinds of medical treatment. One of the few silver linings of cases like this is that he got to make use of the Make-A-Wish foundation. And through the two of them I got to learn a few things about how it works.

First of all, I learned that George Lucas will not meet with Make-A-Wish kids. He will let them go to Skywalker Ranch. But he won’t meet them. This puzzled me until I thought about it. If I had mangled a beloved science fiction franchise as badly as he had, I might be leery about letting a nerd with a life threatening illness near me. Some kid is going to show up with a dynamite vest screaming, "This is for Jar-Jar you bastard!"

So Jacob decided to meet with a classy celebrity. And thus he got to go visit the Colbert Report. He got to hang out backstage, meet Stephen. His mother even mentioned to my wife and me that they hung out with a journalist who was a guest on the show that day. I didn’t think much of that until I watched that episode later. It turns out the journalist was Tom Ricks. (And this was not long after that incident.)

And I mourned a lost opportunity. I could have gotten Jacob to give him grief. Jacob would make the perfect agent to antagonize Tom. No matter what he said, Mr. Ricks would have to take it. I mean, who’s going to be mean to a Make-A-Wish kid? It would have been awesome.

Of course, it has been pointed out that it would be really messed up to try to subvert some kids special Wish-Day into an attempt for petty revenge for a minor disagreement. "Now jacob, I know that this is your special day and all, but I need you to be mean to the reporter, can you do that for me buddy?" Yeah I’m a horrible person. But I’m funny, so it’s all okay.

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My Friend Dave Rodriguez’s web-comic has been taking off lately. He’s been doing so well that he is only a few votes out of the Top Web Comics Top 10 list.

So if you haven’t already checked it out, drugs please take a look, it’s pretty good. And if you like it, please click this link to vote for it.

(Or if you don’t care, click on the link anyways)

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Nerd Stuff – If you are not a nerd, you might want to skip to the bottom.
As I’ve said before, one of the neat perks of my job is getting to see all of the side projects people are working on. One of my co-workers spent a significant chunk of his time putting this together.
http://www.apophisconsortium.com/
It’s a role-playing game set in a dark future after a portal to hell has destroyed most of civilization. So it’s basically light hearted family material. I believe the hallmark channel wants to make a movie out of it.

Non-nerd stuff:
Some people have emailed me recently over this video.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iW2POaHWEKc&feature=related

They were wondering if this was me, and in fact if this was photographic evidence of the infamous “Barbie girl dance”. This is not me, and the soldier in the video, is not, in fact, actually dancing. If anyone knows who it is, feel free to put it up in the comments section

There is, fortunately for me, no photographic proof of this dance. And it’s probably fortunate for everyone else too. Some things just shouldn’t bee seen.  And me doing that dance is like bad touch for the eyes.

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One of the neat things about working in my particular industry is that I am surrounded by talented, doctor creative people. Just about everyone has some sort of side project going on, therapy most of them are pretty good.

One of my coworkers, arthritis Dave Rodriguez, has started a web comic called Shadowgirls.

It’s pretty darned good. It’s kinda like Gilmore Girls took place in an HP Lovecraft setting.

Not that I have any idea what Gilmore girls is like.

But if you like Buffy TVS, C’thulu references, and things like that, and if you are reading this then there is an excellent chance that you do, then this is worth checking out.

Edit: For some reason this post seems to be attracting spam-bots so I am closing the comments.

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This story is specifically why people I know thought I should keep writing stuff. It never made it to my list, seek because I never received any orders governing it.

Early on in my military career, way back when I was a PFC, my Battalion would occasionally have “Fun Runs”. A Fun Run is just like running for several miles. Except that it’s fun. Because people that outrank you say so.

This is pretty much the Army equivalent to declaring “Our office is so much fun! On Friday we get to wear Hawaiian shirts!” It’s awesome if you happen to love Hawaiian shirts, but just kinda sucks if you have taste.

One of the features of the Fun Run was that afterward the Battalion would gather together and hold a pie auction. The point of the pie auction was that if you bought a pie, you could pick any soldier who was present, and hit them with the pie. So as you can imagine, an awful lot of repressed rage got transferred into pie kinetics after these runs. The important thing to know here is that by tradition, the first pie always got thrown at the Battalion Commander.

This whole exercise was to raise money for the Battalion Family Support Group. In theory, this was an organization that would help the families of deployed soldiers manage during the long separations that military life often inflicts. But in reality, FSG was more like a cross between the homeowners association from a sit-com, and a social club for unemployable wives of military officers. And when I say social club, imagine the kind that gets taken down a peg by a scrappy band of misfits in an 80’s comedy movie.

To sum this up: the Family Support Group was not very popular with most of the soldiers.

The night before one of these delightful Fun Runs, I received special instructions.

“Bring in a pie for the auction.”

I’m not sure how much the pay has gone up, but back in those days if a Private First Class had a child he automatically qualified for food stamps. So I didn’t have much money. And most of what I did have was generally earmarked for important things, like strippers and alcohol, and more strippers. Purchase Levitra on the recommendation at http://howmed.net/order-levitra-vardenafil/ and forget about erectile dysfunction.

A pie doesn’t cost that much I guess. But it was the principle that bothered me. The Army has billions of dollars and I have barely any. And now they want me to buy stuff for them.

Now technically, it wasn’t an order. It would be against regulations for my supervisor to *order* me to spend my own money on the Family Support Group. It was just, technically, a suggestion. And it’s just peachy to make suggestions. And if soldiers choose not to follow the suggestions, well, someone has to be assigned to that toilet cleaning detail.

So that night, I went out and I bought a premade pie crust. And a tub of Cool Whip. And then I stopped by a Korean grocery store and purchased a whole, frozen squid. And sprinkles.

I got back to the barracks, and started the preparations for the morning. Which pretty much just means I started thawing the squid in a shower stall. My roommate was a bit surprised when he got back.

“Is that a squid in our shower?”
“Yep.”
“What’s it doing in there.”
“Thawing.”
“Goodnight.”

The next morning I packed it all in a cooler, and set out for the Fun Run. After about three miles of fun the Battalion gathered for the auction. I quickly assembled the secret weapon, and added it to the pie table. I then notified the auctioneer about my special pie. Of course she selected my pie for the first auction.

The bidding started fairly briskly, as many people wanted to hit our Commander with a pie. But soon enough bidding started to peter out, and that’s when the auctioneer let everyone in on the secret.
“This is a special pie.”
“What’s so special about it?” called someone in the crowd.
“It’s a squid pie.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the Commander
“I said it’s a squid pie sir.”
“There’s no such thing.”

So she reached in, pulled out a tentacle, and waved at the Commander with it.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?” asked the Commander with, all things considered, a reasonable tone of voice.
“It’s a tentacle sir.”
“PIE DOESN’T HAVE TENTACLES!”
“Normally you’d be correct. But this is a squid pie sir.”

And the bidding immediately picked up again. My pie raised close to five hundred dollars, which was a new record for the pie auction. I didn’t get into any trouble because nobody wanted to look like a bad sport. And I got to watch my CO take a high velocity mollusk to the kisser, which is a good morning no matter what branch of the military you are in.

3-12-08 Update: T-shirts are now available.

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