Obdormio.com

Loki’s timing is a bit off here, as I actually set aside time today to write here. Unless of course he used “currently” to mean “at this precise moment, 1:11 AM, September 16th” or a similarly narrow definition. Knowing him, he probably did.

Anyways, over a month has passed since the post where I said I was leaving for Bergen. Wow, where on earth did all the time go?

Actually, I have a good idea where all that time went. A good portion of it went to Babylon 5, which I’m fortunately almost finished with now. Very good show, that.

Another sizable chunk went to schoolwork. The intensive class Academic Writing has consumed many a night lately. When you cram a ten point subject into five weeks, it figures that it’ll take a lot of time. (For comparison, the other two subjects I’m taking this year, each also worth ten points, last at least fifteen weeks each.) Academic Writing, too, is almost over now.

And I’m not dead! I’m living and breathing and learning in Bergen, the city of rain, the Seattle of Europe. (Actually, I’m fairly sure Bergen was there first, so it should be that Seattle is the Bergen of America.) The city from whence the Black Death spread across Norway and killed off half the population. A city that, like Trondheim, is a much better choice for capital than Oslo. A city I could easily see myself living in, if not for the terrible lack of diverse products in grocery stores.

In my last post I said that Raptus was about to start. It is now over, leaving me with much less money than before, but also a nice little collection of comics containing stories by Carl Barks and Don Rosa. I also got hold of Rosa’s “Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion” yesterday, so I have plenty and plenty of reading material. Especially if you factor in “A Game of Thrones”, “Eye of the Labyrinth” and “Deadhouse Gates” as well.

Hm, I foresee much more time vanishing in the near future.

So, what else has happened the last month?

Andy Weir has put Casey and Andy on indefinite hiatus, in order to focus his efforts on Cheshire Crossing. While I’m sad that we have to wait for the grand finale of C&A, I’m also excited that this probably means less waiting for the next issue of Cheshire Crossing. Weir reports that he is sick of C&A, which is extremely sad, and that he might not finish the arc at all, which is nothing short of tragic. I certainly hope that he feels better about it when the CC-issue is finished, it would be a crying shame for a great comic like Casey and Andy to end in the middle of its final arc.

Sluggy Freelance has started a new Oasis-story. Pardon me while I squee. It even looks like we’ll get some actual, definite answers in this one, though I’m not taking anything for granted when it comes to Sluggy. I’ll hold my tongue until it is over, I think, though I have to say that I love the new supporting characters. The setup has all the markings of a truly great sitcom, and it’s a shame there isn’t one like it on TV already.

The Gods of Arr-Kelaan have lost Ronson! Eeek! Well, no, not really eeek, we all know he’ll be back, as we have seen him appear in stories set at after the current one, but this should still be a very interesting story.

No doubt a lot of other stuff has happened as well, but this is all I can think of at the moment. Any omissions will have to get separate posts later, an arrangement nobody should be angry about.

Now I have to go fill the fridge.

I need to write something here, preferably something long and summary-like, explaining why and what has happened recently, and to put some of my thoughts on other subjects down as well. Not now. Not this weekend, as Raptus, the comic convention, starts tomorrow.

Right now, I just want to say that this is the best Irwin tribute strip so far.

It isn’t easy, especially when you have friends clearly set out to sabotage your academic development in any way possible - by, say, lending you five seasons of quality television-series mere days before you need to really start writing your assignment. Or lending you even better books, mere days before that. Or nagging you into joining a board game taking up one of your precious set-off-for-writing-afternoons. Get the picture? ‘Cause Obdormio sure has.

That’s right folks, your one and only beloved GUEST-BLOGGER is back, and I’m here to tell you, our gracious host simply doesn’t have the time to stop by and complain about how he doesn’t have time to stop by and complain.

Thus, I’ll do it for him, despite having tons of stuff to do myself, because that’s just how nice a guy I am.

WAAAAH, I DON’T HAVE TIIIIIME!

There, now that that’s over and done with, what has Obdormiboy been up to lately? Well, aside from his compulsive just-one-more-episode-habit of watching ”Babylon 5″, he’s been writing his assignment in ”Academic Writing”,
a compulsory introductory-course in Norwegian universities. Booh-yeah, right? No problem for good ol’ Dormie?

WROOOONG!

He’s struggling, people! Struggling! He needs all the help he can get, and that’s not all - he needs MORE help than he can get, which might be the problem.

You see, he can’t get his summary summarized enough. Mind-shattering, I know, but the man turns out not to be perfect after all. While the rest of us are now no doubt sighing as one in unison relief, we have to be understanding if Obdormio doesn’t join in. He is, after all, way too busy with shortening down his summary. Something which presents quite the challange, considering his working-schedule opens for maximum four minutes work per episode of B5, and that DOES include mentally preparing oneself for working, a ritual which has been known to take at least five minutes.

In other words, our boy is in a dire mess. We should help him out. I should help him out. I don’t have time, though, because the only spare time I had today has been used up writing this post. But at least I got his weblog active again. I’m sure he’ll be ever so pleased. :D

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

What? So I’m taking Roman History this term. Sheeesh.

… and rarely has it been more anticipated. This summer has really helped convince me that the job I’m aiming for (teacher) is the right one for me. The hellish graveyard job in particular has made me eagerly await the beginning of fall.

It wasn’t so much the mowing itself, as the lack of equipment, communication and understanding. This job will not be applied for next year.

Tonight, I am leaving for Bergen, and on Monday, I will begin my studies at the university there. I do not know how long it will take to get set up and online again once I arrive, so bear with me if I disappear completely for a few days.

That is all.

So, have a look at the latest Casey and Andy.

All right, there were hints. Weir has kindly provided us with a list of them. Some of them, even I picked up on.

We knew she was rich. We’ve seen her with jewels. Both of these I noticed. And I actually did wonder what on earth she was burying. But I never added it up to this.

I somehow completely missed the Interpol thing. I know I’ve read it, more than once even, but it’s just been pushed out of my mind, I guess.

I figured she just had a good job, like jeweler, or maybe she came from a rich family. She was supposed to be the normal one, you know, the poor girl that had all the weirdness thrown at her.

She became fairly weird herself, eventually, but that was to be expected really.

And then Weir hits us with this revelation. Well, those of us who haven’t bought the RPG.

This is why Casey and Andy is Highly Recommended.

I don’t like to use the word ‘review’ on anything I write here. It sounds too serious for my tastes. A review is supposed to be structured and give reasons for all its opinions, maybe analyze and dissect the subject, and be all serious. It is easy to do badly. I don’t think of myself as a proper critic. I much prefer to simply say, “I like this, you might too,” which is basically what I do with my comics links page. That’s hard to screw up.

Even so, in this post I am attempting a review. Bear with me please.

So, Count Your Sheep. Click that link for the definition of bittersweet.

Count Your Sheep is a strip I’ve been avoiding for some time, for no good reason at all. Seriously, I have no idea why I haven’t read it before. It’s not like I haven’t seen links, on Websnark if nothing else. And it’s not like those links weren’t really, really good. I had just, for some unfathomable reason, decided that I wouldn’t read it. I guess it just has to be chalked up to stupidity.

Count Your Sheep chronicles the adventures of young Katie and her widowed mother Laurie, and their imaginary friend, the sheep Ship, who often helps them fall asleep at night. Counting Ship appears to be far more effective than counting normal sheep.

Count Your Sheep is cute. Very, very cute. Cute and sweet. Seriously, it’ll give you diabetes if you look at it too long. Un-manly though it may be, I actually like cute, especially when it is the kind of cute Count Your Sheep delivers on a pretty much daily basis.

Katie is a pretty believable child, innocent and curious and full of energy, and capable of cause plenty of mayhem. She’s too sweet to actually be a fully believable child. I have two younger siblings, and they both had a screaming streak that Katie seems to lack. This is not a real drawback, as the sweet and innocent Katie is much more fun to read about and more suited to the comic world than a screaming, realistic Katie would have been.

Count Your Sheep is funny. It’s not necessarily spit-take, laugh-so-hard-your-belly-hurts-funny, though there are strips that do that. Mostly, it is a warm kind of funny, that makes you smile or chuckle a bit. Be it from the relationship between Katie and Laurie, from the interactions with their mutual imaginary friend, or from the young Laurie’s relationship with her future husband.

Count Your Sheep is sad. It is heartbreakingly, painfully sad. Even at its most cheerful, there is an underlying melancholy, reinforced by the blue colors, and the purples used for the little Laurie strips.

Laurie is a struggling single mom, who works two jobs trying to make ends meet. As seen in the strip linked earlier, they had to pawn their TV, breaking Katie’s heart.

As I said earlier, this strip is the definition of bittersweet. Adrian Ramos manages to deliver heartbreak and humor, often in the same strip, which is extremely hard to do. Of the top of my head, I can’t think of any other strip I read which manages to do both simultaneously, and certainly not as well as Count Your Sheep does it.

If I was to complain about something, it would have to be the many unrelated sketches you have to flip through in the early archives, but other than that, reading Count Your Sheep is a joy. A teary, heartbreaking, gut-splitting joy. Count Your Sheep is now Highly Recommended.

(Also, it really needs Oh No Robot.)

The Starslip Crisis books I ordered arrived yesterday, sooner than I had dared to hope for. They arrived just as I had to leave for work, so I spent most of that trip wanting to be home and reading. With good reason, as it turns out, because both of the books were great. All the strips reformatted to fit on a page each, and plenty of character profiles, insights into 35th century society and culture, and other interesting tidbits. My favorite extra in the first book is the excerpt from the quickstart guide for the starslip drive.

Wow, ‘excerpt’ is a really ugly word.

Anyway, I was also relieved to see the matter of the Cirbozoid hive mind settled in a satisfactory manner. Meaning, what I rooted for won. The second book had a nice page about Cirbozoid evolution and the origin of the Battlesong, but lacked a similar page about the Mothersong, which was disappointing.

I think I saw one strip that does not appear in the digital archives, but it’s been a while since I looked at those, so I may be wrong.

The forewords for the two books are written by Steve Troop and Jerry Holkins respectively. The second one, eh… To me, it looks mostly like “This foreword was written by Jerry Holkins. He’s famous.” It wasn’t really very interesting to read and didn’t say much about the strip or its creator, unlike Troop’s funny two pages.

The books aren’t all that big, height and width-wise. In my comics shelf, they end up looking small and pushed in, especially since S and T are next to each other in the alphabet,just like Starslip Crisis and Schlock Mercenary are next to each other on my shelf. The Schlock Mercenary book is abnormally tall and wide, so it looks extra odd.

I can find no Blank Label logo on either of the books. I interpret this to mean that Straub hates his friends. Then again, there is no logo on the Schlock book either, so maybe they just don’t do that.

To end this rather aimless rambling, I’ll just say that both books were well worth the money and a very enjoyable read.

In other comic news, Cyanide and Happiness and Killer Robots from Space are added to the Recommended Comics list, and Blomsten og bien is added under Norwegian Comics.

Also, have a look at what passes for fanart these days over at Terror Island! If I can do it, anybody can! And should that be too small for you, you can have a look at this spiffy .svg version. Now you can zoom in for a closer look at those straight lines!

My vacation has come to an end. After a week of worship, it’s back to the graveyard grindstone. It was a good week. Lots of good music and several good speakers. I shook the hand of the heavenly man, a very inspiring speaker, and got a signed copy of his book, which I am looking forward to reading.

On the long bus and train rides, and the long, long waits between them, I finished Shaman’s Crossing and Forest Mage by Robin Hobb, both excellent books. Robin Hobb never seems to stop finding ways of torturing her main characters. She must hate them all. I also purchased Eye of the Labyrinth by Jennifer Fallon and Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. I also bought and read T Campbell’s A History of Webcomics, which was an interesting read. Can’t say I understand what all the controversy was about, but then again, controversy is what makes the internet go round.

Speaking of comics, I also bought books one and two of The Books of Magic. Then I found out that book three was out of print. Smeg. I also bought the first book of Y: The Last Man, which I’m now looking forward to reading. Spending what holiday money I had left I have ordered the two Starslip Crisis books, which I am also greatly looking forward to.

Also, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean while waiting for the bus. Said bus goes once every twelve hours, it was a bit of a wait. I don’t know why people disliked it so much. I had been a bit worried when I heard they were making this one more of a comedy, but I loved the results. It was funny, exciting, and well worth the money. The only complaint I have is… Well, I think Greg Dean has pretty much summed it up.

Finally, an updating of the comics links. Terror Island now has 15 strips under the belt, and the concept is holding well so far. Also, I got to be Stephonian Prime on their forum, so it moves up to Recommended Comics. Something Positive, which I’ve recently begun reading again, and Queen of Wands, which was omitted form the link list by an oversight, are both added to the same list. Lokes eskapadar is added to Norwegian Comics.

And I think that’s it for now.