So you may have noticed my blog is looking a little...different. That's right, you squiggly nutters, I'm in the middle of an overhaul. I'm power-mad cruising down the information autobahn like Mad Max and I like it. Lost track of what I was saying. Changes. Yes.
So in addition the layout, you'll notice the title has changed. Again. Hopefully permanently this time. OverReactor is now Hungry Robot. Why the name change? Well, several reasons. I never really liked "OverReactor" much, and its connotations are still sort of a product of a bygone time when I thought this would mostly be an opinion blog. Plus it's self-depricating, which isn't always a bad thing but I didn't like it for the title of something.
"Hungry Robot," on the other hand, takes its name and shiny new mascot (woo, I have a mascot now I guess!) from a failed art experiment of mine--an attempt on a college campus to get a multi-student comics compilation effort going (much in the manner of Fat Chunk or Void Pulpo). It seems that will not see the day, so Hungry Robot can live on instead as the name of a blog.
I'm making genuine effort to really learn the tools this blogware has for me, so expect continued changes as I muck with formats, retrofit old entries, switch around the names of categories/tags and try, generally, to make this place look a bit prettier and more professional. The design now is happy and fresh but still a bit plain...it can be worked. I do appreciate the extra column width though.
Also, I'm intending to do more articles. A lot more. It's not just Sunday Comics anymore, if I can help it. I really want this to be a thing that I do. Just for fun, but a thing that I do nonetheless. It may take a while before these new articles start to pop up, since I'm mostly brainstorming about what directions to take this place in at the moment. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I'm sure I will.
Also, I'm considering deleting the anemic, crumbling "Hundred Faces" blog. It was a fun idea for an experiment but has lain untouched for a year now. FoodPeople will remain, and eventually probably get a facelift of its own.
More after the jump. (Yep, I'm using jumps now, like a real blogger! Teehee!)
So Rook, an e-buddy of mine, has this thing going over on her blog, "A Fork In The Socket," (content warning! not for the underage!) that she asked me to plug. And I will do it gladly because it is a neat idea. This thing is called "I'm Crazy But It's Cool' Week," or as I have chosen to abbreviate it, "ICBIC Week" (Ick-bick week!). The basic idea? To celebrate your eccentricities and quirks. She's got a whole week of it going on with a juicy trio of posts, while I, for my part, have opted just do her day one exercise: 25 things about myself that, in her words, "make me crazy." I urge you to do the same. It's a fun exercise.
ONWARDS. Prepare to learn more about me than you wanted.
25. I hate cutesy words. Even if a child is using them. It is not a “froggie.” It is a frog. It is not your “tummy.” It is your stomach. Or your abdomen. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it really does grate on me. I make a single exception for “kitty.” Why “kitty?” No idea. Probably because I like cats (in spite of being allergic to them).
24. As long as we’re on petty annoyances, it seriously irks me when this happens:
- I call someone.
- They’re not there.
- I leave a clear, concise message.
- They call back later in a way that is clear they have no idea why I called, and therefore did not listen to the message at all.
Now, I get when someone, say, texts me with that sort of response, if they’re somewhere where they need to be discreet about their phone. That’s cool. And I know that message boxes can be a hassle to access on some phones. But people leave messages for a reason. It facilitates efficiency in conversations. By the time you call back up, you already know what we needed to discuss and I’m not repeating myself, so we all win. Not listening to your messages makes us both lose. And makes America lose. If you do not listen to your messages whoever The Bad Guys are right now win and they will take away our apple pie and guns and cowboy hats and now I’m getting sidetracked. Listen to your messages.
23. I have peanut senses. They’re frighteningly similar to Spider-Sense except kind of lame and with much more specific usages. Peanut allergies are very common these days, and I’m no exception. Mine are pretty severe (though not as severe as some people…I hear there are those out there that can’t even eat something that’s been near a peanut. Yowch)…I have to physically ingest it for any reaction (well, okay, touching peanut products gives me a nasty rash) but even a small amount, swallowed, is potentially lethal to me. To my body it is deadly poison. Anyway, yes, Peanut Senses. My body has apparently found a mechanism I don’t know about for ensuring my peanut-related survival. There have been occasions now where I have instinctively avoided a food based solely on a very nebulous reaction from my body when I have approached it, despite no obvious presence of peanut ingredients, and many times this has happened I’ve turned out to be right. Peanut Senses. As another facet, if someone has peanut breath, it will cause my adrenaline to spike. Nothing will actually be wrong with me, but my heart rate will shoot up for a few moments as my body’s way of ringing alarm bells that say “I SMELL POISON, DO NOT EAT IT.”
22. As many friends and family members know of me, I have extremely double-jointed thumbs. I can realistically feign breaking my thumb and it doesn’t hurt at all. Apparently my elbows have a bit of this too, I’ve found people freaking out when I’ve been in a pose that finds my elbows bending backward to a notable degree, and I wasn’t aware of it.
21. I am pretty much constantly stretching. I have never stretched enough. If I’m standing in a line, I’ll balance on one leg and stretch the upraised leg all around. If I’m sitting somewhere, I’ll take a moment every so often to stretch my arms over my head or roll my shoulders back a couple times. When I’m about to start walking somewhere I’ll pull my arms back behind me for a moment. When I wake up in the morning I’ll do a couple weird lunge things or some cat stretches. When I’m walking around, I’ll crane my neck from side to side every so often. Why do I do this? No idea. Tense, maybe. Interestingly, though I have tons of stretch marks on one of my shoulders, this isn’t where those come from. They are from a time when I dislocated it.
20. I used to chew on pencils when I was thinking hard. This often made me feel kinda sick as I probably ingested way more paint and wood and graphite than is even remotely healthy for a kid. Then I switched to pens. This led to my pens quickly becoming unusable. Then I switched to the side of the pointer finger of my left hand, which is kind of gross and probably counts as some sort of self-abuse but is at least probably less poisonous than pencils and pens. Because of said chewing I have a callous in that area. It’s involuntary, but I am trying to cut back on even that. Hopefully one day I’ll eliminate it and replace my thinking-hard action with something else, like fiddling with my hands or bouncing my leg. Both of which I do a lot anyway. Wow, looking at these things so far I guess I’m kind of twitchy.
19. When I was a young kid (probably…Kindergarten through 3rd grade) I had some definite behavioral issues. Specifically, I would absolutely freak out when I got frustrated. Cry, make odd noises, hit my desk, run. Didn’t matter what the source of the frustration was, whether I couldn’t figure out a math problem and therefore felt stupid, or was being made fun of, or felt left out of something, any sort of frustration. This made me an absolutely prime bullying target during my grade-school years because I was so easy to provoke. Thankfully, with the help of some very patient teachers and parents, I grew out of this. I still, of course, get frustrated, and my reactions to my frustrations are probably more violent than average Joe’s, but I’m much better able to internalize it and process it.
18. When I’m in an especially good mood, I will half-dance/bop my way down the sidewalk and I will do what I call “jazz humming,” wherein to a nonspecific tune I will make little jazz noises—“bam de bam bow,” etc, in a way that is very much like humming. And I do not care if anyone watches me while I do because I’ll be in that good of a mood. If I’m ecstatic, finger-snapping will be added in as well.
17. I enjoy dancing but I have to be in this really weird very specific mood to do it. If I’m not feelin’ it I just can’t make myself, and oddly, trying to fuel it with requests (“why don’t you dance?”) will just make me want to dance less. I’m still not really sure how it works. When I do actually get in the mood to dance, though, man is it fun.
16. Porcelain dolls terrify me and are probably the most irrational of my irrational fears. Plenty of people will admit they’re creepy, sure, but I feel really uncomfortable even just being in the same room as one. If I had to sleep in the same room as one I wouldn’t be able to. They evoke a really big Uncanny Valley response in me, something about the combination of those dead eyes with that insincere little smile and those vile little outstretched arms. Sometimes when I see one I have an urge to just smash it to bits but I know I could never do that because the only thing creepier than a porcelain doll is a broken porcelain doll.
15. My childhood monsters were odd. A lot of us, as kids, invent monsters that will come after us in certain situations, but the only one I can really remember now strikes me as especially strange for a kid. I believed in a witchlike entity called The Roach Queen, who at night would send a vast, huge, army of roaches to cover every inch of my walls and floor once I had fallen asleep. They wouldn’t do anything, oddly, just watch me, but it was creepy all the same. Maybe they reported back to her on my dreaming activities.
14. I was a pretty sick child (medically, I mean. Not, like…twisted or bad) and have been on some form of medication (usually multiple ones) throughout my life until very recently, when I just decided to quit my allergy meds on a whim and free myself utterly from daily pills. Really, I’ve grown to hate pills a lot, and ironically my allergies have been better since I stopped taking the meds. I recommend being med-free if you can help it, I find my mind’s a lot clearer. A lot of times I’d even rather wait out a headache then take some ibuprofen.
13. I wore sweatpants all the time as a kid up until…I think fourth grade. All the time. Granted, they’re comfortable, but looking back that’s really kind of odd. I remember I thought jeans were too stiff and uncomfortable. I even sort of coordinated some of them…I wore red ones on Valentine’s for example.
12. I have big old mutton-chop sideburns mostly because I think it gives me a bit more of a Victorian-era aesthetic. Seriously, I love the 19th century’s visuals.
11. Condiments, especially ketchup and mustard, gross me out to the point of triggering my gag reflex, yet I’m okay with mustard as a flavour in stuff. It’s a key ingredient to good egg salad, and there are these mustard-flavoured pretzel snack things I’m really fond of. But apart from that, condiments are usually eww. Something that especially has ketchup on it I consider “contaminated.”
10. I once was actually sleep-deprived to the point of hallucinations, as part of a brutal finals week in college. Mostly it was just seeing odd sparkles, but I remember one particularly vivid one where out of the corner of my eye, I just missed a huge purple-and-black worm slithering under someone’s car. At 3 in the morning on a dark street with no one around, that freaked me out a lot.
9. I’ve mentioned this one before, but it bears repeating: for a brief time in my childhood I wanted to grow up to be a mime. Yes, a mime. A mime troupe put on a performance at my school and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I can still do a decent “trapped in an invisible box” and “leaning on an invisible table.”
8. Again, have mentioned this one before, but it’s odd enough. I’m missing half my thyroid gland. And apparently always have been. Like, half of it just doesn’t exist. So far, though, this hasn’t had any problems—the remaining half has been compensating just fine and producing the proper levels of thyroidy chemicals I need.
7. I’m ashamed to say that I sort of waste paper when I’m artistically frustrated. Some days, if the lines don’t turn out right, rather than trying to fix it or erase it and start over I’ll just crumple the page and grab a fresh one. I’m trying to get better about that and am mostly succeeding.
6. I like a lot of old-fashioned candies, ones that a lot of people don’t seem to anymore, and did even when I was a kid: I genuinely like Necco wafers and horehound drops, and have always preferred black licorice over red. Don’t get me wrong, I totally like other newer ones too. But that’s not what we’re writing about today.
5. I can only whistle inhaling.
4. When I was in high school I kept an angst journal. You know, typical high school stuff—self-indulgent and depressing rants, terrible poetry and the like. That’s not unusual. What is unusual is that the cover was rainbow with a big fat happy face, and the pages were pink and lined with floral patterns. The cover I didn’t care about—but it had been given to me shrink-wrapped, so I didn’t know about the pages until later and for some reason it didn’t occur to me to just buy a different journal. In hindsight, that incongruity is really hilarious to me—teenage vitriol on pink flowery pages. Some time in community college I ripped all those pages out and threw them away. The then-blank journal was appropriately lost.
3. I used to make cartoon shorts with PowerPoint. There is a surprising level of animation complexity you can pull off with it if you’re patient enough. Naturally, the file sizes were massive and they relied on a lot of carefully timed spacebar presses to work right, so I never really went anywhere with them aside from showing people that happened to be over at the time.
2. Again from when I was pretty young (I must have been quite an odd child), I would often stuff clothing with blankets and set them up in places around the house as sort of cloth mannequins. I’d even pose them. I’d use gloves for hands and things like balloons and buckets for heads. I called them “Snertles.” One of these days I should try my hand at making a Snertle again, for fun.
1. I once had pet crickets. Which is where the whole cricket fixation comes from. (Said fixation isn’t as obvious here, but I’ve used it as a motif for all sorts of things for years. I’m even planning to get a cricket tattoo sometime.)
Celebrate. It is a command.
[Holden Out.]
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