BenPaddon.co.uk

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that you’ve been charged with the task of building a Robot. Let’s not worry about the Whys and Hows of this scenario, only that this is your job. You are going to build a Robot for Some Guy, and that’s pretty much all you need to know.

Oh, wait, one more thing. You’ve been told where to get the parts from. There’s Some Other Guy. He’s a pretty neat guy. You get along. You have shared interests. The problem is that this Other Guy is also providing parts for about nine or ten other people, so he’s not always able to get your parts straight away.

Now imagine that Some Guy, the same Some Guy who asked you to build the Robot, comes up to you to ask how his Robot is progressing. Well, you can’t answer him, can you? You don’t have the parts. It’s out of your control - Some Other Guy pretty much has the monopoly on Robot Parts, after all. It’s entirely out of your hands. You can learn how to build the parts yourself - that’s an option - but it’s going to take time. This Robot isn’t going to be finished any time soon. It’s annoying, but it’s out of your control and it can’t be helped.

“No,” said Some Guy. “You’re supposed to be building a Robot. Why aren’t you building a Robot? You should build me a Robot.”

So you explain, again, that you can’t get the parts. Some Guy doesn’t seem to care that you can’t get the parts. You’ve already got some of them, after all. He asked for a Robot. He should have a Robot. Where is his Robot?

It’s times like this, I’m sure you’ll agree, when you’ll wonder why you even bothered getting a job in Robot Construction.

This morning Paul Southworth this tweet about today’s Ugly Hill:

Today’s comic is what happens when I don’t feel like I have an outlet for any other ideas. Wish I could do it more often.

That got me thinking: What if there were a website where cartoonists could put up such strips? Think about it - a daily webcomic with different comics every day by different people, for those occasions where they come up with an idea that doesn’t fit into their own comic. Somewhere to put ideas that might work for one or two strips, but probably couldn’t be sustained over a long period of time.

Say Krishna comes up with a funny idea for a strip about zombie proof-readers. One quick joke, one quick strip, but it doesn’t quite fit in with PC Weenies or Uncubed. Or say Jim wants to take a break from Outsider and do one or two quick little three-panel strips about a Leprechaun Pimp. They could draw a strip and send it on to this site, and then it gets put up in a few days as that day’s comic. One day you’re seeing Jim’s Leprechaun pimp-slapping someone, the next you’ve got Krisha’s zombies lamenting the number of spelling errors in their latest document. A different comic about something different every single day, forever.

I’m seriously considering setting this up. GhostHamster.com is going woefully unused at the moment with no sign that Eric and Jeremy are interested in actually getting around to launching it, so maybe I’d stick it there. Or maybe I’d set it up as something new. But it’d be interesting to see what people think about it. I’ve already had some positive feedback on Twitter.

Any thoughts?

Here is a list of computer and videogames that I will be passing on as May rolls onwards:

1. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

Below is a picture of actual text on an actual church sign that I actually drive past on my actual way home from the place where I actually work. Click to embiggen.

Have you ever seen a more self-contradictory sign in your life?

Am I the only person who saw the headline for this news article and immediately thought up a consolatory response from a loved one?

I have a tendency to over-analyze things. I’m constantly over-analyzing my own actions for one, and that’s something I believe I’ve gone into previously. I have difficulty sometimes figuring out what motivates me, what causes me to say and do some of the things I do. Since learning that left-handed people are more susceptible to neurological disorders such as bipolarity, acute anxiety disorder and paranoia (largely due to the left-handed brain being wired up differently from the right-handed one), I’ve started mentally chalking up my bizarre actions to simply being left-handed, and have begun trying to pigeon-hole each action into a particular neurological disorder in much the same way that Harold Crick found himself tallying the Comedies and Tragedies that occurred in his life, the exception being I’m doing it purely in my head, and my list is rather bigger than just the two options. It’s entirely possible I’m looking for justification where none actually exists, and by considering this I’m now over-analyzing my over-analysis, which is surely a Bad Thing.

I have discovered, or at the least decided, that my main reasons for doing much of what I do is because I need to feel like I’m entertaining. I have an overwhelming desire to please people, to make them smile and laugh if at all possible, and that drives me to say and do things that I know will perhaps make me look stupid. I’m willingly making myself look the fool just to get a quick chuckle out of people - often people I hardly know - and that strikes me as very dangerous behavior.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Yesterday at work, some co-workers and I were wasting time with trivial movie-related junk. A short while later we had a diagram mapped out, and one of the co-workers, Joe, says “Wouldn’t that be great on a tee-shirt?”, further suggesting it would look good done in the style of a London Underground map.

Last night I put up the tee-shirt on the Jump Leads Store. It’s the first tee that has absolutely nothing to do with the comic (save, perhaps, for the scifi theme):

And about fifteen minutes ago I made my first sale. This is heavy.

I’ve been playing Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune a fair bit lately, and I have to say it’s very good. The story and the characters give off a sort-of National Treasure vibe, but the gameplay itself reminds me very much of what a next-gen remake of Flashback might be like. Credit where it’s due, it was my Dad who first said Uncharted reminded him of Flashback, but the more I play Uncharted the more I wish some developer would snap up the rights to Flashback and remake it.

This is, of course, coupled with my deep desire to see Another World adapted as a feature film with absolutely no dialogue whatsoever.

There’s a Church we drive past on the way home from work. They have one of those typical American Church signs with the replaceable letters, which currently displays the rather amusing slogan:

FAITH GRANTS US THE FREEDOM TO ASK - “WHY?”

Feel free to  write your own punchline here, kids.

Doesn’t seem like much to ask for, does it? They have my support.

I’ve just discovered, via an article about British fire departments considering charging to rescue fat people from hospitals and nursing homes, that “bariatric” is the medical term for obese. I thought obese was the medical term for obese.