This Is A Safe Place

Sometimes you have let the one’s you love know how their path to self destruction is really inconveniencing you. Other times you have to say, “F-Balls to that!” and go grind your man-bits (Tim Bits if you’re Canadian) right into another man’s pants-parts while the sweet sounds of oontz-oontz-oontz rhythmically lull you into the waiting appendages of anonymous club sex. You know how it goes.

I’m not entirely sure Eli actually needs an intervention. I suspect something much more sinister is behind his recent constant drankishness. Or maybe he’s an alcoholic. I guess we’ll see.

Oh, and Oreo? You didn’t have to do anything to make me love you more than all other cookies, but it’s nice that you tried.

The initial Preorder for the Lil’ Wil Wheaton plushie ends on 6/30/12. If you definitely want one before the holidays, NOW is the time to order.

The first HE iBook/eBook is nearly done. You can see the cover HERE. Donation subscribers will get it for free. Everyone else will be able to get it for a pay-what-you-like donation.

COMMENTERS: Have you ever intervened for a friend or family member on a NON-life threatening problem? Ever gotten up the courage to tell a room mate they needed to bathe more often, or that eating nothing but Romen noodles was going to kill them? I guess that IS life-threatening. I once flat out told a guy (friend of a friend, but not MY friend) that he couldn’t come into our apartment any more because he reeked so terribly if cigarettes that it made my eyes water and and my allergies go nuts. He remained not my friend from that day forth.

Be Prepared

And so our new mini storyline begins! I think we’re going to find out why Eli has been drinking so much and what exactly happened to him after he left the movie theater with neurotoxic booze-candy poisoning.

If you’re a member of the HE Fancy Bastard Facebook Group, I just posted the cover for the first HE iBook/eBook offering “ijiNKS ENSUE: Drawing Hands Is Hard – An iBook Collection Of HijiNKS ENSUE Comics from 2007-2008.” The iBook itself should be available to donation subscribers this week and to anyone else that wants to drop a one-time pay-what-you-want donation in the bucket. If you donate now, I will email you when the iBook is available.

Fans of the HE Podcast, I should have some exciting news for you pretty soon. Maybe not until after San Diego Comicon, but soon.

I’ve been reposting all of the previously locked content from The HijiNKS ENSUE Vault over in my Tumblr under “The Vault Redux.” Feel free to check it out.

Fans of The Experiment might be interested to know that my wife and I are starting a second experiment. With our daughter starting school in a few months, my wife is ready to return to work. I’m not about to ask her to burden herself with a commute and a boss and… gauhhhhh… COWORKERS, so she is going to start a photo restoration and photo retouching business. You can see her website HERE. Her rates are reasonable and she’s really fantastic at the work she does. Please feel free to pass her URL along to anyone you know that might need damaged photo repair, cosmetic touch ups in photos, removing someone from a photo, adding someone to a photo, color correcting a picture, black and white / color effects or photo colorization, or just general Photoshop image manipulation.

COMMENTERS: Even though Eli was just “bobbing for beers,” Josh was certainly quick with the body disposal plan. Assuming Josh is equally prepared for all scenarios, what other situations is he prepped/planned for and what supplies does he have on hand? I’m assuming he has multiple contingencies for any and all HAMergencies.

Taken It 2 The Streets

Thanks to Rob for the joke in panel 4 which inspired this entire comic.

Before I start the next storyline, I thought I would take[n] this opportunity to reinforce a few things about Eli’s personality. First off, he thinks all action movies follow the Rambo naming convention, i.e. the title of the film is the lead character’s name. This goes for Taken, Die Hard, Cliff Hanger (actually THAT one was a real missed opportunity, Hollywood) and Point Break. Secondly, he is a creature of confident confusion. He rarely knows what he’s talking about, but he know’s it’s right. Thirdly, he is probably still drunk. We’ll get into that more later.

I watched the trailer for Taken 2 and it is clear that Taken is Taken it up a notch. This time his daughter, his wife and presumably his entire extended family have been Taken by the (I’m assuming) widowers of the dozens if not hundreds of ~~Ukrainian~~ Albanian human trafficers he murdered in the first movie. I’m actually relieved that they took[en] this direction for the sequel. The only things going through my head at the end of Taken were A) NOT enough blood, because most of it was in my boner and B) the idea that one dude might have the particular set of skills required to take[n] the lives of 150 some odd goons, and he just might get away with it if no one identifies him, BUT how in the ridiculous fuck is he going to murder a wealthy European slave dealer in his own home AND am Iranian Sheik on his own boat and NOT face immediate retribution? The apparent answer is: no. Or he can’t. He doesn’t. Whatever. My money is on him rage-flipping all of Eastern Europe like a lumpy mattress.

SIDE NOTE: if you HAVE seen the trailer for Taken 2: Taken That Shit To The Next Level, is it just me or does the main bad guy look like The Most Interesting Man In The World from the beer commercials? “I don’t always traffic in humans, but when I do… I make it white American women. Stay scummy, my friends.”

COMMENTERS: Please insert John Taken into more films and give him his memorable quote. For example:

V: Taken Out The Lizard People – “What I do have are a very particular set of scales.” That was also works if you put Taken in Blow.

Surface Tension

As an unapologetic Apple fanboy, I am probably not the most expected source for seemingly anti-Apple sentiment. But a fact is a fact, and chief among Apple’s key strategies is waiting for years after a new service, feature or function is adopted and implemented by EVERY other competitive platform before putting their own spin on it and taking all the credit as if it were their own invention. They are almost always the last to the party, but they are always the best dressed, the most interesting, the sexiest and the only one everyone remembers the next day.

I don’t fault Apple for this type of behavior because all they are really doing is letting the other guys take the risks and make the mistakes and gauging public response based on other products before taking all of that knowledge and refining the hell out of their own product before launching it (2 or 3 years after the first one came out). Then WE, not Apple, create the notion that Apple did something new, different and spectacular. Apple is the only tech company not frothing at the mouth to be the first to a milestone. They have the foresight to know that in 5 -10 years, no one will remember who did it first. They will only remember who did it best. No one will ever say, “Did you see Apple’s new Diamond Rio Mp3 Player? It’s called an iPod.”

It’s the same with the upcoming inclusion of turn by turn GPS in iOS 6. Android has had this feature for free since 2009 or so. Apple has outright neglected this feature (like they did video recording, 3G and apps on the early iPhones), but I guarantee you that as soon as people are asking their iPhones, ” Siri, tell me how to get to the nearest Thai place,” they are going to think Apple not only invented GPS, but also the orbits that hold the satellites in place and probably The Moon too just for good measure.

So when Apple finally puts a keyboard in a Smart Cover, don’t be surprised. I feel like that’s the only real standout feature of The MS Surface. I’m sure it will be a perfectly fine tablet, but I promise you the full Windows 8 version will be at least $1000, which makes it more of a competitor to the Macbook Air than the iPad. I also think it’s foolish to release two identical products with the same name when one is essentially a full computer and the other is a tablet running an mobile version of Windows 8. Leave it to MS to create confusion within their own brand. They just don’t have that singular vision that Apple has (or perhaps had… time will tell). I do not think poorly of Windows users or MS fans, but I firmly believe they are children of a lesser Steve. Everything they release seems very “design by committee.” Actually it seems like an outside committee was hired to consult the committee that advised the design by committee committee who worked on the design for four years before being reassigned to a different project, at which point a new committee as brought in to rush the design to completion despite having no idea what it was for in the first place.

COMMENTERS: Is the MS Surface finally going to put Redmond on the hardware map? Are their any standout features of the Surface that have you excited? No? Is that because they really didn’t announce any features, like at all? Weird, huh? Is it just me or is the whole “every device must have a Metro OS” thing a horrible idea? I find the current Xbox dash nearly unusable and it’s as Metro as all get out.

Any other examples of a company or service that was “late to the party” but gets all the credit?

The Fassbender And The Furious

The Lil’ Wil Wheaton Plushie Pre-Sale IS NOW HERE in the HE Store. The ONLY way to make sure you get one by the holidays is to order during the pre-sale. They’re $19.95 + shipping. Buy one for you, one for a friend and one to customize with a little fez or horrible spacesuit sweater!

Did you know the Fancy Bastards are keeping each other company over on the new Fancy Bastard Facebook Group? Why are you missing out on the fun? Why would you do that to yourself?

!!!PROMETHEUS SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

This comic was inspired by a conversation with my friend Stepto in which he attempted to convince me that I was too dumb to realize that I was too smart to be OK with all of the structural weaknesses in Prometheus. I was determined to hold on to my geek joy and not sacrifice it to his dead, pedantic spite-gods. Then I actually started to think about some of the… all of the stuff in the movie and the black goo of doubt began to race through my system and infect my very DNA. At one point a little techno-organic worm poked out of my eyeball just long enough to shout, “WHY WERE ALL THOSE SCIENTISTS SO DUMB AND BAD AT SCIENCE!?!” Just before I begged Charlize Theron to bathe me in cleansing flames, I realized he had a point.

Still I enjoyed the movie. And what is the most important question you can ask of art designed to entertain other than “was I entertained?” The weird thing about Prometheus is that it distracts you with pretty, and robots, and pretty robots, and murder aliens for 2 hours and then it’s over. So you don’t really notice all of the problems until you’re totally removed from the situation.

Regarding all the talk of “mystery,” I don’t think the plot actually leaves all that much unanswered. You don’t have to know why the Engineers want to delete humanity in order to understand the story or their role in it. David spelled it out perfectly when he made the “Why did you create us?” analogy. We would deactivate and destroy hundreds of thousands of androids if we decided they were faulty or posed a threat. They’re our creation and thus below us and we can do with them as we please. Same goes for the engineers. Whatever humanity did to piss them off 2000 years ago, was enough to say, “Well that’s enough of that bullshit. Time to wipe them out and mark a check in the FAILED EXPERIMENT column.” The “mystery” isn’t the issue.

The issue is one of characterization and motivation. The list of character problems I could make would be too long and boring to actually get anything out of, but all of the problems stem from the same root cause. Every single character in the movie (excluding perhaps David and the Engineers) establish type then play against it at every possible turn. And not in a clever way. More in a “one guy wrote the first half of the movie, then another wrote the second half without reading the first half” type of way. All of the hired scientists are incredibly terrible at their jobs despite displaying and professing their proficiency early on. We shouldn’t even have to question their merit considering the richest man in the galaxy decided to include them on the most important expedition in human history. Their ineptitude immediately throws their own character and that of Weyland (and subsequently nearly the entire plot of the film) into question. You get the impression early on that none of these people are professionals or even intelligent. Why don’t they follow any protocol on the planet? Why do they take their helmets off? Why do they KEEP TAKING THEM OFF even after shit starts to go real bad? Why does their cowardice overpower their scientific curiosity and why is that tolerated by their superiors? “I’ve decided NOT to contribute my expertise to this trillion dollar mission for which I was hired. Cool?” Why doesn’t main science lady ever tell ANYONE that she just c-sectioned an alien squid monster from her belly? No one even asks why she’s covered in blood, not in stasis and COVERED IN FUCKING BLOOD. There are just too many cases where people don’t act or react like actual people.

Still, I enjoyed it. Considering it was written by a LOST show-runner, I’m not entirely surprised that an excellent premise was confusified into something that posed more questions than it answered. I’m not sure when it happened, probably when LOST got so popular, but why did Hollywood decide that confusing = deep? You don’t get to say “it makes you think” when you really mean “we couldn’t come up with anything so we just left that part out.” Still, I enjoyed it. I just wish it had gone through one more rewrite by someone that wasn’t mistaking ambition for sloppiness or convoluted for thought provoking. Still… I enjoyed it.

COMMENTERS: OK, GO NUTS! Spoilers and all. Get your Prometheus thoughts off your chest.