Flash poster

Here's an interesting use of Flash in a "poster" for the upcoming Terminator: Salvation.  I like short, relatively simple but interesting uses of Flash like this (that aren't confined to pop-up ads)... 

I really hope this movie doesn't suck, by the way...

Sorry about your job... here's a blog!

I am a believer in the idea that the internet will be the future of newspapers, but something about this doesn't sound quite right:

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program offers recently terminated bloggers and journalists a free pro account (worth $150 annually) on the company’s popular blogging platform. In addition to the free yearly membership, the 20 to 30 journalists who are accepted will receive professional tech support, placement on the company’s blog aggregation site, Blogs.com, and automatic enrollment in the company’s advertising revenue-sharing program.

I'm sure TypePad is just trying to do something nice for recently laid-off journalists, and someday this might be a really cool offer.  But at this point in time, it would just seem to add fuel to the Huffington Post way of thinking about the internet... like, "hey, exposure is just as good as money!"

I suppose the conclusion to draw is that it's just a shame newspapers have allowed their industry to get to this point, and haven't made more progress in making their product work on the internet (maybe, by extension, helping to make the internet a more reputable and profitable medium in general).  Of course, it's harder to do this when you've laid off all your talent.

Fighting Words: 11/24/08 Cartoon...

"The Skeptics"...


Classic Fighting Words this week -- doing a little recharging this weekend...

Fighting Words: 11/17/08 Cartoon...

"Chez Newspaper"...

Three more editorial cartoonists lost their staff jobs at daily papers last week. Among the many reactions to the layoffs, Jimmy Margulies did a pretty ingenious mock news article which reported that Harper's Weekly had eliminated the position of Thomas Nast.

I did a bit of analysis on the challenges facing the newspaper industry (and by extension my chosen profession) in this post last year.  However, I think this article by Philip Meyer is a must-read. Here's a few highlights:

The endgame for newspapers is in sight. How their owners and managers choose to apply their dwindling resources will make all the difference in the nature of the ultimate product, its service to democracy and, of course, its survival.

...

It is now clear that [the internet] is as disruptive to today's newspapers as Gutenberg's invention of movable type was to the town criers, the journalists of the 15th century.

...

Robert Picard, a media economist who looks at newspapers from an international perspective, believes that [newspapers] try to do too much. He expressed this view in June at the Carnegie-Knight Task Force conference on the Future of Journalism at Harvard University. Newspapers "keep offering an all-you-can-eat buffet of content, and keep diminishing the quality of that content because their budgets are continually thinner," he said. "This is an absurd choice because the audience least interested in news has already abandoned the newspaper."

If they should peel back to some core function, newspapers would still have to worry about the Internet and its unbeatable capacity for narrowcasting. The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.

...

[I]t is possible to envision a scenario in which newspapers trim down to a specialized product and survive by serving a narrow market well. They are already trimming down. But what are they trimming down to? Have they thought about what's left after all the shrinkage?
One of the rules of thumb for coping with substitute technology is to narrow your focus to the area that is the least vulnerable to substitution

...

I still believe that a newspaper's most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

It's pretty clear to me what major industry in this country is most in need of a "bailout"... the question is: would they know how to use it right?

Fyi - no animation quite yet on this 'toon again, but if you missed it, I did do a little something for last week's. I'm kinda liking this schedule of getting the static 'toon done and posted on Mondays, and then coming back to the animation later in the week (when I can take my time and put some thought into it).

Viaduct Revisited...

The Seattle P-I has some really cool graphics illustrating the differences between the various plans for the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which I blogged about in this post last year. State officials have said that they will make a final decision by the end of the year.

Now, if you live in Seattle, you probably know all about this already. If you don't live in Seattle, take a look at the pictures (especially the "Waterfront view") and tell me which option you would choose for your own city. The differences in the images are glaring. This area has the potential to be one of the coolest (and most valuable) parts of the city. It makes absolutely no sense to spend so much money on another giant concrete slug running through there... especially if it's just to save a couple minutes on a trip to the airport for people who just have to drive their cars everywhere. The alternative option of an elevated freeway dressed up with grass and other development just looks odd to me, and extremely expensive. The tunnel options all seem extremely dangerous given the crumbling seawall.

Take that money, invest more in Metro buses and streetcars and light rail, make the streets surrounding that area easier to travel on, and let the citizens enjoy that area finally. Boom, I just solved Seattle's biggest problem.

Good God that's cute...

I hate "cute" stuff. It's all "nice" and... um... "cute." I like stuff that kicks ass, like death metal and raw sewage!!

Of course, when it comes to dogs (especially my dog), I am probably the biggest softie on the planet. And damned if this isn't about the cutest thing I've ever seen...

Fighting Words: 11/10/08 Cartoon...

"Letter From 2012 in Obama's America"...


This was one of those cartoons where doing the artwork was like going back to drawing in class in middle school... like, "kick ass, I'm gonna draw a TERMINATOR now!"

If you haven't seen the letter that was the inspiration for the 'toon, do yourself a favor and check it out... pure hilarity! Just a harmless piece of fearmongering propaganda that was apparently being circulated by James Dobson's Focus on the Family before the election. It's an invented letter from the perspective of an imaginary person from 2012, telling the story of the horrific world we'll live in after 4 years under the thumb of the tyrant Barack Obama. It is a world where U.S. cities are getting attacked by terrorists left and right, Israel has been nuked by Iran and forced to cede most of its territory (apparently, Israel didn't feel like retaliating that day), and the Boy Scouts of America no longer exists because the new liberal Supreme Court was trying to force young boys to sleep in the same tents as homosexual scoutmasters. The "tipping point" for all this horror, and the reason the Court was now stacked with liberal oppressors, was Justice Scalia's surprise resignation in 2009 due to "health reasons." Uh-huh. I'll bet just about anything I own that Scalia will keep a death grip on his seat until the moment he breathes his last breath.

By the way, no animation on this one quite yet, as the coloring took for-ever...

My Palin Admission

Now that that's over...

I have an admission to make regarding the popular perceptions about Sarah Palin. I don't expect to do any more cartoons about her, so I'll blog about it now. Here's my admission:

I DO think that it's possible that there was an element of sexism in how people evaluated her, in one respect only...

Yes, she is an incredible moron, who is in no way qualified to hold higher office. Yes, she's an extremist nut-ball who has no business making decisions for the rest of us on important stuff. And yes, she deserved to get hammered for these things in the media.

But these things were also true of Bush. This should have been abundantly clear before the 2004 election, and yet people gave him the benefit of the doubt and put him in office for a second term.

Sexism? Who knows...

All I know is I won't be giving up the chip on my shoulder over the '04 election any time soon...

From the Neglected News Dept.

... in the "how in the hell am I just now reading this?" division...

On Tuesday, Mexico's Secretary of the Interior (their #2 official, the equivalent of Vice President) was killed when his Learjet crashed into "a posh Mexico City neighborhood" amidst rush hour traffic. Nine people on the plane and five people on the ground were killed. According to the Yahoo story, speculation is widespread that "the drug cartels were to blame."

Am I missing something here? Aside from being a rather important news story, it's at least interesting, wouldn't you say? Yeah we've had other stuff going on this week, but...

Thankfully, almost every news site on the web has among their lead stories that one of Hugh Hefner's ex-girfriends is getting married.

Obamas considering rescue dog

Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with why anyone would support Obama (the politician) on anything...

But it would be yet another really, really cool side-story in this whole great saga.

Pure Science Fiction

Almost lost among all the big news: celebrity global warming-denier (and pal of everyone's favorite senator) Michael Crichton died at 66.

Escaping from reality will never be the same again...

Fighting Words: 11/3/08 Cartoon...

"The Bradley Effect"...

No animation on this one yet, as I wanted to get it done and posted. I also want to see if I can use the Twilight Zone theme song royalty free...

Mainly though I want to get some other stuff done tonight so I can rest my eyeballs on the TV screen all day tomorrow. It all comes down to Pennsylvania, folks. The race in that state is crucial not only because of the polling numbers and the number of electoral votes at stake, but also because I think the results in PA will shed light on just how much influence naked racism will have on the results of the election as a whole. It cracks me up that John Murtha is getting so much flak for telling the truth about many of the people in his state.

Obama can still win if he loses PA (assuming he loses FL and/or OH, even though he has slight leads there), but it'll be close then...

Ted Stevens caricature

Wow...

And I thought my caricature was nasty!