http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:thetruewibbler&section=today deviantART RSS for by:thetruewibbler en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:34:53 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/28980105/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/28980105/ Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:44:09 PST
Now, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but the entire point of deviantArt is for people to show off their art, whatever it might be, so that people other than their mothers can see it and appreciate it and their talents for what they are, and maybe offer some criticisms and comments. If you're really good, then perhaps people will favourite your work, and if you're really really good, they might subscribe to you and have your new work delivered to their inbox without having to keep checking your page. This sounds like a good idea. But then, it's all ruined, by the simple inclusion of a single option during deviation submission. The watermark.

It's ugly, and it ruins your work. Yes, it stops anyone stealing your work. But it also stops everyone else from actually seeing your work properly, and it stops them from giving a fuck about it anymore. I hate watermarks. I don't steal art. I think I photoshopped something from dA once, to learn how to use Photoshop, and I gave full credit to the original artist. So then why is it that increasingly I'm unable to see my favourite artists' submissions because of the fuck off great big hideous dA logo and writing all over them?

Now, in the old days, it was pretty simple. If anyone wanted to make sure that credit wasn't taken for their work by anyone else, they'd put a signature, or an artists mark discretely in the corner, or incorporate it into the background. Because, you know, that's what real artists have done for centuries. It does the job, shows who really made it, nobody can steal it convincingly, and the integrity of the picture and its content is preserved and unhindered. Fine. Don't have a problem with that. It's cool. Some of the marks that artists come up with to signify that something is their work are in themselves pretty interesting bits of graphic design and construction. On occasions I've seen work where the most artistically redeeming and valuable thing on display was that little artist's stamp, ironically.

But now, people who are too lazy to come up with their own mark, and then wondered what could be done because they put their work online for people to look at, making it very easy to steal, and they aren't very happy about it, have come up with a truly bizarre conclusion. "Well, gee, I've never marked my work before, and now people are stealing it. Should I put in a little fucking effort to come up with an interesting but ultimately unobtrusive symbol that I'm responsible, or should I let dA plaster an ugly great logo all over the entire image? The latter. It's easier."

FUCK YOUR FUCKING WATERMARKS. FUCK THEM. YOU ARE RUINING YOUR OWN ARTWORK, YOU STUPID CUNTS. The sheer irony! You want people to see your work, but then you prevent them from doing so! Am I the only person who sees that for how moronic it truly is? I can't be the only one.

The best part? The fucking BEST part? Those watermarks. They don't just ruin your work. They also don't do what you think they're doing, which is making it clear who did the original work. They just don't. Is that YOUR logo plastered all over your work? No. It's deviantArt's fucking logo! And they all look the fucking same! Every damned one of those poxy rubbish watermarks looks the same, apart from the much smaller text under the logo with your name.

So, I'm going to just say it here... if you start using watermarks, and sabotaging your own work, I care not who you are... friend, family, someone whose work I formerly really respected and liked enough to want to comment on... whoever. If you start watermarking your stuff, don't expect it to remain in my favourites. Don't expect to remain on my watched artists list anymore. If you don't give a shit enough about your art not to ruin it, I don't give a shit enough to want to look at it. It's that simple. And if you follow me, if I ever get around to writing again, please don't comment on anything I do either. Because if you care so little for your own work, you're never going to have anything worth saying about anyone else's. "I like your work so much." "I don't like your work so much, and this is why." Most people, fine, I love feedback. Especially criticism. But if you watermark your own efforts, I have a simple retort. What do you know? You, who freely and willingly ruin your own work with someone else's logo? Who are so insecure about possible theft that you would do that. What do you know? You know nothing, and your opinion is therefore utterly, and totally without merit.

If you don't want anyone stealing your art, fuck off and stop putting it online at all, you fucking idiots.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/27713145/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/27713145/ Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:28:50 PDT
I've been thinking about happiness. What is it? Or rather, what is true happiness, and contentment with life. I've been happy before, but only for brief amounts of time. It's far more transitional and fleeting than the kind of overall glow I've seen in other people. I never seem to be able to hold onto it for more than, at most, a few short hours at a time. Things I do to try and attain some measure of it always seem to go wrong and have the opposite effect in the long term. This doesn't seem very fair. I am a cynical and somewhat bitter individual, prone to near-constant stress and anxiety, but I've somehow managed to keep a certain amount of hope going in a quiet corner of my brain, contrary to how I normally act and feel and despite events in my life. I can't explain it, but it's always there. A small part of my mind holds a vigil for eventual happiness and satisfaction.

One way I know I'm not happy, is that I am lonely. This is not the same as being alone. I can quite comfortably not be around people for extended periods of time, and often prefer to be, more so than I prefer the company of others. But I still desire and require a counterpart; an equal. On an intellectual and emotional level, who I can be comfortable with and share things with. Contrary to the movies, and what your parents, society and your inbuilt genetic imperative might tell you as you're growing up, love is not happiness. Or at least, it isn't necessarily. In fact, it seems to be more about pain from my limited experience. Every relationship where I have developed some degree of love, be it familial, romantic, friendship, or even for an idea or inanimate object. It seems to consist of more pain than happiness. I loved my father, despite his abuses, and despite my anger over them. I love my mother and sister, though they are usually a source of considerable shame, frustration, and again anger. I fell in love with a beautiful but similarly unhappy young woman, but she was unable to reciprocate the emotion and in my desperate frustration, and to my infinite regret, I managed to drive her away from me. As I have similarly driven away, or been driven away by or even just drifted away from most of the friends I've had.

A particularly worrying thought is that the majority of those seem to become happy once away from me, or find happiness and that's when they suddenly leave. The young woman, who I still constantly think about and care about regardless of what happened and didn't happen between us, has recently found a degree of happiness, or at least contentment. Her life has become infinitely improved, academically, professionally, and personally since she stopped spending time or talking with me. And I'm glad for her, because she deserves for things to go right for her for once. I mean that sincerely. But I'm also jealous, and sad that I couldn't be a part of it. Which in turn bothers me with how selfish that seems. And even though she was unhappy before I met her, that she couldn't be happy until I wasn't around worries me. Similarly, my best friend, at least I consider him my best friend, got married this year and it's obvious to anyone even in passing that he's high as a kite. But I've barely seen him since his wedding, and I barely saw him during it either. I was there, but I wasn't really a part of it, but on the periphery observing from a distance. I wanted to be more involved, but couldn't find a way to be. Now, I realise that any newly wed is going to be more concerned with the excitement of a new chapter of their life having started than with spending time with their friends. But I can't help feeling as though gradually he's not going to be around for more than very occasional and brief moments from now on, each time with our friendship having cooled and lost coherency a little more. I don't want it to, but I don't see what I can do. Or know that I should do anything. Wouldn't it be very selfish to impose my problems and anxieties on his happiness? All I know is that I seem to be a common link in what sucks in the lives of those closest to me, or periods of time when things don't seem to be going that well for them. And I don't know why, and it isn't a problem that I'm equipped to analyse and correct. I'm better with machines than people. But machines aren't a replacement for even the limited human interaction I need.

Happiness also isn't money or material possessions, but I've known that for a long time. It hasn't stopped me filling the limited space available to me with all manner of supposed entertainment devices, games, or DVDs. They amuse me for a time, and they can distract me from things, but they don't make me happy.... ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/26966545/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/26966545/ Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:27:05 PDT
]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/26362984/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/26362984/ Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:02:38 PDT
Everything I try to write now seems to be derivative. I cannot write when I am depressed, and so the few times I've actually written anything in the last few years have been as a result of inspiration, where another writer or a film or a piece of music has altered the state of my mood momentarily. I cannot sustain it, and ultimately it means I don't write anything original or unique any more. It's regurgitating and trying to emulate how an already existing work made me feel, and failing to do anything new or to even approach the quality of the original.

My imagination and wit have atrophied. I've grown more and more despondent and bitter overall. I have no confidence in myself or anything I do any more. I feel so old, and so alone. Whatever once made me eccentric, creative, passionate, and darkly funny has either gone or is almost gone. Instead I'm just constantly veering between depressed apathy bordering on nihilism, and frustrated rage.

I have no idea who I am or what I am supposed to do any more. My childhood dreams and expectations have all failed to materialise or be realised. The things I used to be good at and enjoy doing I no longer am any good at and find tedious, and nothing has filled the vacuum left behind. I can't write, I've grown obsolete as a computer engineer after three years inactive and out of work through illness as the last operating system I trained with is soon to have been succeeded and replaced not just once but twice when Windows 7 is released in a few months. Any thoughts of becoming a minor stand-up comedian went out with the realisation that I'm not funny. I've lost my pilot's license because I haven't logged the required flying hours thanks to my health, and I'll never get it back again because it's just too damned expensive and this time I don't have a friend helping me out by letting me fly with him in his plane. As with most of my already few social contacts, we lost touch a long time ago, and I have no idea how to try and get back into touch with him, or explain the length of the absence, or how to deal with the resulting awkwardness.

I accomplished just enough to ensure that I have a CV and titles and enough residual pride that I cannot try and make do with an average, humdrum life. If I were told tomorrow by my doctors that I am well enough to work again, I'd be too over-qualified to get a basic boring job. If I met a woman who could see past my flaws enough to wish to be with me I could not be satisfied, because of who she wouldn't be. I will never have a proper family because I've been forced to realise that my health issues could be passed on and I could never morally justify doing that to a child, taking that chance. And even if that weren't a consideration, I could never inflict life on this Earth on anyone anyway. For too many people the bad outweighs what joy or beauty remains in the world.

I'm above what most people accept as a decent, simple existence, but I'm a failure at accomplishing something close to what I previously planned to do with my life. I'm left somewhere inbetween in limbo, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. I don't know what to do.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25690049/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25690049/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:59:30 PDT
An especially unfortunate effect of the heat is that it makes me even more introspective than usual. I sleep even less than usual, and since I can't do much else either, I invariably wind up spending the time in thought. I've had constant moments of deja vu recently, and a strangely deep-set sensation bordering on almost prescient knowledge of death. It's more ambiguous than simply dying from sunstroke or kidney failure (I'm drinking 2 pints nearly every hour, and I'm still not going to the bathroom - the only pissing I've done lately is from my pores) or any other kind of physical demise. It's a strong feeling of ennui. Perhaps my life is become so dull, unfulfilled, repetitive and meaningless that I genuinely have done the exact same thing at the same time, and thought the same thoughts and felt the same things. My perception of time has always been... unique. But a part of me feels that something is going to change irrevocably. Maybe it is a premonition of actual physical end. I suspect however that it refers to a more subtle state of death; change of how I live on a grand scale. What, given my inactivity, I cannot discern right now. Maybe the heat is just playing tricks on my mind...

For all of the things that go wrong in my life, this has been an especially strange year so far. My sister got pregnant, and subsequently had a miscarriage. My best friend got married, and in the process forced me to realise that some things I took for granted were never really so, as well as meaning that I don't see him very much now, soon to be at all when he moves away to pursue his new married life and start a home not only away from our home town, but away from our home county. Indeed, the opposite end of the country. And finally, I have been rejected once again by a certain lady. I had a feeling that would happen, but as last time, I allowed myself to be optimistic, foolishly so, and opened myself up to be vulnerable. I should be angry about what happened, but I cannot bring myself to be so. Instead I am merely very sad. Perhaps this is where the sensation of death comes from; I have always known that I will die alone. And I have never been so lonely as I am now. I am entirely lacking any kind of social contact, virtual or otherwise. My dissatisfaction with my home situation, and the natural differences in intelligence, taste, and personality leave me even more disconnected and excommunicated from my family than ever. And I have to deal with a love that requires me to not know the close companionship of a single equal with whom I can entrust everything of me. It could be suggested that the latter is self-inflicted, torturing myself needlessly. The object of my affections would almost certainly believe it to be the case that I am being unrealistic, but for the first time in my life I am certain about what I am feeling. I am in love, and far from being unrealistic, I realise it may mean that I can never fall in love again with any other partner. It's just that there is nothing I can do about it. That is not self-pity, or depression, but simply a plain statement of frustrated conviction. If I could change things, I think I probably would. I have rarely felt so pained as I did yesterday when I took a package for her into her college reception for her to receive indirectly, without having to come into contact with me in person. When I tried to describe the circumstances that required me to leave it with them, I felt as though the two women there were judging me as somehow a coward, inadequate, lacking honour or nobility or grace. Perhaps they believed that I had dumped her and was taking the easy way out depositing the package with a third party. I do not think of myself as a particularly good man. I have done many things I am deeply ashamed of, and made many mistakes, and missed many chances through neurosi... ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25309766/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25309766/ Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:19:17 PDT
I can't say much yet, but there are a few absolute details. Firstly, chronology. These stories will be set just after Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The idea is to play around initially during the 3 years between that film and the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, when Kirk's crew on the Enterprise are on their final voyages and Sulu and the Excelsior are in the Beta Quadrant looking for strange gaseous anomalies. I wanted to do it in the later original film series era, but I also wanted to use a newly commissioned Constitution class starship, and with the Enterprise-A being decommissioned at the end of Undiscovered Country and the Excelsior class beginning to enter active service also, it wouldn't make much sense for Starfleet to commission a new Constitution after this time. Whether or not this project of mine extends beyond those three years I have no idea... I do have ideas for two story arcs, but after that, we'll see.

Secondly, I'm not going to have any of the show or film characters or ships show up in my stories. I definitely will not be retconning canon stories or events to shoehorn my original characters in, though one of my characters has a history where he was a nameless redshirt on the Enterprise during the Wrath of Khan. I think I can justify that because his being there has absolutely no effect on events and changes nothing except his own character. I loathe with a deep and abiding passion when fan writers and Star Trek RP players make their characters best friends with Kirk and company, to the point of saving them, and altering events from the shows and the films. It's bullshit, and people need to quit doing it. I will be including references to events from the films, but they'll be apart from what my characters are doing, remote and distant, purely for the sake of showing where I am in relation to the films in timeline, and to include my characters in the same overall setting and universe. It's worth remembering that Kirk and Spock, and the other TOS crew to a lesser extent, were very highly visible, influential figures in the Federation and Starfleet, so to ignore them entirely would be anachronistic. However, I won't have Scotty or Chekov or someone suddenly and very conveniently show up and get involved in what I'm doing with my characters. Hell, even published official Star Trek novelists have a tendency to do it, and it drives me nuts.

Thirdly, I'm going to ignore The Next Generation and anything that was made in the franchise after 1991 and The Undiscovered Country. So all the continuity mistakes and retconning that occurs in Voyager and especially Enterprise and the J.J. Abrams film that fucked Star Trek up and turned it into the barely recognisable crap it is today means absolutely nothing. Doesn't exist as far as this goes. Even the lesser changes that sometimes crept into TNG and Deep Space Nine are going to be utterly ignored, despite my actually liking those two spin-offs. The original series, the animated series, and the original film series are all that I shall be drawing inspiration from. So no Ferengi, no Borg, no Jem'Hadar will magically appear. Klingons will have been first encountered during Kirk's first 5 year mission on Enterprise. Romulans will not have been seen in the century between the Romulan/Federation first contact wars and when Kirk intercepted Mark Lenard's Romulan commander in Balance of Terror, and at the time of these stories they will be making tentative peace negotiations with the Federation prior to their involvement in the Khitomer peace talks in Undiscovered Country. Jonathan Archer and his merry band of muppets never existed. The machine planet that found Voyager VI and enhanced it to create V'Ger was not the fucking Borg homeworld. Essentially, every dumbassed change that was made to modernise Star Trek's past and justify the incompetence and lack of imagination on the part of the writers and producers of the later Trek series and movies will be wiped out in this purer interpretation of the original Star Trek. That's probably very elitist and arrogant of me, but I happen to think... ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25266731/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25266731/ Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:22:49 PDT
I'd just been watching the old films through on DVD this week, and it struck me just how much I care about those characters and that setting. I mean, I always have, and most recently until now this was made evident by my reaction to J.J. Abram's "re-boot". Or perhaps I ought to say Harve Bennett's re-boot, since Abrams took an idea and pitch that was rejected in 1990 in favour of making The Undiscovered Country and dusted it off to make that God-awful travesty that apparently everyone loves judging from the hype and reviews and comments online. I only know two people who apparently agree with me just how terrible the new Star Trek is. But back to the point, the old Star Trek films still make me feel the same way I did when I first saw them. I understand them better now than when I was a child, despite having been an unusually precocious and insightful kid, but the emotional response is more or less the same. I felt the same awe and fascination for V'Ger, the same fear towards the Ceti Eels, the same horror and devastation at Spock's death, the same anger about the destruction of the Enterprise, the same tension when Kirk leaps into the sinking depths of the Bird of Prey and the joy when he succeeds and releases George and Gracie to freedom. The same tension disbelief at the graphic assassination of Gorkon, and the rage when McCoy is accused by Chang of incompetence and sentenced to life on Rura Penthe. And most of all, I felt immensely sad when credits rolled at the end of The Undiscovered Country. It's been over for 18 years and I've known that for as long as I can remember, and I still couldn't believe it was over when that sixth and final film ended in my DVD player. More than anything else, the original Star Trek has always had a special place in my heart. It's one of the few things, maybe the only thing, which I haven't become jaded and cynical and bitter about. I'm cynical about the franchise, after what they did with it with Voyager and Enterprise and the Next Generation films, and most recently that re-boot. But the original series and films don't seem to be a part of all that. Never since has Star Trek had that charm, ingenuous humour and intelligence, and that feeling of comfort and camaraderie and optimism. Even Star Trek V is better than anything that came since... a controversial stance, and one I've only come to after watching that one this week. In the past I was just as critical of it for it's continuity gaffs and poor special effects, and the egotistical way in that Shatner represented himself as Kirk at the expense of everyone else. But ultimately, there is a compelling idea and story there, and its heart is in the right place, even if it could have been done somewhat better under another director perhaps.

Star Trek roleplaying online used to be a big part of my life before my outspoken opinions alienated the people who run those sites and who claim to love Star Trek and its ideas but who really are infinitely more egotistical and petty about how they run them than Shatner ever was in the director's chair. Unfortunately, I threatened a lot of people too stupid to see that simming is supposedly just for fun, and that Star Trek's core tennet has always been the acceptance of different ideas and opinions and cultural beliefs without prejudice.

Well, assuming I don't just let this slide and eventually die like all my past ideas, this will be like that simming, but in long form. A group of original characters on a new ship, whose interactions and relationships are just as important as the adventures they share.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25175198/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/25175198/ Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:12:03 PDT
So who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to have Gordon Brown at the 65th anniversary remembrance ceremony in Normandy yesterday? This is a man who was never elected by the people of Great Britain, and who nobody wants to be prime minister, and who isn't going to just give up and go away without force being applied in some way. There seems to be a massive case of missing the fucking point at work here. This is a prime minister who is the most hated and least respected in British history. In the last week more than half of his own cabinet ministers have resigned, some of them giving fairly angry and vitriolic press releases about his efforts as prime minister, Labour party leader, and even as a man in general. He has led his political party to losing every single local and county council they controlled - Labour have no local authorities under their control following last Thursday's local elections. No doubt Labour will be similarly hammered in the European Parliament elections, since those went to the polls at the same time as the local elections, and further embarrassment and contempt will be forthcoming when the results of that election are made public later today and tomorrow. The leadership of Great Britain is disintegrating everywhere you look. And Gordon is being told to go, by everyone, including those of his own party who aren't mere spineless eunuchs or trying to position themselves to capitalise on the main chance when the one-eyed Scottish fuckwit finally gets pushed. He was booed when he showed up in Normandy yesterday, and heckled during his keynote speech at the ceremony (the BBC commentator actually said that the heckling wasn't as bad as people expected, so it went off pretty smoothly on that basis alone). Several of the veterans attending publicly snubbed him when he tried to shake hands and ingratiate himself to leech off their image as heroes.

Actually, almost everything yesterday surrounding the 65th year remembrance ceremony was a farce, and a slap in the face of everything those proud old men stand for, and stood up for when they fought on those beaches. The midget French Tony Blair, President Sarkozy, stated that the D-Day landings were a remarkable Franco-American achievement against Hitler's tyranny... I'm sorry, but what? More than half of the troops who landed on D-Day were British! And there was a lot of Canadians there too. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure that not very many French soldiers were involved at all. Or rather, not on the Allies side. There were quite a few Vichy French who joined the Germans and welcomed the "conquering oppressors". Funny how the French president could forget about them. Obviously British and Canadian involvement in liberating France was utterly worthless to the French. After centuries of trying to invade France, we finally managed it, and then gave it back to the French. With hindsight, we probably should have kept it and kicked all the ignorant, ungrateful cheese-eating collaborating bastards out. As for the continued myth that America won WWII almost single-handed, without any involvement from the British or anyone else; why do Britain continue to support America's wars of aggression when they think so little of us, and clearly don't believe we're any help anyway? Fuck them, let them go get their poorly trained, overly technologically reliant poorer classes slaughtered in the Middle-East without putting our people in the firing line alongside them, or even in front of them at times. Whenever you see D-Day represented in films or video games or novels, it's nearly always the Americans at Omaha beach that are all you see. Omaha did have the nastiest fighting and the most Allied casualties, sure, but it's worth remembering why. The American generals fucked up. That beach was only taken in the end because a small force of US Rangers were landed there instead of where they should have been sent. And those same generals, with the authority of the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, ordered that their battleships along the French coast shell the American troops to force them to advance up the beaches against fierce German resistance. Real heroic that, being forced to choose the lesser of two evils, being machine-gunned by the Nazis or blown up by your own navy. The same order was given to British Royal Navy battleships to fire on American forces to "encourage" them, but most of them refused to do so.

So. An unelected, unwanted dictator, and the contribution of anyone not... ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24600416/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24600416/ Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:35 PDT
Today my XBox 360 refused to start. I was under the mistaken impression that I was safe because I have the Halo 3 model with the newer CPU core that doesn't cook itself if you believe the hype Microsoft made about having fixed the matter with the hardware revisions. So I didn't immediately think to look, I was sitting back staring at the controller flashing and thinking it shouldn't take this long to start. When I did look, three red lights flashing. I had to spend an hour on the phone to Microsoft, who go out of their way to make you not want to call their customer support. The machine spends 3 minutes right off the bat telling you to go to their websites, of which there are many. Then it asks you to describe your problem, but you have to speak into the phone and pray the machine understands your accent, rather than just push buttons on the phone to select options. The machine didn't understand me on several occasions, despite having a very clear, well enunciated educated English accent. When I did finally convince it that as a real person I should be allowed to speak to another real person, I was put through to a clearly Asian woman who had an even harder time understanding me than the bloody machine did. I had to repeat, spell out phonetically, and repeat spelling out phonetically my email address, my name, my address, my post code, and my console serial number, because she was unable to discern my apparently strange and alien dialect of English, spoken not of mortal man but the hideous apparitions of a demonic dimension populated with ravening, half-sentient beast men. And her final advice? Go to the website.

Eventually I did get the website to accept my report of a broken console, and I was offered free repair and postage despite being out of the standard warranty, because let's face it, they likely get thousands of the damned things back and this is a kind of PR stunt to mollify their legions of angry customers. Now, in the USA, they would send you a special box with all the relevant labels and padding to protect your console in transit and make sure it gets where it's going. Not so in the UK! They EMAIL you a label, which you have to print out yourself, and that's it. You don't get a box or padding, and you don't get a courier to come and treat your console with reverence. You have to package it yourself, and entrust it to Royal Mail, who frankly I have absolutely no enthusiasm for since I regularly get parcels from them that look like they were used to play football in the sorting depot. I think this is probably because in the US, Microsoft are based in Texas and know that they'll get shot at if they treat their customers as fools. In the UK, they're based in Ireland, where the worst that will happen is they'll get a wry look from a withered halfwit crone and a "Ahh, Jaysus, come on now... you're taking the piss now" in an Irish lilt. So naturally they take that as full license to treat their English customers as cunts, even though we actually pay a lot more for the privilege of owning their console than our colonial cousins.

What makes this all the more galling is that I have spent the last year (I've only had this supposedly improved and immune console for a year, yes) celebrating how different Microsoft's gaming department is from their main software business. I really thought that the XBox 360 was a good console with excellent service and support. How wrong I've turned out to be. I've spent a lot of money on this thing... I got the harddrive expansion, the HD cables, a second controller (which I only bought 3 days ago), over 40 retail games, and over 20 XBox Live Arcade games, a wireless adapter, and I pay for an XBox Live Gold subscription that I currently can't use and may as well be burning the money for all the good I'm getting from it. And for all that money, and I paid the full whack for the console too, unaware there would be major price cuts just a month or two later, and my loyalty to the 360 in the face of over-zealous Nintendo and Sony fanboys (who ignore that I own a Wii, DS and Playstation and consider anyone with a 360 the enemy) all I've gotten in return from Microsoft is a reminder that ultimately, their XBox and gaming division is still owned by the evil empire.

I am not fucking happy. This is taking the piss. And if I could, I would be shooting at the people responsible.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24499098/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24499098/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:06:45 PDT
]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24440551/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24440551/ Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:03:57 PDT
And yes, I am aware that it's incongruous to put up a notice about nobody reading what I write where nobody is reading. It's more for form's sake than any real utility.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24204675/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/24204675/ Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:01:50 PDT
All of this means I'm feeling rather better about myself, and have a lot more free time. I've restarted work on an old unfinished book project with a view to seeing it through to the end, and I may also write more than the current one short story a week that I've been posting here. As well as just opening Word and seeing what comes out, I've been thinking about doing a mid-week story where I take an item from the news and use it to come up with something. I always follow the national and international news very closely, due to my interest in politics and anthropology and despite my almost continuous despair over humanity as reported in the media. I have a fondness for satire, and a great respect for writers who use their work to bring people's attention to certain issues that normally they wouldn't bother with. With that in mind, I think a topic story every week would be an interesting project now that I'm starting to write frequently again, and also improving. Boogie Man and Internet Bigots were admittedly poorly written, and not very good, but they were the first I'd done in a long time and I was out of practise. Testing was the first thing I've written in over a year that I was satisfied with, and Green and Pleasant Land I'm pleased with too.

I have no idea if any of the very few people watching me on deviantArt still look in anymore, but as always, I would very much appreciate any comments and honest criticism on anything I post here. Indepth feedback is especially encouraged, as it offers me alternate perspective on what I'm writing, and let's me know when I'm doing something right or badly. And of course, any new readers are very welcome too, though I don't hold out much hope of gaining any.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/23724144/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/23724144/ Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:10:14 PDT
Which means I have limited online access. I knew when I posted the other day that my posting a new story every other day wouldn't last... didn't expect it to turn out like this. I'm still going to try and do once a week though. I'm really serious about getting back into writing regularly this time.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/23679369/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/23679369/ Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:52:53 PDT
]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/21582175/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/21582175/ Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:42:08 PST
Well, you know who you are, and I suggest you leave me alone in future, because I'm unwilling to continue getting a headache because someone is too much of a self-righteous moron to realise that sometimes somebody with an obscure wit and advanced vocabulary isn't insulting you every time you can't understand what they're saying.

Or, to translate it into something that is easily understood, indeed universally recognised for the sake of simplicity; fuck off.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/19285388/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/19285388/ Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:32:41 PDT
]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/16568068/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/16568068/ Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:01:36 PST
You heard it here first ladies and vegetables, being a genius does not necessarily make you smart, or socially capable.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/12854628/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/12854628/ Sat, 05 May 2007 17:03:07 PDT
It's great, on the same level as Spider-Man 2, maybe better. I'm going to need a second viewing before I say for sure. I'm not going to talk about it though, if you want spoilers there are wankers online who specialise in ruining films elsewhere, so go find one of those instead.

Instead, I got to thinking about something, and some of the questions raised have me wondering about how my mind works. Now, when I see a film, I don't just see the film. As with everything else, my mind is working overtime, on more than just one level. I watch the film and I enjoy it or dislike it for what it is in terms of entertainment, but I also note down in detail every single visual or spoken reference to other films or literature or games, or whatever. I note every plothole and continuity error. I memorise the soundtrack, and a good deal of the dialogue. I compare the film to the source material, if it has one, in the case of Spider-Man that being the comics obviously. All of these are totally separate mental processes that run independently of each other at the same time.

With Spider-Man 3, another thought process was running however. It would also apply to the first two films, except that the night before I went to see those for the first time I wasn't kept awake frantically hunting for a real spider. That's what happened the night before I went to see the third one though. And I'm unashamed to say that spiders terrify me. I don't mean that I just don't like them, and I get a bit squeamish in the process of stepping on them. I mean that I have a full blown panic attack even from the smallest ones. Spiders are the only thing that will send me into paroxysms of abject fear. I routinely check rooms for them before going in, and when I'm actually in there I keep on looking around for them too. I have excellent peripheral vision, and I always see them moving. When I go to the toilet I check the toilet for spiders, ever since I read about the ones in Australia that live in the bog and bite people on the arse. They don't even exist in England but I always, always look, no matter how urgent the call of nature. When I get a shower I shake out the towel in case there's one on it (that actually did happen to me once), and I always check my bed too before getting on it (there have been spiders in bed with me on more than one occasion - so for all those people who say that the spider is more scared of you than you are, you know, fuck you, you're full of shit). And when I sleep, which I so rarely do to start with, I always have utterly convincing, vivid nightmares, and a lot of those include spiders.

Spiders are a major source of stress and paranoia for me, even if I haven't actually encountered one, because the prospect that it might happen is always present. And yet... Spider-Man is one of my favourite heroes. I couldn't care less that he's entirely fictional, and could never possibly exist either. It's not that I just enjoy reading Spidey comics or watching the films. I respect the character, and have an emotional attachment to him. Considering that I don't even get emotional feedback when dealing with real people except in rare cases that's something special. The only people I have more of an emotional attachment to are Babet, my grandmothers, and Batman.

How is it possible that I can be so scared of spiders, but feel so strongly about a character who genetically is part spider?

I don't actually kill spiders when I do find them. It would be easier at the time if I could, because the fear is prolonged by trying to hunt them down and remove them intact. I have to will myself to even move. But in the long run it'd be so much harder. It sounds stupid to some people, but I absolutely refuse to kill something just because I'm afraid of it. That's not the spider's fault, and I have no right to murder it on that basis. The few times I have killed one, years ago when I was smaller, still leave me feeling incredibly guilty.

I think the only answer I can think of is that I feel a great deal of respect and admiration for the one thing that above all else consistently destroys my intellect and makes me soak myself in perspiration and urine.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/12429036/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/12429036/ Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:22:45 PDT
I'm not sure how long I will be online for, so I'm using Deviant Art as a means to pass a message to friends who aren't on MSN or YIM, and to save writing all of at least three emails. Because that would be strenuous.

I was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday as an emergency, ironically after telling Babet that very morning I was feeling much better. I have had my appendix and a good-sized chunk of bowel removed by a very posh-looking and sounding blue-eyed surgeon who I am convinced is the only English doctor in the NHS, all of the others apparently being Indian or Russian. Not that I have anything against Indians or Russians (my xenophobia extends only to humanity at large), indeed being somewhat fluent in Russian, which delighted one of the surgical registrars no end. I suspect he doesn't get to talk his own mother tongue that often.

So here I lie, not eating still, drinking very little, with two holes scarring up on my stomach and one on my groin, and peeing blood. And they don't seem to mention that during surgery they inflate you with air to make their lives easier. This is probably because they don't remove it afterwards, and the pain of the trapped wind crushing your lungs, heart and diaphragm is infinitely more agonising than the actual marks left by the operation.

On the bright side I am finally at home in pain, rather than on a ward in pain, even if only temporarily. Unlike my last hastened trip to Treliske there were no available private rooms, and having three other patients staring at you or doing even more unpleasant things where you can see them is not exactly conducive to positive healing thoughts, much less only being able to hear the four more on the other half of the ward behind the flimsy partition bisecting the room. There was one old fellow, thankfully on the opposite side (most of the time anyway) who had a colostomy bag that was prone to leaking. So apart from when he wandered out trailing a hideous bag-supporting contraption behind him, for the door into the ward was sadly right next to my bed, you could smell the most inexplicably foul odour, and sadly gagging a) hurt my wounds and b) is terribly impolite. I realise it wasn't his fault, but still, I have to be honest and say that it is utterly disgusting. If I ever get into that state, I'll hold my breath until I pass first blue and then on to the netherworld, unless my own stench gets me first of course.

The nurses are a very friendly and professional bunch for the most part, but sadly lacking the stereotypical traits alluded to by television. They were almost universally ugly, many pushing forty or fifty if they're a day, and had an irritating tendency to jab needles into the most sore and tender parts of my anatomy at 3 in the morning, and demand that I at least try and eat and drink despite the noxious atmosphere and the all-consuming firestorm in my belly. Actually, that's doing them something of a huge disservice. They're woefully short-staffed (I was moved to the afore-described ward after the one I was originally in was actually decommissioned around me - myself and the nurse who wheelchaired me from it being the last people to leave), run ragged, abused by patients, underpaid, and yet still do a very difficult job to an extremely high standard.

I go back to hospital on Wednesday. This time a different hospital, one much smaller and further away than Treliske, and which is being even more abused by the NHS. In fact, this time I might just be wheelchaired away as the entire hospital closes behind me.

PS - Kat, I was very, very depressed when I spoke to you last time. I can only hope that my ham-fisted attempts to scare you away didn't hurt you so very much as I suspect they did, but knowing you might die (still a possibility) corrupts your world view somewhat. If I ever get through this, I still want to stay in touch.

I also owe Babet an apology for doing the exact opposite with her. I may have downplayed my condition somewhat, and joked around too much. Still, I guess after reading this you know more what's going on. Enjoy your trip to London, and as soon as I'm well enough we're going on that long put-off date. I love you.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/12323796/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/12323796/ Sun, 25 Mar 2007 13:43:41 PDT
I guess the point is... if there is anyone out there who I don't know who actually bothers to look up (accidentally or otherwise) the crap I've written here, don't expect any new stuff for a while to come yet.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11774946/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11774946/ Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:54:19 PST
The first thing that provoked my gall bladder into fits of bilious contempt this evening was a report on the news about how Iran is apparently helping bombers in Iraq fighting British and American troops get hold of sophisticated demolitions materials. Now, most people have by now probably heard of how the U.S. government and the C.I.A. backed Saddam Hussein's rise to power in Iraq, before turning on him in later years and eventually rigging a supposedly "free Iraqi" court in order to have the highly-exposed dictator murdered under the pretence of justice. Now it seems, the U.S. government has found yet another target for potential invasion and conquest, under the banner of the so-called War on Terror. But wait! Who has historically backed Iran, and indeed, supplied almost all of their arms? Britain and The United States of America, that's who. All the years that our governments and media have attacked Iran for its policies and attempts at a nuclear presence in the Middle-East, they've been selling them guns, tanks, aircraft and munitions. I would go so far as to wager that every single fighter jet active in the Iran airforce comes from Britain or the U.S.

If America does go to war with Iran, and that would in all likelihood mean that Britain would wind up tagging along too (much as the weasel-faced kid in the playground who would follow the biggest bully around and lean around them as they shook their fists and extorted money from the other children and make a pathetic echoing statement of intimidation), then American and British troops would find themselves fighting against their own equipment. One or two generations past, perhaps, but still their own equipment. They would be killed with bullets and missiles that had previously belonged to their side, and if the cruel irony of that for those mostly innocent troops isn't apparent to every rational human being, then I am forced to declare the whole of mankind a lost cause, if it already isn't one.

And America and Britain aren't the only ones to be blamed in this. Iran itself, a duplicitous and corrupt nation by all accounts, must really have no regard for its own future by aiding the enemies of their own under-the-counter allies. Helping to blow up soldiers and civilians from the two countries chiefly responsible for maintaining your military and making sure that your tyrannical acts wreaked on other weaker nations remain a muddled and ineffectively resolved mess in the United Nations (hardly a difficult task I suppose, considering that the entire organisation is a spineless, muddled and ineffective politically correct farce) is hardly conducive to long-term survivability. Whilst in keeping with the image branded on the country by Western media, it beggars belief in the level of suicidal recklessness exhibited.

The second thing to rile me today again comes from a T.V. broadcast. Some of you may be aware of motoring review show Top Gear on BBC2. It's pretty much an institution in Britain, despite the shabby way that the BBC has occasionally treated it, and at the least anyone who listens to the news or reads the newspapers in the U.K. knows of co-presenter Richard Hammond's near-fatal accident during shooting of the programme last year. I am a very dear fan of Top Gear, for many years now and more so since it returned in its current format of three friends cocking about in cars and having a generally good time. James May is a man much to my own heart with his old-fashioned English mentality and ethics, and indeed even his dress-sense (or lack thereof) and haircut are frighteningly similar to mine. And Jeremy Clarkson's utter disregard for political correctness in favour of what he personally perceives to be true makes him just about the most objective journalist with significant exposure in the media. I have enormous respect for both of these men, as well as the afore-mentioned "Hamster".

Tonight Top Gear diverted from its traditional format in order to present a special challenge oriented program where the three presenters were given $1000 to buy a car in America capable of undertaking various tasks and surviving a roadtrip through four states from Florida to Louisiana. One of these tasks was rather more extreme than the others, if possible. They each had to decorate one of the other's vehicles with slogans or pictures that would get... ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11712403/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11712403/ Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:09:37 PST
Hopefully the first of many, newly daily stories, although I finally got a date for my next operation yesterday - the 23rd of this month. Oh well.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11657485/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11657485/ Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:23:24 PST
In my defence, I have been in the hospital. And shall continue to go back, due to the fact that the NHS has absolutely no idea what put me there in the first place.

I shall endeavour to start posting stories again tonight, and I will catch up with everyone on MSN, where you may find details on my recent activity.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11239566/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11239566/ Fri, 29 Dec 2006 23:33:20 PST
But if the politicians have their way, we're supposed to be all leaping for joy, a great blow in the name of justice struck against a corrupt dictator. Whilst I was lying on the damp paving slabs gasping for oxygen, Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, was murdered by order of a puppet Iraqi government, and George W. Bush was the one whose hand was lodged firmly up their backsides and controlling the direction in which they jerked. Whoever has their arm up behind Bush we may never find out.

Looking at it objectively, I can't help thinking that justice doesn't have anything to do with it. It sickens me no end, but justice has joined religion and national security in the pantheon of names that used to mean something right and noble, but have long since been subverted to disguise political corruption or cowardice, and the greed and contempt held by governments for the people who supposedly elected them. It's part and parcel of a wider reaching disease, also instituted by politicians, and the middle-classed know-nothing busybodies who prop them up through hot air and infusions of cash (apparently in return for honours, and the passing of absurd laws that ignore the basic human rights of everyone else).

This morning, only a few hours after Saddam's execution was made public (though it seems Dubya and probably Tony Blair knew in advance), the latest Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom had this statement for the press:

"I welcome the fact [Saddam] has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people.

The British government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else. We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime.

We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation."

Of course! Naturally, the British government supports the rights of Iraq as a sovereign nation. Now that we've already invaded alongside the Americans and put in place an Iraqi government that will do as it is told, at least for the moment. In fact, I strongly suspect that her statement is another veiled hint at how even the British government is receiving its marching orders from the American government. They welcome Saddam's trial and conviction, but not the resulting sentence, yet they won't interfere. I wonder, if Bush wasn't so overjoyed with the entire affair, but rather also had a problem with the sentence and execution, would we not then be trying to stop it?

Even after Saddam was taken prisoner by the invading troops, and the new puppet government installed (and it's worth remembering that Saddam himself only got into power via American backing, specifically that of the CIA, so how long until we call Jalal Talabani a dictator when he stops doing what we tell him?) so-called "rebels" and "terrorists" have been fighting occupation forces and ensuring that Iraq is now much more dangerous than when Saddam was in power. More people have been killed by British and American military forces in that invasion and subsequent "police action" than during Saddam's entire regime.

Is that going to change now that he's dead? Hardly, I think it's only going to get worse. Because before he was a diminished figure, a frail old man in a cell being prodded by military doctors on international television, stripped of his dignity and dictatorial pretensions. Now though... he's a martyr. Now that he's already dead, he can no longer be shown to be diminished, but he can be remembered for being more than what he was. A symbol to be used in the name of some bloody war of vengeance.

This country, and America, had no right going into Iraq. And now, well, that entire region is even more royally fucked up than it ever would have been otherwise.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11226031/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11226031/ Thu, 28 Dec 2006 18:21:03 PST
I've mostly recovered now, at least, to the point of being useful, though some of the scars of the holiday season to my withering supplies of hope, peace and goodwill to all men may never heal. So, expect a new story later tonight, and a continuance of the original idea from thereon.

Christmas started out innocuously enough, with a pile of gifts, as is common in the secular celebration of the season. Very quickly I realised that my pile was about a fifth the size of everyone else's. Fair enough, sometimes you get less because you've got something more expensive and larger than everyone else's somewhere else. But this wasn't entirely the case. People in my family are just stopping sending me gifts, based entirely on the fatuous system of age, whereby I am now deemed to be too old. Considering I've felt middle-aged since I was about ten years of age, that doesn't seem fair to me.

What I did get was pretty good. Mostly because I bought most of it myself. My grandparents and various other familial contacts prefer to send money in advance, thus ensuring I get precisely what I want, and also craftily truncating the amount of time they have to spend shopping themselves. However, my mother, in her insanity seems to have a nasty habit of secreting away what I buy, wrapping it up, then presenting it under the tree on Christmas morning, like some kind of anticlimactic slap to the face as far as the joy of opening surprise gifts goes. Better yet, the hypocrisy of the process extends to her LEAVING THE FUCKING PRICE TAGS ON.

On the other hand, I did get a new mountain bike I hadn't been forced to get for myself. That was pretty good.

As usual, some cheap bastard with no idea about what to get you and a book of clichés managed to give me socks and a can of aerosol deodorant. The socks are fine, if sapping of Christmas spirit, but the other item, it is well known that I cannot actually use. Firstly, it's insulting, you may as well go up to the person you're giving it to and call them a stinky git, and secondly, I have extremely sensitive skin and any deodorants or perfumes or aftershaves set off a rapid chain reaction of itching rashes that encompasses my entire body. I have a collection of these cans that symbolise my resolve not to rig them to explode and return them. This collection grows each year, as that resolve lessens.

Following this, tally ho! Away we go to a much smaller house, that of my grandparents, for Christmas dinner. This is something of a tradition too. We all pile down there and gorge ourselves silly, then everyone else stays there and I go home alone in the mid-afternoon, desperate to escape my family. This year, not so.

The first thing to irritate me is that my sister and mother have decided that this year they want to stay with me. Which is also part of the second problem, in that they insist I remain hours longer than I can normally stand in order to escort them to my home, warding off potential "weirdos" and rapists that might magically appear on Christmas evening in a community composed entirely of the less than mentally gifted yet harmless.

So, I don't get home until the early hours of the morning, annoyed, exhausted, and thoroughly pissed off, towing behind me a pair of inebriated blimps. Better still, my sister decides that having ensured I fulfil my obligations as protector, she wants to wander off and take a different, longer route out of Helston to my house. My mother continues on the original route, so they split up, and further enrage me. Clearly, safety isn't a priority consideration after all. The exact same chain of events happens on Boxing Day, and again on the 27th.

Three days I'm stuck far longer than usual in my grandparents, surrounded by a family that drive me insane. It's Christmas, and that means everyone is arguing about the most trivial, petty, stupid fucking bollocks that I cannot honestly even remember what the hell it was. It gives me a headache, and makes me constantly have the urge to scream at them until my throat bleeds and my epiglottis bursts, provided they just shut the fuck up.

Then there is their constant desire to see that you're constantly stuffing your face with food, or trying to drown yourself in extravagant quantities of alcohol. I'll tell one I'm fine, and another will ask, and when everyone has asked, they'll start around again at the beginning.

My young cousins, seven, four and two years old respectively, are present, so I have one of them, the four year old, constantly hitting me, shouting swear words, and saying I smell. I've had two showers a day, every day that I'm th... ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11131275/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11131275/ Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:49:26 PST
I may embellish it a little bit, but I'll point those bits out in the deviation description. Somehow, I doubt I'll need to add a whole lot to it.

If nothing else, I'm yet again reminded of how I hate humans in general, and of why I only spend my time on certain individuals who rise above the curve.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11111056/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11111056/ Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:30:15 PST
I've challenged myself (as a paranoid schizophrenic that's very easy to do, just by getting one of the voices in my head to attack the others) to try and write something new on here every night, though with no set time, and no real penalty for having failed to do so.

Another aspect is that I want to stretch the limits of my ability in terms of imagination, genre, and composition. Up to this point, except where forced by unbending academic institutions, I've only ever written fantasy and science-fiction, and more often than not heavily laced with my personal brand of sarcasm and irony. I expect that's all you'll see here for the first few stories, but I plan on trying new things.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11007843/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/11007843/ Sat, 09 Dec 2006 15:51:16 PST
In a way, that's kind of happened to me this last week. I've had certain feelings towards Babet that I dismissed as teenaged lust before now, but in recent weeks I've become more and more convinced that I was falling in love with her. And eventually I got my courage up enough to tell her how I felt, since we're supposed to be going to the big fantasy convention in Holland together next year.

I thought she'd be scared off, or that it might affect our friendship. Afterall, I am pretty weird and eccentric. But instead we've been talking all the more since, and she has said that if distance weren't an issue (her in The Netherlands, me in the UK), she'd go out with me. She also said nobody had really asked her out before, but I think she's overly modest, considering just how funny, caring, intelligent, and frankly beautiful she is.

Who knows... I can't stop thinking about her. I'm going to Holland next year to spend some time with her, and maybe she'll be coming here for a visit too. If I had to move there to make it work, I would, even though I love Cornwall and said I'd never leave. I turned down a job at IBM which would have meant going to Germany, but if Babet wanted me to, I wouldn't turn her down.

]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/9714863/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/9714863/ Sun, 13 Aug 2006 15:29:45 PDT
I'm very excited. Babet, my friend who I originally asked to do the comic but couldn't, has decided to give it a trial run to see how things work. Babet is an extraordinary artist, and she's got the intelligence and the sense of humour to pull off something... well, it's hard to describe. Her artwork just has an incredibly human feeling and wit about it. I'm very happy that she is working with me on this again.

Babet is a long time devArt user, though her current account isn't as old as her previous one. I don't know if her old account is still around, and it's a shame if she did delete all that work, but her current user is Koekje. Yes, she's one of the two people who bothered to watch me, in case I did something. It's always nice to have a friend in the audience.

Who knows? Maybe if this comic thing takes off, more people will want to see this page of mine and I'll start using it. Though I suspect they'd be more interested in seeing hers. ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/9404387/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/9404387/ Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:50:48 PDT
The whole idea behind this devArt account wasn't actually for me to exhibit work, I just thought I needed one to cruise the artists on the site, and it actually has been very useful in following certain favourites.

You see, I've been looking for an artist to illustrate a regular webcomic that I would write. It's a fantasy epic/ironic look at life. At least, that's the idea. But I cannot draw to save my life, I'm a writer. My art teacher used to hate me except for that one module on Picasso and cubism, which I don't see as much of a compliment. I've had this idea for a very long time, and at one point I had hoped that an old friend would draw it, but she had to pull out because of the commitment involved and her busy life.

There have been a few artists on devArt I admire a great deal, from Mattahan to Yumedust, and yet I've never had the confidence to ask any of them if they might be interested. To be fair, I don't have a great deal to tempt someone into putting their time and work into this fantasy project of mine.

I realise that this account of mine probably garners no attention whatsoever except from my two friends who thought I might actually use it for something creative and constructive, but if you're an artist, and if you're interested in learning more about the storyline and characters with a mind to maybe committing to at least a trial period illustrating it, please contact me. ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/9146758/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/9146758/ Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:26:55 PDT
Fuck bugger cunt frig knob bollocks cock bastard titties shit crap twat!

Nope, not obscene enough. I'll have to trot out the big guns. The one word nobody dares use in public.














Poop! ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/8336376/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/8336376/ Sat, 01 Apr 2006 17:27:36 PST
Free personality analysis from ColorQuiz.com.
Generated on Sat Apr 1 17:27:57 2006.

Your Existing Situation

Authoritative or in a position of authority, but liable to feel that further progress is rendered problematical by existing difficulties. Perseveres despite opposition.

Your Stress Sources

Delights in the tasteful, the gracious, and the sensitive, but maintains his attitude of critical appraisal and refuses to be swept off his feet unless genuineness and integrity can be absolutely vouched for. Therefore keeps a strict and watchful control on his emotional relationships as he must know exactly where he stands. Demands complete sincerity as a protection against his own tendency to be too trusting.

Your Restrained Characteristics

Has high emotional demands and is willing to involve himself in a close relationship, but not with any great depth of feeling.

Able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity.


Your Desired Objective

Tries to escape from his problems, difficulties, and tensions by abrupt, headstrong, and ill-considered decisions. Desperately seeking a way to escape, and there is danger of reckless behavior to the point of self-destruction.

Your Actual Problem

His natural ability to examine everything with critical discrimination has been distorted into an attitude of harsh disapproval, which opposes and denigrates without regard to the real facts. ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/8014626/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/8014626/ Mon, 27 Feb 2006 03:54:58 PST
After that robbery last week and the guns and the £40m in cash, life seems a bit slow now.

Luckily, I have completely thrown off the police by being in a completely diffent part of the country at the time. This is why I am truly a genius.

Anyhoo, I have a project coming up, a webcomic I've been wanting to do for a long time. I've finally got a potential artist in Baba (Koekje), and I'm just waiting for her to get well and design some character sketches.

I'm also writing a short story about her elephant bird picture, so maybe something may actually show up here before long after all. ]]> ~thetruewibbler http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/7945946/ http://thetruewibbler.deviantart.com/journal/7945946/ Sun, 19 Feb 2006 18:17:56 PST
I have come to several conclusions. Firstly, you are all fucking insane. Seriously, the number of people who seem to either love or hate me. I don't really deserve either. So stop making me seem so damned important, and go get your own lives, stop looking up to me as though I'm so great and high above you.

Secondly, I need something I am really really crap at. I'm also going to need to enjoy it, which is the hard part, as I tend to excel at things if I put even an iota of energy into them. But I need something completely enthralling, and that I am so blatantly bad at. Because I need to know that there is more out there for me to do. ]]> ~thetruewibbler