Looks like I made it

I go to the cottage for four days, and look what happens. My hit counter made it to 1000! Huzzah! I am the new Webmaster Grand Champion*. I guess this deserves some kind of celebratory something. Maybe I’ll learn Flash and make an animation by tomorrow. Nah, too much trying invoved with that. Instead, I’ll just whip up some kind of article or something. Actually, that shouldn’t be too hard… I have just recently acquired some great material…

Anywho, my birthday is in about ten days. Buy me this. Seriously. I’ll be getting a scanner in no less than that amount of time, so I’ll be able to add tons and tons of my “artwork” to the site for all to see and critique. I drew a few “comic strips” this weekend that I really like, so you can expect to see those up right as soon as I get that scanner. Those, and a whole art book full of crap that contains a lot of drawings and sketches, even some from years ago.

Now why am I getting all excitied about being able to scan up my art book? Well for one, I love to draw. And when I draw something that I like, I want people to see it. Drawing is my single greatest passion. I may love to play video games and writing for this site, but I love drawing even more than those. I’m very much an artist, and I guess subconsciously I started this site mainly to show off my work. And rant. I love to rant too. Not necessarily angry rants like most people do, but just ramble on about stuff that nobody would really care to hear otherwise, like this. Putting my ideas into words or pictures and putting them up for everyone to see. I really wish I could put those doodles I did this weekend up now. They’re not too original or funny but I like them. It’s probably because they mainly feature my oddball personality.

Getting back to things I can do now, I’ll have a new article up sometime tomorrow. I promise. It will be done, come sleep or Mario Sunshine. I’ve been playing that a lot lately, and after five whole days sans-Cube, I’m need a lot of CC’s of Nintendo goodness. I predict it’ll be up either just before noon or around 5-ish. There’s no way I can tell for sure, but I’m starting to think this paragraph is getting to be more procrastination than explaination. So it’s off with me for now. I’ll catch you alls on the flip side.

*Ryan is in no way the Webmaster Grand Champion

A call to drivers and rockers

On a happy note, new article! But that’s not all that I have to go on about today. Plenty of whining, good news and bad news will now ensue.

Nintendo Fusion Tour? Damn, I need to go! Featuring Story of the Year, Lost Prophets and My Chemical Romance? Damn I need to go! Three other decent bands? Oh why can’t I go? Only the closest they’re going to get to me is Minneapolis and Toronto… My birthday is soon and tickets are 20 bucks. Somebody take me! OK, the money I can handle, but I’d still need a ride and someone to go with, and that’s where other people come into play. Right now it don’t really matter who. I just wanna go! Having no car/license and girlfriend sucks every once in a while.

In other news, I might very well be going to see Van Halen when they come here in October. I’ll be going with my dad and brother, but it’s freaking Van Halen. They are the band that got me into rock n’ roll. It’s just something I have to do as a man and a rocker.

Better news yet, the X-Box that’s been dirtying up the house has been sold! Huzzah! As soon as we get rid of these Windows-based computers, the house will be Microsoft free!

Bad news, I’m out of mini bagels. This isn’t really relevant to anything, but I loved those little things.

I know there was something else I was supposed to be mentioning about now… Ah yes, Wolf Pack Productions, my favorite anime subbing group, has teamed up with Planet MegaMan to provide torrents for several entire MegaMan soundtracks. Awesome opportunity, and a wise use of your bandwidth. You know I have them all already.

That’s about all that I needed to get out of my system today. Now if you don’t mind, I haven’t played Tales of Symphonia for like a week and it’s really starting to bug me. Ryan, away!!

In the nick of time!

GorillaMask.net has gone through a major change. It’s been totally revamped, and you probably wouldn’t recognize it at a glance. And to think that I stole the site layout for myself just more than a month ago. That certainly was close. I guess this means that I’m not directly copying anyone anymore? Oh well.

There is more than that little note afoot, however. Two things, to be exact. Firstly, and it’ll be more important to my friends than anyone who’s stumbled across the site and has kept reading for whatever reason, I’m going to stop drawing new Spare! comics. As much as I loved doing it, I’ve realized that this comic endeavour is more of a big joke than anything else. Ever since I started reading Penny Arcade I’ve wanted to write my own webcomic. Reading Real Life made me consider starting a new site devoted to the comic, but there are two major obstacles in my way:

1) My source material is gone. With no more school to attend (for the moment), I’ve got nothing to write comics about. Sure, I could try to make some up on my own, but looking back at the fictional ones that I’ve already done, they’re some of the weakest ones there (bar the “imaginary girlfriend” saga, I really like those ones) and I’m just not good at writing funny. If someone would like to write for me, that would be excellent, but out of the people I know, and no offense to you guys, we’d need a whole team of writers to get anything done.

2) No webspace. Yes, I have a few options, but none of them sit quite right with me. Making another site on Angelfire is not something I want to do. Hell, I can’t wait to find an alternative for this one. I hate having to rely on free providers. A friend’s webspace? No. That way, I lose a lot of immediate control. And I wouldn’t be able to put up spur-of-the-moment stuff like this. It just wouldn’t be right. I could make my hard drive into a web server thing, but then my site would be a number, and people are less likely to remember a number than a name (not that “Torrential Equilibrium” is easy to spell either…). Someday, I’ll buy space and a domain name, but as it stands, that won’t be happening soon.

So as it stands, the comic is dead. I’ve begun the slow and painful process of Painticizing them, but that’s not looking too bright as an option. Nobody would respect a webcomic done in Paint. I’m probably gonna get a scanner for/around my birthday, so I’ll at least have them all up for viewage in a month or so.

Now, onto the other thing I needed to rant about. Damn, I went on so long about the comic that I’ve forgotten. Well, I’ll just leave this then. My brothers and I have all decided to forsake our Christmas presents this year, and will instead be getting a new computer (hopefully) sometime in November or early December. Yes, it’s a long time away still, but I’m pretty pumped. Obviously, there aren’t any ideas on the table yet in regards to specs or manufacturer, but it’ll certainly be able to run Doom 3, so I think that “the shit” is a pretty good ballpark description. Personally, I’m most looking forward to the possibly huge (looking at 200+ GB) hard drive. Living with ~10 (considering space for other users) gigabytes of storage space is very hard these days, what with current games taking anywhere between 500MBs and 6GBs each. Now that I’ve let out enough geek for the day, I think I’ll go do something productive, like mowing the lawn. Yeah right.

Ah, Hell. Now I remember. Planet MegaMan is currently offering MP3s of the entire soundtrack to RockMan X Command Mission. A pretty good bunch of tunes, if I do say so. Not quite as great as the original NES games’ tracks, but enough to tide me over until the game is released over here in the West. Go and download them now if you want ’em, as they probably won’t be up there long.

Boo curfew

My dad has received the title “Computer Nazi”.

All summer, my brothers and I have all been vying for time on the internet-ready PC. It’s usually theirs during the day, and every couple nights, I manage to get on during the split-second that they try to switch off. I like to think they’re working against me. So one of us is usually on until the wee hours of the morning. Just look at most of my posting times.

My parents do not like this trend, and have reinstated a new regiment so that my brothers will get back to a normal sleep schedule before they go back to school. The new rule is that no-one is allowed on the computer after midnight. Bullshit? Yes. But they never really enforced it until last night.

I was casually flipping through the Real Life archives, and my dad came down at exactly midnight, and hovered over me until the PC was turned off. I tried a menacing glare, but no such luck. I gave up and sought to come back an hour or so later when he’d be gone to bed. I went upstairs to take a bathroom break, and as I turned back, I saw him unplugging the computer.

Now you see that giving him the nazi title is totally justified. I don’t see why this rule should affect me, as I’m not going back to school right away. In fact, I’m trying to get the midnight shift at the local Tim Horton’s.

The situation was dire, but as I pondered a way for revenge, I found my loophole. If he had only taken the power cable, I could simply steal the modem and hook it up to my PC with my TV’s cable line. I had been wanting to try this out for a while now, and never had the right opportunity, so now was definitely the day of reckoning.

As things turned out though, he had not stolen the power cable, as I had previously assumed, but in its stead, he had removed the cable that connects the modem to the PC. This was a stupid move, not so much because my plot was foiled, but because his rule was breakable. The PC was still in working order, there was just no internet access. So I was free to do all the non-internet things I wanted. Unfortunately, the internet is like cyber-cocaine for some (me included), and a PC seems totally useless without it. Gah, this blows.

But on the upside, it’s been a month now since I redesigned the site, and I must say it’s been a huge success. Not only have I been posting a lot more (it helps that posts are easier to write than articles), but my hit counter has been steadily increasing as well. For a while before I changed the site, it was stuck at around 800 for days, and within a month, it’s gone up by approximately 150. That’s pretty awesome for a site that nobody knows about. And that means the 1000 hit celebration is due any day now!

TV notes

Being the deadbeat I am, I’ve been spending most of my summer days watching TV. I usually don’t watch a lot, but I go on little TV benders every once in a while. And lately, I’ve just picked up on a lot of things that I think might need a little discussing, or just some things that pass through my head.

  • Win Ben Stein’s Money must be on about ten times on the Comedy Network every single day. I like the show, but playing it every hour and a half is a bit much. and it’s always the same episode all day. At least I can watch it once alone, then again with people and look smart because I know all the answers. Normally, I’d skip out on multiple repeats in a single day, but Nancy’s damn hot.
  • The Bobroom is awesome.
  • I think that “Rolo Chocolate Cone” commercial is bullshit. Either that guy is really freaking desperate, or he’s just atotal douche. I’ve seen the specialty ice cream freezers, and those things are at least 4 bucks. And he just lets that harpy take it? I rarely givethe time of day without expecting something in return, and he’s just giving away expensive-ass ice cream? What a douche.
  • Will the slogan change to “I Am Half-Canadian” because of the Coors-Molson merge?Odd Job Jack needs more/better time slots. It’s only on one day of the week (kinda), and that’s Saturday night. At 10:30. And most people are doing something on Saturday night at 10 (but not me… sadly). Still, I manage to miss it often, and then my only other chance is at 5:30 AM. If I didn’t mind stayng up all night and sleeping the day away, this would be okay, but that’s just not the case.
  • I saw Daryn Jones (from Buzz) on “The Comedy Network Presents” the other night, and suffice to say, he was fantastic. Uh, fantatically funny, that is. The guy is a genius, totally killing any other comics I’ve seen in a while. And the best part is that his parents were right at the front of the audience, and he was going on about them and their buttplugs for the longest time. How many other people would have the balls to do such a thing? I sure wouldn’t.
  • I’m watching this commercial for the new movie “Without A Paddle”, and I’m thinking that it’s just a modernized (so to speak) copy of City Slickers. Just look at the premise: three guys having life troubles go out on an adventure to find themselves. Sound familiar? I swear, if they mention anything about a do-over…
  • TBS may censor a lot of stuff, but damned if I don’t love its weekday lineup of Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond and Seinfeld. I get all the TV elements I need for the day in one sitting: Joey, smartass old people, and Seinfeld. Ah, I’ll never get tired of Peter Boyle.
  • How is it that I still haven’t seen Kill Bill?
  • I was just channel flipping when I stopped on this one good show. It was about this college professor or something teaching his students about sex. There was a whole lot of other things going on, and it seemed to be a first episode, so I guess everything was still in the process of setting up. Anyhow, it was a pretty good show, funny and interesting so say a couple things. Then I learned the title was “Naked Josh”. Good thing I found that out afterI watched it.
  • Brent Butt was on Comedy Now! the other night (morning at that point), and he was going on about how big his head is. Made me wonder how big mine is, and I went to measure it. Soon as I got up, he says “You know you’ve got a big head when you want to measure it”. Dammit.
  • How can you make a Batman prequel? There would be no Batman to speak of (as I imagine that his encounter with the Joker was near the beginning of his career). Prequels are almost always a bad idea, unless it works like the Lufia games for the SNES.
  • “We’ll save the princess or die trying!”
    “Die?”
    I love it. Donald Duck rules.
  • I love Teletoon. Any channel that revives both Family Guy and Futurama is a winner in my eyes. They just need to pick up the old TMNT for their “Teletoon Retro” time blocks to make everything perfect.
  • There’s that damn Cheerios commercial. You know the one where the guy is teaching his baby about football with the cheerios. You know, “You just ate my tailback”. Well, upon watching this I said to myself, that I wanted one of those, those babies. Then I realized that what I was saying was proposerous and that I certainly do not want such a thing. Upon this realization, I swiftly fell off the bed and vowed never to think such heresy again. Stupid brain. Trying to trick me again.
  • I wish “Starsky and Hutch” had been a good movie. Carmen Electra and Amy Smart just couldn’t save it alone.
  • One word: Rollitos!

And that’s pretty much everything I’ve thought while watching TV over the past month and a half. Now you have further proof of my insanity. And holy cow, I’ve been posting a lot lately. I think I’ll take a little break for a while. Oh, say three days. By that time, the new site will have been up for a month, and I’ve been thinking about something special for the occasion. So stay tuned, loyal readers. All two of you.

Of things that should come

I’ve totally forsaken sleep for it, but it brings me great joy to present you with the very first CG strip of my “Spare!” comic. I made it all by myself. Click for proper-sizedness.

As you may have been able to tell, I did it in MS Paint, like so many before it. I just don’t know how to use any of the advanced tools in Photoshop to make it look all pretty and such. But how I made it isn’t important. It’s why I made it. And Hell if I’m going to explain that.

I said I’d post again today, but this isn’t what I’d intended to put up. See, I was reading my new favorite webcomic “Real Life”, and decided I should go back to producing my own comic. Then I realized that I’ve totally lost all will and patience to draw. The problem is: I need a class to slack off in. Seriously, math class was one of my most productive comic-drawing times. But now that I’ve defeated high school, I have no proper comic making environment. It’s just not the same, and I discovered while making this one, that if I were doing it on the computer rather than by hand, I’d have a much easier time (thank the G man for copy/paste!) producing it. So I guess that I’ll have to learn Photoshop skills if you ever want to see more than this little teaser of sorts.

A little behind the scenes commentary: The last line used to be different, but I felt this new one was more sarcastic, and therefore would better suit the character’s personality. To see the original ending, you’ll have to get your mitts on my holy notebook or wait for the DVD.

I think that’s about it. I’ll post again tomorrow. I hope.

This is so morally wrong

Okay, before we continue, I’m going to make it clear that what I’m about to do is very, very wrong. It goes against my policy of not invading other people’s privacy, but I’m going to do it anyway. Besides, do files that are left out in the open on a PC even count as private stuff? Yeah, I know they’re supposed to be between only those who made them, but when you save your chat logs, you’re pretty much looking to give them away to those who have nothing better to do than go through every folder on the hard drive. I guess if I do have a purpose, it’s simply to show how bad kids are at typing. The fact that the horrible “slang” is intended is just the icing on the cake of my hatred. What can I say? I can’t stand net-speak.

So if you personally have a problem with looking at these, then by all means – don’t. I put them up here for the sake of light entertainment and not to reveal any deep and scarring secrets (although…), so make your own decisions, but you’re responsible for what you read.

(NB: the files have been removed. It was just so… not cool of me to put them there in the first place)

This first one is the long one. It’s just babbling between my brother and his girlfriend. Like I said, these aren’t anything really important.

I just wanted the link from this, really. There’s nothing else of interest.

Very debatable if this should be here. It’s kinda personal, and something I probably should confront him about. But, it’s for the sake of me exposing something else to be pissed at: IM chain messages. God, it just gets worse and worse every day.

There you have it. Nothing else of specific interest, or even a proper length to waste time with. Tomorrow or later today I’ll post something else that is a little more revealing of my own state of mind. And sanity. Oh I feel like something’s gonna bite me in the ass for doing this…

New feature! Band of the Month!

Yeah, I think I need a new feature for the site. It really doesn’t have that much of it’s own personality yet. Mostly just taking ideas from other people and changing them up a little. But this one, I thought up all on my own. Yeah. Okay, it’s not original, but I don’t read any sites that have the same thing, so I’ll call it my own for now.

So here’s a brief rundown of how it’s going to work. Basically, every month I pick a band to do a short review on (and I mean short. I’m not sure how to review bands/music.). I guess for the most part, it’ll be whatever band I’m listening to the most at the time. Unless I’m still listening to the same thing two months in a row, in which case I’ll choose one at random. To kick off this little feature, I present to you My Chemical Romance.

I’ve honestly only been listening to them for 4 or 5 days, but I cannot deny that MCR is one kickass band. Plainly stated, they rock. Solid guitar work, some impressive drumming, and excellent vocals all wrap themselves together quite nicely to form one helluva band. The genre issue is a little up in the air with these guys, as they sound like they could be either punk or rock, while having a slight tinge of goth and/or emo in the lyrics. In the end though, genre doesn’t matter much, because they still kick ass.

A relatively new band, MCR has realeased a grand total of two albums in the last two years. While their debut I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love is a lot more praised by their fans, the new one, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge is in my opinion just as good as the original. While I haven’t heard most of the songs on Three Cheers…, what I have heard is just as impressive to me as the stuff off their first disc. I guess a good place to start would be taking a look at some of the songs.

I’ve listened to the entirety of I Brought You My Bullets… and there are a lot of things to pick out. First off, the apparent most popular song (and incidentally the first I listened to), “Vampires Will Never Hurt you” is a great song, but I don’t really see what the hype is about. I personally prefer the upbeat and ironically worded “Headfirst for Halos”. It’s fast, almost poppy (while retaining the hardcore), and the lyrics are the exact opposite. I’m not going to get into it much more, but they contrast with the music in an almost artsy kind of way. Another song that I like quite a bit is “Skylines and Turnstiles”. It’s mostly your basic rock, and I just find it more catchy than most of the other songs. “Drowning Lessons” is damn sweet too, but I find “Cubicles” to be a little irritating. An overall great album, with a good bit of variety without changing the way they play. Very nicely done.

At this point in time, I’ve only listened to two songs from Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, but I love the songs. One, “The Ghost of You” is one of those slow songs that isn’t a slow long, like Lifehouse’s “Hanging by a Moment”. It’s got a lot of emotion in it, and some of the best vocals that frontman Gerard Way has ever sung. The other song “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison” is a real grab bag of sounds. It starts off sounding reminiscent of Hoobastank’s “Can I Buy You a Drink”, but then quickly goes to a much faster paced and takes on a tone suited well to speed metal. Well, maybe not that fast, but the chorus is pretty damn fast. Oh, and the song kicks absolute ass. If you’ve never heard of MCR before and want to download something to see what they’re like, go with this one. It’s my favourite song from the guys, and it’s just (for lack of a better word) “fun” to listen to.

Now, I need to point out some general things about the band. The one thing that I really notice is that a lot of their songs have obscenely long titles. If I had a band, I’d use almost all one word titles, but that’s just me. I don’t know why, but this bugs me. I’ve never seen any bands with such a tendency, but then again, I haven’t listened to a lot of lesser-known bands. The other thing that I took note of right away is that most of the time, the vocals are particularly screamy. I’m not a fan of bands that scream a lot (how the Hell do I like Slipknot?), but it’s not too common to be annoying, so I’ve no trouble tolerating it. Lastly, it’s often hard to make out the lyrics. Not quite AFI hard, but if you like to know what they’re saying, you’re going to go through some frustration if you try to figure them out on your own. Me, I like to know the words so I can sing along, so I’m slightly annoyed, but like the screaming, I can brush it off easily.

Overall, My Chemical Romance is an excellent band, and for the sake of keeping it real, it would be a lot better off if they didn’t get the mass attention that ruins a lot of bands (see Good Charlotte, Serial Joe, etc.). They’re definitely on my “good enough to buy” list, and I suggest going to check them out right away, cause I’m pretty confident that 100% of my readership has never heard of ’em. Now, can anyone tell me if I’m supposed to use underline for album titles and quotation marks for song titles? I did it the other way for the HIM CD review, and I have no clue which way it’s supposed to be. I just never know. I’d use italics, but I find they’re too hard to make out with this font at this size.

Anyhow, that’s this month’s “Band of the Month”, and I hope that I can do this for at least a couple months before I forget about it. It seems like a good idea to me, and I like the feature, so I’ll be keeping up with it as best as I can.

He’s back in business, folks

It’s been a long damn time, but I’ve finally willed up the attention span to finish another of those full-length articles that you all love and missed so much. It’s the fifth Disney World article, if you hadn’t guessed, and you can find it conveniently placed in the Articles section of the site. But you knew that already, right? It’s not like I get new visitors all the time, and if there were, the site is simple enough to navigate. But enough of me trying to make this post longer. More articles, particularly the sixth and last Disney articles, are on the way. These guys are a dying breed, what with the site’s new format working out so well, so cherish them while you have the chance.

Also, in the past few days, I’ve also added a couple links and other things to the sidebar, so make sure to give anything new to you a click. You might just find something you like. Ooh, and hits are way up since the format change, so I guess that means people like it then? Maybe I am getting new visitors? I know I’m the sole Google search that brings up “torrential” and “equilibrium” together (not the only site to contain both, but elsewhere they show up separately.) So if some naive buffon types them in on a whim: Booya! Free hit. I guess that mostly wraps up what I needed to say. Until some other time, I’m out.