The colors! The colors!

Okay, I've altered the colors on my blog because I have received a few complaints from people who were having trouble reading light-colored text on a dark background. I may continue fiddling with things over the next couple of days.

Enjoy.

-M.

Update...

Nick Provenzo over at Rule of Reason  has published another update to the uproar over his abortion post. He has published several of the more venomous and ridiculous messages he received from the so-called "pro-life" nutjobs. Some of them are hilariously asinine, others are eerily disgusting.

Go check it out for a good laugh and a creeped-out shiver. 

"Our stigmata will stagnate and we will shake"--

Matt 

The greatest show unearthed!

Okay, I’ve been absent for a bit. Fall semester at university isn’t really kicking my ass, but it is time consuming. And, and the hurricanes. Half the city doesn’t have or is just now getting back power. I have a few things lined up, both for here and the YouTube account, but right now, I’d like to introduce a new feature here at Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Actually, this is just an excuse to introduce something that I can use as filler whenever I get too distracted to post as frequently as I would like.

So, every now and then I’ll post a strip from a little comic I’ve been working on off-and-on for a few months. It’s nothing particularly mind-blowing. Just something I do occasionally to pass the time, when I don’t feel like writing and when I don’t really have the alacrity to retain anything I read.

The comic is called “The Horrors of Babylon”. It used to be called “The World Will Be Poorer without You”, after a line in one of my short stories. But that name just didn’t fit the comic. So, I played with a few names in my head and eventually changed it. And if I think of a better one, I’ll change it again.

To describe it as succinctly as I can: This is the kind of comic I would find funny. Topics include philosophy, science, economics, history, geek culture, b-movie horror film culture (e.g., Bob Wilkins, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Addams Family, Vincent Price, etc.), camp and kitsch (usually on the darker end of the spectrum), some politics and a few other things. It’s certainly not for everyone. But, if you enjoy a good Bob Wilkins, Kierkegaard or cryptography reference, this is for you.

The three recurring characters are Tzim Tzum, Ms. Penny Dreadful and Autumn Mitternacht. I am an okay artist, if I take my time. But I don’t put an incredible amount of work into these things. They exist largely for the jokes and references. They’re a boredom project.

The first on is called “Of Bullshit-ology”. Let’s see if you can guess what that is a reference to. Enjoy.

(You may have to click on it to see a bigger version. Flickr doesn't seem to have anything between "too small to read" and "too big to fit in the post".)

Provenzo on abortion; religionists on how to embarrass yourself publicly

Nick Provenzo over at Rule of Reason posted a piece about Palin’s Down’s Syndrome child and the ethics of abortion. It’s a good piece (except for one possibly misleading part that someone outside of an Objectivist context might misconstrue, but which Nick later clarified) so go read it.

What I’d really like to draw attention to for anyone who has yet to see it, is the quality of comments over at Rule of Reason. It’s goddamn embarrassing. Sometimes, it’s hard to think of some people as fellow human beings. The raving lunacy with which the conservative readers attacked Nick (thanks to links from HotAir, LifeNews and LewRockwell.com, among others) is astonishing. He gets called a moron, a eugenicist and “a sick wacko” among other horrible things. He was even compared to “white supremacists, nazis and other groups hellbent on genetic cleansing.”

In my experience, this sort of inanity and frothy-mouthed, unbalanced hysteria is reserved for when someone tells the left to go take their social justice, socialized medicine or environmentalist nonsense and shove it. Take a lesson from this, kids: it doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, left or right, when you reject reason, you are reduced to the kind of ravings that would embarrass a mental patient.

This was directed at Diana Hsieh in response to one of her comments: “I wish i had an egg to smack on your head”. Charming.

Take a good look. This is what religion has wrought.

From the migraine fields—

Matt

Mother Nature sucks...

Okay, the blog is not dead (is there even anyone out there to check the pulse?). With the fall semester at university under way and hurricanes Gustav and Ike crashing my party, I have been a tad neglectful. But fret not, things are a-brewin' and I will be resuming regular posting within the week. Cheers.

"I liked you better when you had hope."
"No, you didn't."

-Matt