Xorton's Rant

George Lucas' reign of terror has ended. The news that Lucas had sold Lucasfilm to the Disney Corporation and the announcement of a new trilogy has come as quite a shock to fandom, myself included. I'm for one just glad to see creative control wrested from that maniac hypocrite before he completely destroyed the original trilogy, although he's now a "Creative Consultant" for the franchise. Let's hope Disney doesn't listen to him too closely. That said, I find myself feeling cautiously optimistic. Disney did an excellent reboot of The Muppets. I'm hoping they can reverse some of the damage Lucas has done to his own creation. Things I'm Looking Forward to Seeing in a New Trilogy: Star Destroyers, Tie Fighter and Stromtroopers, huzzah! Admiral Thrawn (I'm hoping the new film are based on the Timothy Zahn Thrawn Trilogy).  Any of the Original Trilogy characters (it's probably best they re-cast as much as I'd like to see the ori...

Last week I promised a rant on Halloween (part of my wider war on fun). I was all set to complain about the over-commercialization of Halloween (as based on the cartoon above).  However, I find myself unable to rant. As a child (yes, I was one once), I actually enjoyed Halloween, probably in all likelihood because it was over-commercialized. I can only remember wearing a "traditional" costume twice: in Kindergarten I was a ghost, and later in Grade 3 I remember going as Count Dracula... although on that occasion most people thought I was some sort of biker in a cape with a speech impediment (because of the fake plastic teeth). You see, when it was time to go out trick or treating, it had got quite cold outside and my mum made me wear my "Michael Jackson" leather jacket over top of the costume. Every kid at school had one of those jackets. It was supposed to be cool. One kid even had one white glove... everyone was really jealous even though it was only a...

At the same unnamed company I worked for (as mentioned in the previous blog), a particularly enlightened manager thought that since I was so good at creating technical documentation, it would be an excellent idea for me to create a "How to" sheet with detailed instructions for the office fax machine. It wasn't that anyone was having any particular difficulty with it, she just thought it might be a good idea... just in case we hired someone that had never used a fax machine. Of course, in my opinion, if you can't figure out how to use a fax machine, your only use to society is as a by-product in cat chow. Anyhoo... here's the sheet I created and posted by the fax machine. No one noticed.

The following material was an actual office report I was asked to submit (and actually submitted) a good number of years ago at a company I used to work for. Tired of spending hours and hours exhaustively researching and compiling information, only to see the finished report sit neglected on my managers desk for several weeks before being discarded or simply filed away, I decided it wasn't worth the usual effort, and put some small effort into writing something amusing, more for the benefit of my sanity than anything else. So far as I know, this report is still sitting in a filing cabinet waiting to be discovered. ~ Xorton Contents 1.       Overview 2.       Office Issues / Recommendations 3.       Conclusion 1. Overview It has come to my attention that no one gives my reports any more attention than they would a homeless drifter or a squashed fly, and upon submission, they’re usually filed aw...

Here's a Halloween themed cartoon I did a few years ago. I'm not sure if I still find it all that funny, but I'm trying to stay seasonal. Next week I'll post one which has something to do with my traditional Halloween rant.

For years I have maintained that as computer games become more realistic, in particular with genres such as the "first person shooter", we will eventually reach a point where "virtual shell shock" will become reality. It sounds funny, but I've had a couple of experiences with this possibility myself. The first one was after an all night bout with Grand Theft Auto 3. I was driving home and as I drove by a pedestrian, it occurred to me as though it was the most natural thing in the world to drive over him. Of course I didn't, but it left me with a rather unsettling feeling... normally when I feel like driving over pedestrians it has nothing to do with video games. The second occurrence has been more recent. For those of you not familiar with the Minecraft craze that's been sweeping the planet, it's basically a super awesome "lego on steroids" game with Windows 95 era graphics. It's the most addictive activity I've encountered si...

Children's television can be such crap. Since I've started watching tv with my nephews, I notice it hasn't improved any over the years. I assume you have to make a lot of compromises with your artistic integrity (or do a lot of hard drugs) to write for children's television. Anyway... here's a cartoon I did a number of years ago about that abomination Barney and one of the imaginings I had as to what should happen to him:

Fun with Users This morning I had my usual Monday morning bout with a block-headed user. I needed to reset the password on their account as they (naturally) had forgotten it: Me: Ok, please sign into your computer. User: (Blank Stare). Me: I need you to log onto your computer. User: With my username of yours? Me: (Dumb-ass) With yours. At this point the user attempts (several times) to type their username in. At this point it becomes clear that a user that can barely remember their own username has little to no chance of remembering their password. Eventually they succeeded. Me: Ok, now type in "1234567" in the password field. You'll then be prompted to enter a new password. User: It's not typing. Me: You need to press the num-lock. User: Huh? Me: The number-lock. You need to press the number-lock... User: (Blank Stare). Me: (Crivvens). Allow me. Trafalgar Day I know it shouldn't surprise me at this point anymore, but it's still...

This picture demonstrates why I'm not a huge fan of unions: The poor guy was on the road for the better part of three weeks.

I've been asked lately why I chose the name "Xorton" for my rant. Originally I'd intended to use some obscure Simpsons or Family Guy reference, but all the good ones were already taken. "Xorton" is part of an experiment I came up with years ago and I thought it would be a fairly original name for my blog. My idea was to have someone name their child "Xorton the Conqueror" ("Xoritania" if it was a girl) and see how long it took before their progeny put an ax in the back of their heads. So far no one has volunteered for this ground breaking experiment... although a friend did use the name for their cat. I've also been asked why I use an "x" instead of a "z". Simply put: "x's" are cooler and no one takes anyone seriously who's name starts with a "z". "Zorton the Conqueror"? Pish. Get lost.

Another cartoon from a long time ago. I'm posting this one in honor of the 35th anniversary of the Voyager spacecraft launches. I've done my best to draw the Voyager probe accurately (if not exactly to scale).

As I was reviewing my old cartoons to find one to post today, I came across this one. Originally the comment was in reference to NASA's "Faster, Cheaper, Better" approach to space exploration in the 1990's (as a result of severe budget cuts). As a huge space enthusiast, I find myself severely disappointed that the spirit of this particular cartoon still finds itself to be an accurate satirical comment on the current state of the US space program. I've altered the comment to be a little less specific... I'm confident that it will likely still be accurate in another 20 years.

Back when I first started working many years ago, in addition to working as the "mail room boy" I was also tasked with ordering lunches for the staff every day. The company had a policy that if you worked through your unpaid lunch hour, the company would pick up the tab on lunch. At the time, this was a pretty sweet deal (I made minimum wage) however as I made more money and took on more responsibilities, I realized that it was basically a subtle way to get a cheap hour of labour out of the staff. As soon as I caught onto this, I started ordering the most expensive items on the menu or ordering a "starter" to go along with it. Most days I was fairly successful at exceeding my hourly salary and on many days I had enough food left over for dinner. It was quite a nice loophole while it lasted. A couple of years later I think they finally caught on to my little scheme, so they changed the office lunch policy. The free lunch was cancelled as it was apparently costi...

This morning I was thinking about other funny anecdotes I could post and I happened to remember one from a few years ago. I was sitting in a Tim Hortons/Wendys restaurant with my girlfriend and in-laws. My girlfriend was waiting in line for a coffee and had been waiting a considerable amount of time as one generally has to in a Tim Hortons. This is usually a due to: Stupid customers who don't know what they want despite the fact that they've been in line for 10 minutes. Stupid customers who have orders for 20 people, but haven't bothered to write it down conveniently for the people serving them.  Stupid Tim Hortons staff who don't know what a honey dipped doughnut is. Really. I ordered one once and the idiot behind the counter didn't know what a honey dipped doughnut was. I mean if you've decided on a career at Tim Hortons (judging by this individuals age), you'd better &*$%*@^! learn what a honey dipped doughnut is. Anyway... I digress... So, ...

I think most people with personalized license plates are a bunch of tossers, however occasionally you do encounter one that is either quite witty or just plain cool. For example, this morning I was driving behind someone with the license plate: QAPLAA. It's actually spelled "qapla"... but I suppose if you're screaming it as Klingon would, an extra "a" or three is quite reasonable. I imagine they drive around with a bat'leth under their seat... tops my "argument winning stick". qapla' batlh je!

Recently I have received a number of compliments for my blog.  I certainly can't take all the credit... I have to give a special "thank-you" to all the flaming morons I'm surrounded by for supplying me with quality material to complain about. That said, there are unfortunately long periods where I don't post anything because I run low on anecdotes because the morons just aren't being entertaining enough... that or I may be otherwise distracted with my current Minecraft (or Mindcrack as I call it) addiction.   I have considered engineering situations wherein the morons would create some interesting anecdotes, but unfortunately most of these would likely result in a lawsuit and/or jail time. So, in future during the dry periods I will be posting a series of cartoons drawn several years ago by myself and a friend of mine. I don't claim to be the best artist or for the material to be entirely original (it's a little derivative of the Far Sid...