Mechanically Inclined

Hey, a thing.

2008-07-25T17:12:00.003-03:00

Out of practice, yes, but still just as bizarre.

This is the home of one Ermelius Mitrodior, bookkeeper and astronomer. it was built by a dwarf mason union immediately after they were informed that their pay from the city would be reduced by half. The telescope is worth five times as much as the structure itself, but no one is foolish enough to try to get to the top floor to steal it. More doodlings to follow sometime.

2008-02-16T03:27:00.005-04:00

Well, so much for that whole "regular posting for the hockey pool" malarkey. Um. I'm winning!

Maybe I will start drawing a bit more. Maybe. Working nonstop on assembly, and whatever else needs doing, is sort of a drag. Also, the Leafs suck right now and it's a downer. People leaving town is a downer, too. Lots of downers.

I just bought Rush's six earliest albums though. Upper. And I played "Roam" by the B-52s on Rock band perfectly. Upper. Also a crab-tank transformer is coming to me in the mail soon. Also upper.

Things ain't all that bad.

And now, sleep.

P.S. - Wish you wouldn't go away,
I know I'll have the nerve someday,
But Winter's chill and icy gray,
And fear and doubt came into play,
And that's a poor excuse as any
I'm afraid, the first of many
Whatever then, the window closes
Icicles on chilly noses
Froze the moment, froze the feeling
Fascination, most appealing
Maybe in some new dimension
All the love, without the tension.

The Fatkat Hockey Pool 2007-08

2007-09-05T10:55:00.000-03:00

Something I'm going to try and make regular on this blog will be reports on our office pool here at Fatkat, which I'm heading up as commissioner. So far we've got seven teams, and I'll take as many more as want to join by Friday afternoon. Once all the dust settles on that, I'll list off the teams and you can get to know your favourite hooligans.

Also, check out mmbbl.blogspot.com, which is my site for our in-office Blood Bowl league. First games take place this Sunday, and there'll be a report there about how it all went down. Don't know what Blood Bowl is? google it up!

We Who Are About to Fall Salute You!

2007-08-02T22:06:00.001-03:00

Magical Mister Mudd seems to have Dave the Barbarian beaten...until fate's cruel hand ties his laces together.

Foam fighting at the Wharf for the first time of what we hope will be many.

When in Doubt, Hockey.

2007-06-25T11:33:00.000-03:00

Still feeling bummed out, but when all else fails, the hockey bug bites me and takes some of the edge off and keeps the bile in the stomach where it belongs. SO, as a Leafs fan, looking at the recent draft and its surrounding activity, I have to say I'm pleased. Not pleased as punch, mind you, but pleased. You have to give up a few things to fix a few problems, and one of the problems last year was that Raycroft was expected to handle a schedule like Brodeur and carry this team on the PK. A few picks in a weak draft later, and enter Vesa "Count" Toskala riding high into town on the back of a shark, emerging from Nabokov's shadow and discarding the teal and grey of San Jose for the heavy, dripping-with-history blue of the Leafs. Also along for the ride is Mark "Taco" Bell, who in a perfect world might be playing on a line with Andy "Mc" MacDonald and Tim Horton himself, in some sort of delicious, fattening trio.

Many are upset about the loss of our first round pick. I think at this time, the Leafs can afford it, simply due to the perpetual logjam of young fellers in the system now. It might be different if the D weren't so stacked, and I'm thinking Kubina might be moved for some more free agent money. As with all things, time will tell.

Speaking of young fellers, I'm thrilled to see Chris DiDomenico get picked up by the Blue and White. To be honest, living a few towns away from Saint John now, and not really having a consistent hookup to radio or television outside of trips to Boston Pizza, I wasn't even aware he was in the draft. Now, I know he's a little guy right now, weight-wise, but he scored twenty five goals and fifty assists this past season. With the SEA DOGS. Do you know how bad the Sea Dogs were this year? I was there to see it. Imagine what this lad will do with a team that 1. has some other talents onboard and 2. isn't changing its roster more often than some people change their underwear. In short, DiDo was a steal for the Leafs, and in an NHL that is rewarding the small, fast, clean player, he can bulk up to 180 or so and really, really have an imapct. Let's hope he develops.

And now it's time to go for lunch and buy tickets to Transformers, my other sweet, pain-dulling, hope-giving diversion.

DiDomenicon, Transform and Roll Out!

Jealousy, Anger and Confusion

2007-06-20T14:19:00.001-03:00

Just giving you a glimpse into my head at this time.

That is all.

Well, it probably isn't as big as it sounds.

2007-06-12T12:49:00.000-03:00

This Summer, the First Step to Learning All the Answers...is Forgetting Everything You Know.

Stroudwerks Productions presents a Matt Stroud Adventure, in association with Dungeons and Dragons.

LONG DISTANCE VOYAGERS. Coming soon to a tabletop near me.

Thinking About Seaweed

2007-05-06T14:27:00.000-03:00

It's gross, isn't it? All that it lacks is a lumbering, dreadful, nascent malevolence. All life rose from the sea. So too, all evil. This one has a starfish.

2007-04-28T23:56:00.000-03:00

Okay, so I'm learning to use the wacom tablet. Prepare for experiments!

Yeah, lunch was HUGE today.

Space man. It rules.
The amazing Red, Green, Blue man. Except not so amazing.

This one I really like. It sort of look slike someone I know, now that I think of it. Let's call it Jill.

If you know my taste in music, you probably can guess who this is.

That's it! Go to sleep!

A bit of Transformers ranting. Caution: Very Nerdy.

2007-04-22T19:07:00.000-03:00

You're aware that I like robots. You're probably aware that I really like Transformers. Based on that, you should know that I am excited (to put it mildly) that they're going to be on the big screen in a couple of months.

What I'm going to offer you today may disturb you. It may force you to question how well you know me. Most of all, it will make you feel embarrassed to be a human being.

Ever since the news came out, back in 2004 or so, that the Transformers was going to be made into a Summer blockbuster film, the fandom has been in constant turmoil. Yes, Transfomers has a vast, confusing, internet-wide fan system which is dwarfed only by the likes of Star Wars, Star Trek, and probably whatever it is that girls and people who have real lives like to do. Well, that's not entirely fair. Now that I have a new job and am regaining a social life, I think I might have a life again now. Anyway. The point is, nothing divides a fandom better than something that you'd think would totally unite them. To illustrate this point, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of all of the various permutations of Transformer fan that have arisen in the past several months. Be warned. Some are more stubborn than gravity. Some are more anal than a porn star's birthday.

First off, we have one of the farthest ends of the spectrum. The Complete Geewunner. "Geewunner" refers to "G1", being the first incarnation of the Transformers universe, back in 1984. To this fan, anything but this original cartoon and its immediate comic and toy offshoots is garbage. less than garbage. This fan is usually pushing thirty or past it, and frequently carries an air of "I'm older than you, back in my day, etc". To this fan, the past is sacred, the present is worthless, and the future is scary. In context of this new movie, The Geewunner's life is a constant rollercoaster of praising highs and hateful lows, a whiplash of posts on the internet to allow the masses to know that either YES, the movie may proceed with his divine blessing, or NO, this film is filth and those involved with it should be sent to a gulag to atone for their crimes against True Believers. Peter Cullen will be voicing Optimus Prime? Glorious! Frank Welker got beat for the part of Megatron by Hugo Weaving? Blasphemy! Transformers is about transforming robots from 1984 and there's No room For Change. Think about that for a bit.

Following closely behind the Complete Geewunner are his assorted lackeys. They aren't nearly as devoted or as pure as he, but still find their own ridiculous reasons to not see the movie. To boycott it, even. Yes, some of my fellow Transformers enthusiasts still believe that this film is being made just for them, and not, you know, to make a zillion dollars on the busiest movie day of the year. What a crazy idea. Anyway, these minor towers on the great wall of Protecting the Purity of the Fandom have any number of complaints to lodge, most of them based on their own idea of what's best. A certain character is not present in the lineup of good guys/bad guys. The usual MacGuffin plot device has been switched out for another one. The wrong kind of truck was used. One of my favourites is the "Megatron doesn't turn into a gun" argument. Because, apparantly, some people haven't realised that a mighty robot turning into a dinky little pistol is not only ridiculous by standards of physical science, but also in the idea that somehow, this dinky little pistol which cannot fire itself is somehow more intimidating than a tank or a spaceship. thank goodness we learned that Soundwave was not in the movie early on, or we'd still be inundated with whinings about how he shound be a boxy little tapedeck. Because, you know, there's NOTHING conspicuous about a cassette tape player with a Decepticon symbol in a society that hasn't been using them for two decades.

Now there's an entirely different group, and granted they're half right because Pearl Harbour was about as good as a wedgie full of sand paper and wasabi sauce. They are Those Who Cannot Abide Michael Bay. Do they really think that a different director would give this movie some kind of outside shot at an oscar (Granted, it could very well win for some of the visual effects involved)? The honest truth here is that this is a movie about robots fighting and blowing things up. Michael Bay is very, very good at this kind of movie. People will slag him for Armageddon and its thinnish strings of plot elements (Ben Affleck, second-best oil driller in the world!) but the honest truth is that the director has nothing to do with that. He's there to make the shots look good. Michael Bay is right for this movie. He's not my favourite director either, but if you're going to blow shit up for two hours, do it with a guy who knows how it works.

I could have put this group in with the second group, but they're too funny to really block in with anyone else. They are the Human Inferiorists. From the get-go, these are the guys who posted in forums about how the movie should not involve humans at all. It should be on Cybertron, the Transformers' mechanical homeworld. Humans should take up maybe 10% of the film space, tops. And even then, it's just so they can get squished by their superior invaders. I don't get these guys. Do they hate being a miserable flesh creature? Do they dream of transforming into airplanes and breaking the bonds of gravity? Do they run around the living room going "woooosh" until they pass out and need a twinkie break? I've seen a lot of self-loathing types out there, but some of these people seem to actively despise their own race. It's absurd. Moreover, I'm going to go ahead and contend that humans are INSTRUMENTAL to the Transformers in all its incarnations. Why? because it gives us something to relate to. It gives a reason for these machines to transform at all. The wonder of the Transformers, as far as I can tell, is not watching timeless mechanical giants punch each other for millions of years. It's in understanding how this affects US. To spoil mildly (and very mildly, so don't worry), something the Transformers want winds up on Earth. Some of them are going to tear everything apart until they find it, and others want to retrieve it in a peaceful fashion. We have our conflict. We have a reason to care who wins. These may be my least favourite of all the fan subgroups, and I can say with some conviction that I hope their little brains explode when they see humans - HUMANS! - Take down a Transformer in combat thanks to our organised and advanced armed forces instead of simply rolling over and becoming so much lasagna on the concrete.

At one point, I was sort of bothered by the other end of the fan spectrum too. The ones who came in only because they were fans of the director or producer, the ones who think that the original cartoon was overrated (they aren't entirely wrong) or that the newer cartoons are vastly superior (they ARE wrong about that). The Japanophiles are usually on my list of retarded fans too, but since this is an American-made movie with American actors and designers and dialogue, they've been eerily silent, possibly waiting for someone from the orient to dub it so they can re-import it and re-subtitle it or some stupid thing like that. I'm sure they'll all show up again anyway in a few months to tell us how much better their Takara-made toys are than our Hasbro-made toys, but that's an entirely different story and one that isn't worth anyone's time, even their relatively worthless internet time. But back on track now. I normally might take shots at the doubtless optimists. The ones who can see nothing wrong with this film. The floater fans who show up ever few weeks and say "HEY GUYS THERE'S A TRANSFORMERS MOVIE COMING OUT LOL". However, their optimism is refreshing at best, and silly at worst when held up to the piercing pessimism of a great deal of the fan base.

Luckily, many of the doomsayers are being mellowed with time. It's growing on them. Not at all like, say, when Beast Wars came out and everyone HATED that Optimus was a gorilla. Don't hear so much about that nowadays. Probably because it was ridiculous and people got over it.

What's going to be the best thing about this movie for me? That's an easy one. Seeing other people, especially kids, enjoying this franchise as much as I did when I was little. The cynics will talk about all the money that Hasbro will make, and how we're being jerked around by people who have no emotional attachment to the mythos/history/etc. Luckily I've tuned them out for as long as I can remember being a fan.

Lastly, there are two kinds o toy fans in the world. The MISB (Mint, in Sealed Box) collectors and the guys who take them out and play with them. I'm in the second category. If you look hard enough, there's money in this hobby, it's true. For some of us though, we just like transforming robots. We aren't concerned with "generations" or what's die-cast and what's plastic. When the time's right I'm going to give my toys, all of them, to someone younger who can enjoy them hopefully as much as I do. Isn't that why we became fans in the first place? Fun?

When this movie comes out I'm going to have fun. It's not really that hard.

Getting a Move On

2007-03-15T17:33:00.000-03:00

A few notables in this brief rest in the eye of the hurricane which is packing my things.

Nik Antropov, I'm never going to make fun of you, liken you to Aki Berg, or hope that you'll be traded. In fact, I wish to share this beautiful representation of what you mean to your home nation.

To me, Borat will be always of second place in heart for glorious nation Kazakhstan thanks to hockey greatness being Antropov. Number 80 Ya Ya!

If you want a good beverage, if you love your antioxidants, go try some of that True Blue blueberry/pomegranate stuff. Man it's good. DON'T get the Superstore/Sobeys ripoffs though, it doesn't taste the same at all.

I hope Ger and I can paint in the place we're looking at getting. funky colours and murals will abound.

Okay, I guess that's all for right now but I'm probably going to start adding some degree of animationosity and hockeytude to this blog when there's stuff to talk about. Well, I guess there's some to talk about, like "Chris Simon BAD", but you probably already know about that if you're American because that's all the coverage that hockey gets down there. I think in return, we as Canadians should only cover incidents in baseball where a player scratches himself.

Got der jorb!

2007-03-12T01:38:00.000-03:00

So I'm a Kat now. A Kat who is, evidently, Fat. A Fatkat, if you will. I know I haven't posted in a while but that's because the life of a veggie slinger is not as glamorous or sexy as you all may have thought. As of right now, I have three consecutive shifts left, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, two days to get all my junk organized and embark on a magical journey of temporary housing courtesy of Ger, and eventually an even magicaller journey of sedentary living in Newcastle, effectively putting a stopper on nearly a decade of my rich, noble nomadic history and legacy. We can only hope that I will not forget to use every part of this proverbial buffalo, even the weird fiddly bit that just gets hung out on the clothesline and dried out into jerky.

Also, I hate to disappoint my many socialist and communist friends, but evidently I am comfortable with capitalism. Comfortable at least, in the respect of appreciating that I have the opportunity here to actually justify some of my hobby spendings instead of having to steal sticker cards for Extreme Pita from my friends and co-workers. Maybe one day I'll look down from this tower of money and think "if I jumped off, I might just land on someone soft and idealistic." Then I will chuckle and hug my dollar-sign burlap sacks all the closer, whispering that I will never leave them again, baby."

Ahem.

So. I have packing to do. Essentially everything I own must be ready to go by Saturday morning. I'll be taking but a fraction up with me, namely clothes, a few tech goodies, some music and some books. The rest will be on its way once a house is claimed and my ponderous mountain of personal swag can cease huddling together in one room like a dusty gelatin mould, and flop outwards in a cascade of action figures, Toronto Maple Leafs apparel and various shapes of dice.

Only one person in the world is more excited than I am right now, and that is the version of me that yearns to realise its potential and finally exist.

I'm Walking Along, Singing a Song,

2006-12-11T00:52:00.000-04:00

Walken in a Winter Wonderland.

Nothing Beats a Good Snow Job.

2006-12-05T15:52:00.000-04:00

I am here and there and everywhere lately. Lucky for you, I was here long enough to take snowy pictures and post them blogwise.

The Lair.

Postcardtastic Shed

I should sell this one to Canada Post.

I swear we're the last subdivision to ever get plowed. Sometimes as a community we race snowblowers to get it done.

These trees just blow my mind. For some reason my camera is a jerk indoors but a supercamera outside.

See the little tree? Now, imagine Charlie Brown and the peanuts gang going "Looo, loo looo, looloo looo looo looo, looo looo loooooo, looloo loo looo"

Now, wasn't that fun? Well, in case it wasn't, here's me sneaking up on a tiny spaceship.

MS Paint Challenge!

2006-07-05T10:25:00.000-03:00

Draw an album cover from Memory in MS Paint. I know I did mine like a month ago but the only person who joined in was crazy Justin and he sort of copped out. You know you did, man.

First, Do No Harmonica.

2006-07-05T01:08:00.000-03:00

Dear Internet,

I drew something today at work.
But a cute co-worker said she liked it and I gave it to her.
Even though she has a boyfriend and I think she wears too much eye makeup.
I'm such a softie.

Sincerely, so-and-so.

P.S. It was a guy playing a harmonica.

P.P.S. I have a harmonica.

P.P.P.S. I don't play it very well though.

The Only Warning We Would Ever Get.

2006-06-30T03:00:00.000-03:00

http://www.transformersmovie.com/

The Teaser Is Online.

Oh Yeah.

Cirrrcuitsss...

2006-06-25T02:19:00.000-03:00

Current frame of mind + (Robot x Zombie) ^MS Paint = Hey it's at least something, right?

The Wizard Turns on the Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins

2006-06-24T00:43:00.000-03:00

Okay, so the new reason I'm not posting art is because my scanner isn't operational. That means it's buried in the basement under some raincoats and LEGO, and the power source is in the laundry room I think. But hey, cool things to talk about abound.

We went through some of my grandfather's old records, and I gotta tell ya, think of the sexiest album cover ever. Go on, think about it. Well guess what, you're wrong. It's actually Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' album "Whipped Cream and Other Delights". Holy crap, man, whipped cream wedding dress on sultry sixties sexpot. Well, maybe the girls would disagree. The straight ones. And the gay guys. And that one guy out there who's only attracted to Xena: Warrior Princess. You loser.

Also of note, work is not too bad. There are a couple of babes working with me. One's a vegetarian though so that would probably be a bust. Nice to look at, anyway.

Finally, due to having money again I started picking up some CDs. Latest acquisitions include Jeff Martin (the guy from the Tea Party)'s "Exile and the Kingdom". David Bowie's "Hours", Yes's "Fragile", and The Flaming Lips' "At War with the Mystics", which my sister got for me for my birthday, cementing her legacy as coolest sister ever.

Until later,

Matt "You got the power in there, wavin' your wand in the air" Stroud

2006-06-10T00:25:00.000-03:00

No drawings yet, but OH HELL YES.

http://www.transformersmovie.com/

2006-05-30T13:42:00.000-03:00

Some many people are getting these things. Crazy kids and their big pants, and their interwebs. May as well hop on now before I become out of touch with the world.

I like robots.