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: