How to Develop a Twitch

Step 1: Run an older version of Photoshop on Windows 7.

Step 2: Compulsively save your work after every action for fear of the dreaded "Illegal action/Not enough RAM/You just lost half an hour's work!" pop-up.

*headdesk*

It's not a big enough problem that I'm going to shell out hundreds of dollars for a newer version of Photoshop. For one thing, I actually really like the version I have. But it's random spazzing at inopportune moments? Yeah, that I could do without, especially when I have to restart my computer every time it happens.

Needless to say, there's a reason this week's page is going slower than I'd hoped. However, it WILL get done! *strikes a pose of DETERMINATION!*

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Behind Again

Man. Take a creature of habit out of its habitat for a few days, and watch its little life spiiiiiiral out of control. It doesn't help that Wimbledon's currently going on - whenever one of the tennis majors hit the screen, Kit's productivity takes a dive. The worst one is by far the Australian Open, when anyone in the States who wants to watch live tennis needs to stay up to greet the morning light. With Wimbledon, I just end up staying up late, watching Wimbledon Primetime on The Tennis Channel (yes, I am that much of a dork, and yes, I did watch the epic Isner/Mahut match).

In any case, I have yet to reign in my wildly fluctuating sense of the temporal, so that doesn't help. I suspect I'm in the middle of another CBP, which always puts a dent in my personal timetable. However, I am determined to have a comic page done this week. At the moment, it looks like it'll go up sometime tomorrow evening at the earliest, but at least it's started!

*listens to the slow, sarcastic clapping of a single person*

... Yeah. I'll just get back to work now. :D;;

This Week in Movies

I have watched an inordinate amount of movies in the past week. Some good, some bad, some really bad. Some, I'll even watch again. Here's the run-down of what I've watched recently.

• Children of the Corn - My sister-in-law has been broadening my horizons by introducing me to all sorts of bad 80s horror, including a jaunt with He Who Walks Behind the Rows. While I'm fairly sure Malachi's actor did indeed grow up to be a secret sociopath and/or the older brother in The Adventures of Pete and Pete, I think the most terrifying part of the movie was the idea of Bert and whatsername riding around with a dead kid shoved in their trunk for hours.


• Dune, circa 1984 - Dune is one of the classic books of sci-fi/fantasy. It is the fantastic journey of a young man from the pampered son of a duke to the religious leader of insurgents with a death grip on the throat of civilization. It's got political intrigue, deep characters, strong leading ladies, action, adventure, mysticism...
  
  The movie? Not so much.
  
  Sure, the effects and costumes were great for the early 80s, but that doesn't excuse their butchering of the plot and massacring of the characters, especially the women (What's that? You mean Chani actually spends time outside of Paul's bedchamber in the book? Nooooo...). Toss out the plot, add in rampant internal monologues, some epic rock power ballads, hip-thrust-activated blasters, random face-bleeding, and Sting, and you've got... something completely and utterly headdesk-worthy. Only watch it if you and your friends love to MST3K things. Otherwise, skip it and watch the SciFi Miniseries.. Or, better yet, read the book.


• The Spirit - ahaha, where to start... What can I say about a superhero who has an Oedipal complex for his city and gets stuck in a toilet seat in his big introductory fight? This is one of those movies made to be bad, but more often than not, it was the movie equivalent of nails down a chalkboard bad. This is what happens when you've got a mentally unstable vigilante whose only power is that he can't die. Too bad that whole transformation process didn't add a few IQ points, huh?
  
  Of course, I do have to give it credit for one thing: "THIS IS FOR MUFFIN!!!"
  
  You go, Spirit. You go.


• The Seamstress - What happens when you've got a serial killer of children, a desperate mob, and a psychic school teacher who keeps leading people to the bodies? Well, for starters, one dead school teacher and her unlucky husband. They set about haunting the island until a group of college grads show up 20 years later, all in support of their friend's search for her obsessive mentally ill father, and just lookit that body count rise! Lesson here: True friends stick together. Idiotic friends get themselves killed by wandering off on their own.
  
  Not a terrible movie, but not something I'll feel the need to sit through again.


• Boogeyman - Now, this is my kind of horror. Low gore, an unreliable main character, and plenty of playing with your head. Barry Watson gives a great performance as a guy who, after years of therapy, has finally been convinced that he's got no reason to be afraid of closets. Then, his mother's death forces him to go back to his childhood home... and see if those therapists were right.
  
  If you want the full effect, watch this one at night, when you're all alone in the house. Or maybe I'm just an easy target for what's just out of sight in the dark...


• Boogeyman II - Again with the "kid witnesses traumatic death grows up" theme, although this particular kid ends up in a mental hospital, in group therapy with agoraphobics, cutters, germophobes, and whatnot to try to work through her boogeyman issues. Cue the Boogeyman killing them off one by one.
  
  ... Yeah. This one lost all the psychological horror and tried to replace it with gorn. Did I really need to see maggot infestation and reverse lipo? No, no I did not. Do yourself a favor and just stick with the original.


• The Phantom - Hello, update! The Walker family line has a new addition in this two-part "movie event" from SyFy. This one was actually pretty enjoyable, and I do have a soft spot for parkour chase scenes. They probably should have rethought their casting, however, when the 5'9" hero's sidekick(ish) person is a 5'10" woman... in 3" heels. Kiiiinda makes him a little less intimidating when they stand side by side. Overall, a pretty good flick, and the ending leaves it open for sequels or even a series... and yeah, I'd definitely check them out.
  
  And yes, I was ecstatic that our hero refused the wear the purple unitard. There are some traditions that just need to be left in the past.

So, there you have it: what I've been watching in the past week. Now, on to Wimbledon!

Back from Vacation!

Yep, just got back from a trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We hit Mackinaw (City, not the island this time around), St. Ignace, Bay Mills, and Tahquamenon Falls (yeah, I'll give you a few minutes to figure out how to pronounce that one). Weather wasn't spectacular - I think the highest we hit was 65F, and at one point ended up buying a new hoodie just to ward off the cold while shopping.

Some trips are just destined to have problems. We figured that was the way this trip was heading when my mother dumped a hummingbird feeder full of sugar water all over herself before we even left the house. The trip went on to include: more roadkill deer than I've ever seen in my life, salmonella-licious chicken and a saladless salad bar at the casino restaurant, a screw-up at the hotel regarding the reservations, and everybody's favorite combination of a dead car battery and no cell reception.

But there was a lot of great things about the trip. For one thing, I made enough off the complementary tokens at the casino to cover my shopping spree at Mackinaw Crossings and my favorite store ever. For another, the falls were beautiful and I got a ton of great photos, which will be appearing in future posts once I downsize them from GIGANTIC. I'll probably adapt a few of them for my Zazzle shop and maybe in an "Other Things to See" segment on my Mackinac Island lens.

I'll talk more about the trip and what absolutely made my day next time. :D

Things That Make Me Go "Hee... ^_^"

It happens every now and then - say, slightly more often than once in a blue moon: I'll be surfing along through deviantArt, just checking out whatever catches my interest, and all of a sudden I'll come across something Strawberry Syrup-related. An icon, maybe - not TOO terribly surprising, since I've got a pre-made selection of SS Icons over in the Fun Stuff section of the site (although that reminds me... I need to get some of those up for the Dwayne fans out there). Always makes my day.

Well, yesterday, I came across two. And not just icon users. They've also got Strawberry Syrup plugs in their sigs. One's even got a link.

... Yeah. I'm still downright giddy. :D

Maybe it's different for webcomickers with bigger audiences and it's more commonplace to stumble across things. I don't know. But at last report, Strawberry Syrup's got about 90 steady visitors, so when I come across something related to the comic, it definitely still gets an "omgSQUEEEE!" reaction out of me.

Personally, I hope I never lose that reaction. I do, however, have to work not to exhibit my total dorkness by doing something like glomping them through their comment pages. ^^;; Yeah, cuz that wouldn't completely shatter any illusion of cool I've got going.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to hunt down Koni, show her, and resume my Happy Dance of Squee.

Creative Collaborator? Wha?

Some people have wondered what, exactly, my partner for Strawberry Syrup does, considering I do the writing, the drawing, and the shading... Well, I assure you, she has a very important job: she's my creative collaborator.

Sounds like one of those fancy made-up terms, right? I suppose I could also call her my muse, but I've already got one of those, and it can get huffy about other people treading on its territory, so "creative collaborator" it is! When I get stuck on something, I turn to my dear creative collaborator and talk it through. We bounce ideas back and forth, expand on some and discard others, until not only do I know how to get past the current snag, but what is going to happen for the next two chapters.

That's what happened last week. After a convo with my CC, not only did I get through a minor snag, but the next few pages are thumbnailed and I am really looking forward to something coming up in the future (trust me, after three years of working on something, occasionally you need someone to rekindle that joy of creation and all).

Besides, that's the way the entire story of Strawberry Syrup started: a series of late night conversations between the two of us about why there are no half-vampires on the VAMPIRES' side. Ferdy just done raised his son right, y'all!

Granted, who knows what would have happened if Josie had done the raising... I shudder to think of it. Oo;