Windmill, windmill
A bunch of my all-time favourite artists and bands are releasing new CDs in the next couple of months. I already mentioned how much I like the new Reel Big Fish album that arrives next Tuesday, but it's just the tip of the iceburg. The new Ben Folds CD doesn't arrive until the end of April, but I have heard it and it is outstanding.
I haven't heard much of the new Gorillaz disc arriving in May, but I am a little concerned that it's not being produced by Dan the Automator. With the exception of the vocals, he basically was the entire band on the first Gorillaz album. And if you've heard that album, or Deltron 3000, or Handsome Boy Modelling School, you know that Dan is one of the most talented and innovative hip hop producers around. Hopefully the new producer -- the undeniably gifted Danger Mouse -- can do something different in style but equal in quality. I do like the new single: "Feel Good Inc." You can catch a streaming version of both the song and the killer Hewlett-directed music video over at the official Gorillaz fansite.
Once again, there are humans in the #samandfuzzy IRC channel over at CADNet. I still haven't stopped in myself... after a week or so of artist's block, I'm riding a newfound wave of creativity and happily drawing comics like a madman. Aspiring webcartoonists, this is why it is a good idea to work with a buffer. We all fall behind sometimes, but as long as you are far enough ahead to keep updating in the meantime, no one will ever need to know that you couldn't think of anything to draw for an entire week.
Er, unless you tell them. Oops.
Sam Logan
Played a fine guitar, and some dirty basketball
Well, lots of readers have joined me in their confusion, but no one seems to have an answer to the mystery of Dell's unintelligible ad copy. I'm feeling a little mixed about that. On the one hand, I'm relieved to know that the problem was not on my end, and that my ability to read and understand English sentences is not horribly impaired. But on the other hand, I'm frightened that our society is lurching ever closer towards a grammatic wasteland where communication will consist largely of grunting and marketing buzzwords. Fortunately, these two conflicting feelings have averaged out into a kind of casual apathy. Is that a bad thing? Who cares! What's on television? I'll watch whatever.
Enjoy the long weekend! Hopefully I will be using it to get caught up on some long ignored site business, such as replying to emails, finishing up the "Can't Dance" tshirt and updating a couple of long-neglected sections of the Sam and Fuzzy website. Cheers!
Sam Logan
A party of polaroid friends
I recieved a perturbing piece of junkmail from Dell today. Normally I toss the stuff reflexively, but this time my eye was drawn to the baffling phrase emblazened on its front cover in large, bold letters:
"Get what you want without spending what you don't."
It almost slips by the first time. We are all sufficiently familiar with marketing schlock to know instinctively what they must be getting at. But this time, in the back of your head, you know something is not quite right. And so you read it again, and again, and again, but the more you look at it the more you realize there is something amazingly wrong with that sentence. No matter how hard you try, once you start breaking the structure down your brain just can't make that sentence mean what it was probably intended to mean. You want to add words to the end, but you can't... that would be cheating!
What exactly does the phrase mean? Let's be charitable and say that it does mean SOMETHING. As far as I can tell, Dell exists in some parallel universe where things you don't want are exchanged as currency in a sort of barter system. But you will not have to spend your precious unwanted items in order to buy a Dell. No, they just take money. How convinient! Thanks, Dell!
Andrew from CADNET wanted me to remind you all about the #samandfuzzy IRC chat channel! Once upon a time we had a reasonably active chat room, and after a while I stopped popping in. Now, apparently everyone has done the same. Whoops!
Sam Logan
