Here is a really funny series I came across which discusses the physics of comic-books. It appears to be the highlights of a longer talk, but it's really great nonetheless.

The speaker has a great sense of humor and seems to really enjoy comics as much as physics.

Enjoy!







Cheers,
-Jason

Next Saturday, Leigh and I will be attending the Tri-Cities Comic Con! Presumably, Leigh will be sketching all day and I will be waiting in vain for someone to ask for a sentence.

We will, of course, be overjoyed to chat with anyone who happens to come by, so if you happen to be in the area and can make it, come on by! We'll be the two nerds at the table full of comic books.

On a further note, it was pointed out to me that you can actually Follow a blog now. There's a little blue button at the bottom left hand corner that says 'Follow' (oddly enough). You click that, select the Single Edge Studios Blog, hit 'Okay' and magic happens. You will then be notified whenever the blog is updated.

Feel free to Follow my blog. Really.

Stay tuned for a new page Tuesday and the usual bloggy goodness the rest of the week.

Cheers,
-Jason

I happened to be reminded of the phrase ‘and don’t let the bed-bugs bite’ today. It brought back fond childhood memories of my dad saying that when he tucked me in. Of course, he used to add ‘’cause they’ll eat your liver’ on the end.

And my mother wonders why I’m an insomniac who keeps a machete by the bed.

Now, in all seriousness, when I was a kid I was both terrified of and fascinated with bed bugs. I had this idea that they were these huge Great Dane-sized monstrosities that were quite capable of severing your leg and then running away with it, presumably to eat it in the darkness with ketchup.

I figured they were called bed-bugs because they would attack when they thought you were asleep, suggesting a malevolent intelligence as well. I really, really wanted to see one and if possible, make friends with it. Oh, the adventures we would have had, romping around the countryside, scaring the cattle and devouring large quantities of Captain Crunch.

Of course, I was a pragmatic child and thus I always kept a blue plastic bat near my bed just in case the bed bugs turned out to be mean. It is not a well known fact, but there are few forces in the universe capable of withstanding a determined five-year-old with a blue plastic bat.

NOTE: On one occasion I actually defeated both my older brothers with it. I still have it, in fact.

Anyhow, I never did get to see a bed bug and was vaguely disappointed to learn that they were quite small. Still, there’s always the chance that some mad scientist will grow them to the appropriate size and my wish will be fulfilled (and hopefully, humanity won’t be destroyed in the process).

Cheers,
-Jason

This morning, after my bike ride, breakfast, ritual chicken-sacrifice, and shower, I decided to go ahead and shave.

I lathered up, mowed my face (more or less), and then splashed on a palm-full of aftershave. A few minutes later, after I finished running in a circle and screaming, I returned to the mirror to brush my hair and put the cap back on the aftershave.

It was then that I wondered: Why the hell do I do this? Shaving is painful enough, but why do I then insist on slathering blue alcohol on scraped and bleeding skin?

Well, in all honesty, it’s ‘cause my dad told me to. I remember well the day he taught me to shave, shortly after my sixth birthday. He handed me a can of Barbasol, a razor, and a bottle of Aqua Velva and said “You’ll figure it out.”

Oddly enough, that was the same thing he said to me when he explained sex.

So, why do we men slap alcohol on our faces after we just scraped it with a really thin piece of metal? I had no idea, so I went to that bastion of modern knowledge: Wikipedia.

Apparently, ‘It is said that the alcohol in the aftershave closes pores in the skin and prevents irritation ("razor burn").[‘

Huh. Well it is also said that if you throw a potato at a full moon, a werewolf loses its bunions. So, yeah. I am deeply suspicious that this is one of those things that is ‘just done.’ There may have been some reason in the past, when razors were large, ungainly things that doubled as chicken de-boners and were often used to fell trees, but I don’t know if it still applies.

Well, I’m going to keep doing it, even though I don’t know why. With my luck, I’ll stop doing it and they’ll discover that aftershave scares off the bed squid and then I’ll wake up with a face full of sucker-marks.

Which, of course, will make shaving even more painful.

Cheers,
-Jason

I never get to say ‘diaphanous.’ This is perhaps unsurprising, but it’s a perfectly good word that I never get to use. The word just rolls off the tongue, sort of like licking silk (which I don’t recommend).

NOTE: Diaphanous would be a really great name for an Elf. Or a Roman. A Roman-Elf?

It just seems like a shame, y’know? There are all these neat words in the English language that you just never hear. They’re either too specific, too obscure, or simply too hard to say.

‘Defenestration’ is another one. It is both specific and obscure, though relatively easy to say (rhymes with some other word that I can’t think of right now).

How about ‘morion?’ No, not ‘moron,’ ‘morion.’ You could, I guess, call someone a morion, but it would be both strange and nonsensical (and would thus score double points).

Here are a few more of my favorite, rarely used words:

Ossuary
Jugulate
Awl
Missive
Unguent
Rune
Prestidigitation
Septuagenarian
Orifice
Phantasmagoria
Salacious

So, your homework, should you choose to accept it, is to use one word this week that you never use. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just unusual and pleasing to your ear. I will try my best to work ‘diaphanous’ into a conversation, but I work mostly with men of the smelly, stout variety, so diaphanous might not be a good thing.

Cheers,
-Jason