The Cabbage Patch

Vote 1: TomHB’s One-Notion

Australia.  A great wide brown land conquered by a generation of heroes and heroines.  Who knows the hardships these men and women faced as they dragged family and beasts across the Great Divide and into the unknown?!

What would they think about the current crop of whingers that inhabit the rural areas of today’s Australia?

Our fearless forefathers saw floods as welcome relief from the boredom of drought, and dust storms as a good excuse to clean the house.  Nowadays it’s always either too dry or too wet.

If the dollar rises it’s a threat to exports, when it falls then diesel becomes too expensive.  If the Japanese refuse to take our beef then they’re guilty of having unrealistic health standards but if we take interstate milk we’re told that Victorians don’t have the same quality controls as we do.  If the bank forecloses on a hobby farm 2 hours from Sydney, they make a mini series about the family struggle, starring Colin Friels.

It’s like listening to a bunch of public servants at morning tea.  Boring.  Bullshit.

Well it’s time for the city backlash.  We in the cities are sick of the over-subsidised, over-represented and over-bloody-emotional country folk.  If a ‘mum and dad’ mixed business in the city has to close due to the superstore up the road, you don’t see pollies running to them with buckets of money and rock stars putting on benefit concerts.

So in this election year and to coincide with the demise of the Nationals and the Democrats, I’m starting the TomHB One-Notion Party.  What’s my notion?  Shut up and get over it.

TomHB.

The blinds were drawn, but the people were Photoshopped

Hello World.

As some of you may know, I’m currently in the middle of writing a horror/thriller-themed, noir-style graphic novel.  As a result of this, my mind is currently filled with images of mysterious murders, sexy women, cigarettes and all the other film-noir stereotypes.

In a period of trying to avoid writing (and cleaning, the other thing I’m in the middle of doing), I started to twiddle around in Photoshop.  I ended up with two comic-book-noir desktop wallpapers, featuring sexy women.  I think I need to find something else to think about.

(click for original page and larger view)

and

Nothing that’s going to change the world of art as we know it, but perhaps may liven up a couple of computers.

NB. Posting these wallpapers with the preface about my book may be slightly misleading.  The images in these wallpapers are not related to the book at all.  I am by no means an artist or an illustrator by any stretch of the imagination - these are edited photographs, not drawings (in case it wasn’t obvious enough), and they will not be appearing on the pages of a comic book any time soon.

Hee hee… it was bookmarked as “game with balls”

Hello World.

Shuffle is a simple game which plays a little like a simple version of snooker. Kinda. Well, not really.

The aim is to knock all of the yellow balls off the board using your red balls. If “Yellow” knocks all yours out first, however, you lose. Lose four times and it’s game over.

The idea behind this game is, as you can see, incredibly simple. It has managed to keep me entertained for hours, however.

Coming up next: Quince Paste Tossers

On any given television station as many as seven hours a day are completely bereft of any variant of CSI or Law & Order.  And what have these procedural dramas been replaced with?  Cooking programmes – hours and hours of cooking programmes.

You can’t turn on the TV without some ponce waving his spatula in your face and imploring you to smell his wafting aroma.  Well I had a sniff and from where I was sitting, all I could smell was a cockney prat.

Healthy, Wealthy and Tedious; Two Naked Fat Ladies; Jamie Oliver’s ‘How to cook a Gondola’.

All crap.

And the loony programmers get everything arse-up.  One moment we get a recipe for Chateaux de Sheep which takes a week to prepare and the next, Ainsley Harriot spends 30 minutes buttering toast.

And it’s getting worse.  Cooks have been breeding to the point where there are thousands and thousands of them out there, every one of them frantically searching for quince paste and cool patter to try to get their own show.

These days if you know which side of an egg is up and you don’t have your own cooking programme, then you deserve nothing less than abuse and utter contempt from everybody, everywhere.

I’ve got a bit of advice for television programmers and their treating psychiatrists.  The next time some mincing chef comes to you with an idea for a culinary journey to see some quaint yokels eating bark and transmitting syphilis to one another, tell him to get stuffed.  What else do you think the phrase ‘fuck off’ is for?

TomHB.

…but with no Luck Dragon.

Hello World.

One of my favourite video podcasts (I hate the word “vodcast” and refuse to use it) is Ask a Ninja.  Every episode is hilarious, and often very intelligent.  None more so, however, than the episode regarding Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End.

Let me just say that I agree with the Ninja completely.  I really just don’t get these movies.  I’ll freely admit there is a certain charm about the first one - it has pirates and zombies and a monkey that is both a pirate and a zombie.  But that concept, however cool it may be, does not a trilogy make.  These latest two are just confusing as all hell and far, far too long.  Granted, the special effects are amazing - but so were they in Fantastic Four and no one confuses that for a good movie.  When the best thing about your film is Keith Richards doing an impersonation of Johnny Depp doing and impersonation of Keith Richards, something needs to change.

Shot best your with me hit.

Now Celebrating Favouritism and Spelling Errors

Hello World.

Just a quick post to tell you of a couple of neat features added to The Patch recently:

View Posts by Author:

In case you missed it, there are two of us here at Patch HQ now, and that means two very different and distinct types of posts.  So now if you want to read only the posts by me, or if you want to see a page full of ranting by Tom, you can.  Just click the name under a post title to see all of the posts by that author.

Comment Editing:

You can now edit your own comments for up to 10 minutes after posting them.  No more pleading me to delete or change something you’ve accidentally written, and no more “oops, that was supposed to be…” comments.  As a side-effect of this, I expect grammatically perfect, error-free comments from all of you.

Turn That Brightly-Coloured, Square, Cartoonish Frown Upside Down

Hello World.

I learnt something new this week.  I learnt that there is very little in this world that is more satisfying than dragging rectangles around cartoon squares and watching their little faces light up in joy before they disappear into the great unknown.  I learnt this by playing Blocky. A lot.

Hi, my name is David and I’m a Blocky-holic.

– [via Digg]

Not Just for Lighting Barbeques

Hello World.

Long-time readers will be aware that I like to dabble in Photoshop, despite my severe lack of artistic talent.  You will also be aware that I like to show off my “art” at every opportunity.

A few weeks ago, I was browsing through the forums over at ComicVine, when I found a thread discussing possible replacements for Kirsten Dunst in the Spider-Man movies.  The commenters were wondering what various actresses would look like with Mary Jane’s trademark red hair.  I couldn’t resist the challenge, and started my own digital hair salon. Below are the results.

First, someone proposed that Eliza Dushku (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) would make a very attractive red-head indeed.  They were correct:

Next, someone proposed that Hayden Panettiere of Heroes would make Spidey a very happy man.  Again, right on the money:

Lastly was the suggestion of Lost’s Evangeline Lilly.  Not the best manipulation I’ve done, but certainly not an unattractive lass:

So there you go - three alternatives, as decided by comic-book nerds, should Ms. Dunst ever decide that getting multi-million dollar paychecks for looking distressed in the arms of a guy in a rubber suit is not for her.

Tags: Web Sites

Squirrels With Lightsabers!

Hello World.

This is a photo of squirrels with lightsabers, in honour of the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars.

Original on Flickr!

– [via Digg]