Waiting For Garfield

Garfield Minus Garfield is a tumble blog made up solely of of Garfield comic strips with the Garfield character removed from every frame. The result is a portrait of a sad, lonely Jon Arbuckle and a "comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life."


OK, maybe reading existential commentary into a modified comic strip is overstating it a bit, but after looking a few of these in a row, it does start to take its toll.


I think it's summed up best by a conversation I had with my friend Muriel:

sharelle says:
http: //garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
muriel says:
oh sweet
i hate garfield
sharelle says:
yeah me too
muriel says:
this is fun
sharelle says:
yeah
muriel says:
yeah
sweet
sharelle says:
god this is depressing
muriel says:
yeah
it always was
not like garfield makes it better
god that comic sucks

One For The Bookmarks

I've stumbled on to the webcomic xkcd many times before and have always had a laugh but for some reason never thought to read it regularly. I recently landed there again having followed a link from Kara's blog and this time I took the time to poke around (and by "poke around" I mean repeatedly clicking the "random" button). And the dude is funny...as many people have already discovered. "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language," xkcd is created by Randall Muroe, former roboticist for NASA. He now writes xkcd full time supporting himself on the sales of his webcomic merchandise on his online store. Man this guy is seriously multi-talented. Also check out the Life Imitates xkcd section in the Wikipedia entry for a list of instances where people have actually carried out some of Munroe's comics in real life. He's that good.





Via Just Happy to be Here.

I Love You, Whaleboy

So a couple of days ago I was walking on Bloor St. in the Annex past what used to be Second Spin (RIP) and what is now, to my pleasant surprise, The Labyrinth, a great little shop chock full of graphic novels, anime, illustration books, artist sketch books and tons of other great stuff.


I was lucky enough to chat with Jessica - she and her husband have been specializing in this business for over 19 years traveling to schools and trade shows until they finally opened their first storefront a few months ago. Check out their blog for lots of updates on upcoming releases and special events. The store is super fun to browse through and they take special pride in showcasing the work of local (Toronto) artists. I myself picked up this fantastic print of Whaleboy by Toronto artist Bobby Chiu (which is actually Bobby's take on a character by LA artist Patrick Morgan).


Isn't he cute? I just could resist his little face! Next I might go back for some work by Deanna Marsigliese:


So if you're in the neighborhood be sure to drop by and say hello to Jessica (and her cute little baby).

Wackipedia

It seems that Wikipedia has been taking some harsh criticism in the last little while with respect to its accuracy and its editing policies. This bad press has been going on for some time now but lately (ie: today), I've come across a butt load of references (ie: three) to how easy it is for anyone to pass anything they want as fact. The recent criticism seems to have started with this Op-Ed piece by John Seigenthaler that appeared in USA Today where he's says that the entry for his name in Wikipedia mentions that he may have, you know, offed both John and Bobby Kennedy. And apparently he wasn't happy about that. Stephen Colbert also got in on the action in a recent episode of The Colbert Report where he discussed what he calls Wikiality: "the representation of truth on Wikipedia that is determined by consensus rather than fact." Colbert urged viewers to edit the Wikipedia entry on elephants to say that their population had tripled in the last six months - which of course a whole bunch of people did thus causing the article to be locked "because of recent vandalism or other disruption."


And lastly, the people over at Penny Arcade threw in their two cents with this comic. By the power of Greyskull! (click picture for biggerness)

Colbert info via GeekLikeMe and thanks to Adam (via Sasha) for the Penny Arcade comic.

Cute!...Not!

Meghan Murphy's webcomic Kawaii Not is pretty to look at and fun to read. Mostly cause there aren't too many words. Kind of like my blog. Kawaii means "cute" in Japanese and Not means "not" in English. Get it?


Via The In-Sect.