Beware of Coconuts

The most important thing I have learnt while travelling is just how dangerous the coconut actually is. Please. It's incredibly important that you read this article about how coconuts are trying to kill us all.

Sketchblog: The Truth Behind Squidoo Glitches

Lolcats. Or more accurately, wandering little Lolkittens.

They are to blame for everything. Not that you can really blame them - eight waving fishy-smelling tentacles? How could they not chase them? Don't worry, they'll get distracted by a Twitterbird or fall asleep soon enough.

The Unsuspecting Adoption and Subsequent Care of Websites

Don't feed it - you'll never get rid of it.


Sadly I didn't realise until too late that the old axiom about stray cats also applied to websites. Squidoo, DeviantART, Facebook, RedBubble, Zazzle - even little Twitter, perched on the shoulder of your browser. They all require care and feeding, constant attention and minions, bound into servitude.


Take Squidoo, for example.

For the first few months, I innocently tossed a few tidbits - fed it some content about art, got to know it and told it about myself. And then the affection started creeping in, as it responded to my attentions by arching its traffic levels higher and prodding me with comments and little responses. And then you teach it that first simple trick, and it obeys, producing your very own affiliate sale!

Squidoo is like a team of trained horses, all racing along.. until they trip over their own tentacles, flop over, and start squirming in all directions. A lot of learning is involved in corralling unruly lenses - but Squidoo has by far the greatest potential, when it comes to getting it to perform tricks for an audience.


DeviantART Is The Neediest



DeviantART is the sulky stray that ignores you, while you spend months holding out treats, throwing it scraps and begging it to come visit. you constantly count each glance it sends your way, agonising over the views on your page. And then, almost without realising, it decides to accept you through sheer inertia, and you find yourself overwhelmed with affection and neediness.

A complicated and unpredictable creature, you can never predict what it will prefer - the painting you laboured over for hours will be disdained, while the amusing sketch will be devoured with much purring.


Twitter is the Canary...although it grows into a vulture!


Ah Twitter. So welcoming, so easy to look after. The pet every new internet inhabitant picks up on a whim, to keep their other sites company. 140 characters is hardly a big commitment - a tiny little meal! But the more you feed it, the bigger it grows. And soon, you discover that it's lonely and failing to thrive - be warned. Twitter accounts naturally exist in flocks. A Twitter alone is a sad and miserable creature.

So you adopt another to complement it, and hook it up with some friends - and soon you have an entire flock of Twitters on your hands, to keep fed on fresh updates, entertained, and orderly. You have to watch out for the scavengers, the spam accounts, who exist to prey on the more innocent, and brainless, Twitters.

My Twitter  My DeviantART  My Squidoo

A Guide To The Unicorns of the Internet

A Round-Up of Evil, Robotic, Rainbow, Sparkly, Geeky and Dismembered Unicorns

Unicorns are classic mythological horned horses/deer/kirin/dainty cloven hooved things, beloved by two audiences. Little girls are enthralled with the pretty, dainty, magical horses - as a quick search for Unicorns on Zazzle and Amazon will show in a scary way.

The other unicorn-loving audience does have its "Pretty horse" lovers, true, but the major part of it has recognised the most important bit of the unicorn. It has a bloody great horn and can stab things. Who is this enlightened audience? Why - the internet, of course!

The internet loves unicorns. They're everywhere. From happy sparkly unicorns being ridden by sparkly, doe eyed, beautiful yaoi boys, to beefed-up, psychotic, robotic killers, unicorns appear everywhere! We love them so much, we want to play with them, eat them, draw them, wear them!


I got an email from ArchMage today about ThinkGeek's tinned unicorn meat - apparently if you want to import it into Germany, you better not write Unicorn on the package. Or meat. Or else label it 'JOKE. Not Real!" ... or include a Deutsch-English dictionary with 'Unicorn: fictional" bookmarked and highlighted!
"Canned Unicorn Meat" Gift Delayed at German Border as Rare Meat

And then this evening, someone on Squidoo posted in the forums about the joke 'prize' (of the same unicorn meat) that you get awarded at a certain level.

This reminded me of how many unicorns I've been encountering and writing about lately (mostly amusing), so I figured I'd make a Unicornic Blog!

There's the ThinkGeek unicorn meat, of course - which started as an April Fool's Joke, but is now sold as 'real' canned meat with mixed-up sparkles. Actually, it's a dismembered toy unicorn in a can - reminiscient of the dismemberable Black Knight plushie!

The Sisters at Radiant Farms have dedicated their lives to nursing these elegant creatures through their final days. Taking a cue from the Kobe beef industry, they massage each unicorn’s coat with Guinness daily and fatten them on a diet comprised entirely of candy corn.


If you like the look of the tasty meat and want to serve up your own, well, there's a spin-off ThinkGeek Prime Cuts of Unicorn t-shirt that you can buy - ideal as a guide for serving up a nice serving of prime love-filled unicorn steak and avoiding the slightly tasteless, chewier cuts of superglue meat. There's a (rip off?) version on Zazzle, too.

Next up is the flash game, Robot Unicorn Attack. Robot Unicorn Attack is as addictive, annoying and happy and harmonious and harmony, harmony oh looove...

...

Wait, where was I? Oh yes, it's as always want to be with yo-aargh!. Addictive. Yes. Happy rainbow flash game of doom. You can basically sum it up with this graph.




I wrote a lens on it, and that's doing very well, I'm happy to say. Which is how I know that there's now a heavy metal AND a Christmas version coming out/available for iPhones. Basically the same game, just with different endless songs and appearances. There's a Chase Your Dreams t-shirt and a 'loading screen' Robot Unicorn Attack T-Shirt from ThinkGeek out finally/already. There are also a couple of AdultSwim designs available.

The Robot Unicorn was probably based off Starlite - the happy, sparkly, rainbow maned flying horse from the Rainbow Brite cartoon. The pretty horsey with the colourful mane has also been lovingly recreated by artists across the internet.

Rainbow Brite's Horse Starlite
Yeah... join with me in a resounding collective "Stereotypicaooooh pretty...."

The designs of Starlite and the rest of the characters were revamped recently, from the pudgy cute little round 1980 cartoon characters, to sleeker, older, prettier, more manga-influenced characters.

OLD

NEW

On the topic of 'pretty horsies', The Last Unicorn has been loved for years, as a beautiful, classic animated film in a time when there weren't so many, and fan art and references to Almathea abound across the net. I've done my part by adding Almathea/Disney femslash to the Disney femslash collection *cackles*

Sadly, I haven't actually seen this famous film, apart from YouTube excerpts and for years thought it was the book The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge (because I could not fathom a famous book that I hadn't read, much les not even heard of!)

The AVENGING UNICORN PLAY SET is well up there in awesomeness - the Avenging Narwhal is even more awesome, as it impales endanged species (the unicorn less imaginately is impaling people), but sadly no longer available.

There's this awesome animated screensaver from The Truth about the death rate of smokers, which I downloaded many years ago and spent hours looking for recently. All I found were a couple of screenshots, and the original download site... which doesn't always actually work for me! I did finally get it to download (weird browser issues? The site itself? Dunno. But I finally have it again!)

It features badly drawn but apparently content unicorns, that jump back and forth between two clouds, floating in a pale pink sky with a giant rainbow arcing down across it...

... and 30% (or some similar smoking death statistic) miss, and either fall to their deaths, get struck by lightning or crash into the cloud. The corpse then falls to the ground and burns or decays into a skeleton. The longer it runs, the larger the pile of skeletons below...

And on this topic of horrible medical conditions, let us segue into the internet classic, Charlie the Unicorn.




And then there's this mysterious cutie

HELLO my name is the Unicorn of your dreams

And to round off, have some general unicorn art and linkage

• Patrick Rothfuss' lesbian unicorn was briefly hilarious (also, I love his books).

• Two of my favourite rainbow/ robot unicorns, for originality and execution.

Rainbow Stallion by Unicorn_Dream
View more Rainbow Posters


Steampunk Unicorn Damask Poster by redrevvy
Shop the other art at zazzle

The steampunk unicorn actually reminds me of the young adult series by Tanith Lee , which features giant mechanical unicorns.

• My contribution to the Unicorns of the Internet is my quick sketch-painting and story of the bloody My Little Pony duel.
  
  And of course, the pointy horse t-shirts!

• 
  A Unicorn is a horse that... T-Shirt by Flynn_the_Cat
  Make a custom t shirt on zazzle

And I've been writing this for about three hours (admittedly, while being distracted by Eufloria) so I'm going to suddenly stop, with no real conclusion now.

edit: And now, of course, there are the unicorns of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Twilight Sparkle and Rarity.

Avenging Narwhal and Unicorn Toys Impaling Cute Fluffy Animals

. WANT. These.

Too much 'cute' in your world? Here's the solution.

• The narwhal is an arctic-dwelling whale that's been called 'the unicorn of the sea' due to its long pointed tusk. While there's much debate about the true purpose of this appendage, the truth is finally revealed!
• The narwhal uses its mighty tusk to skewer the cute smaller animals of the world specifically baby seals, baby penguins, and koalas. This 5 1/2-inch long, hard-vinyl narwhal comes with 4 magic tusks (crystal, onyx, ruby, and ice) to impale the three 1 1/2-inch, soft-vinyl cuties included.
• Don't let cute overrun the world.
• Fight back with your own Avenging Narwhal!

AVENGING NARWHAL PLAY SET


 

Unicorns never lie, always lend a helping hand, are loyal, can keep a secret, don't use drugs, and viciously skewer mimes on sight. The Avenging Unicorn play set comes with everything you need to decorate your desk with an angry creature of myth determined to impale terrified onlookers: 3 human figures, 4 different magical horns, and 1 cute little unicorn of death.

AVENGING UNICORN PLAY SET

And finally...

There is only room enough on this earth for one majestic horned beast, thus the Unicorn and Narwhal must clash to decide the fate of their species. Two previous battles ended in a tie, with both sides claiming to be the victim of dirty tactics. Now you can settle the score with your very own Unicorn vs. Narwhal Play Set.



Unicorn vs. Narwhal Play Set

Sadly, most of these seem to be out of stock - though you could create a do-it-yourself avenging Narwhal and buy a Narwhal toy on its own
ALSO SEE A Guide To The Unicorns of the Internet

Silly Captioned Zazzle T-Shirts

I have a weird sense of humour... occasionally I succumb and make random t-shirts (and stuff) instead of updating my store with my artwork like a good artist should.

Especially when it comes to unicorns. Unicorns are FUNNY. I restrained myself after four, though... if you've got a better caption, care to share? (And if you really want your idea on one of the t-shirts below, they should all be customisable, so just replace the text)

Then there's the silly-to-me but probably not to other people ones...

Good Witch! T-Shirt by Flynn_the_Cat
View other Tshirt T-Shirts

DO NOT WANT by Flynn_the_Cat
See more Do T-Shirts

If I'd Been Koschei Tshirt by Flynn_the_Cat
View more Firebird T-Shirts

Then there's the political/argumentative ones...

My argument is so powerful I don't need to say it by Flynn_the_Cat
Browse other Flynn T-Shirts

I Can Change Your Opinion With My MIND by Flynn_the_Cat
See other Flynn T-Shirts

For Science. A Poem.

[I just spent an hour on this... I do have a life! But sadly I forgot to make a save point. How many quotes/misquotes can you spot? Critiques are welcome! You can also try and answer the quiz about the quotes on this page: For Science: The Geekiest Poem Ever]

I live my life free of compromise
So I am wary of Google
Because its answers weigh less
Than its operating manual..

I find the world inconceivable
I aim to misbehave for science
And promote people to the level
Of their incompetence

Noah's ark is a problem.
The lies are inside my head
And I'm all out of gum
So bring out your dead

For science.

But Han shot first so the cube could live
Now when I offer cake
It is actually some sort of delicious biscuit
So please don't panic.

The world needs hope right now but
This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
Gunpowder treason has been forgot
And fear is the little-death that condemns this place

It's dangerous out there, so
If I know kung-fu, I don't have to dodge bullets.
Watch how I soar, and step into the shadows
Without complaint or regrets.

For science.

There is no Earthly way of knowing
If the cake is truly inconceivable
Or if winter is really coming
Or where your towel is right now

It's dangerous to go alone!
Together we need to go deeper
We're going to need a bigger boat
And let the harvest hope for the reaper

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing
So we must put our differences behind us
Take up hokey religions and ancient weapons
Learn the air-speed velocity and use the force

For science.

Our existence deforms the universe
So one of us should say goodbye
And it shouldn't be me because
I am just too pretty to die

I will not go gently into that good night
It is pitch black and the road
Goes ever on and on, until i am out of sight
In a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

I must live long and prosper
And be a leaf on the wind, not be eaten by a grue
You may have killed my father
So don't go to sleep or the kittens will eat you

For science.

I curse your sudden
But inevitable betrayal
But you gained nothing
the princess is in another castle!

You have sent a machine
To do a human's job
In against a Sicilian
When death is on the line!

I have beaten your artificial intelligence
With real stupidity
Luckily on the subject of kneecaps
The Bible is somewhat fuzzy

I have owned all your bases
And in the darkness bound them
I really must apologise
For the inconvenience.

For science.

I said "I may be dead but I'm still pretty,
Which is more than I can say for you."
This has made a lot of people very angry
And has been widely regarded as a bad move

Most people want things like a candle-flame
But you don't have to be a gun
Although Vera is a hokey name
I'm never gonna give you up

My baggage doesn't try and kill me every five minutes
Although the pattering of hundreds of little feet
Still makes me nervous and
If your life had a face, I would punch it.

For science.

It is very cold in space, I fear
And my god, it's full of stars
I can see your house from up here
Just me and the world. And Mars.

The existence of life is
A highly overrated phenomenon.
For three years I had roses
And apologized to no one.

Practice the art of spannungsbogen
And arrive precisely when you mean to
Until you get to nine thousand and one.
Then divide by cheese error and reboot

For science.

Library Pirate Hat Day: Wednesday 15th September

Turns out that Pirate Hat Day has been declared for your library next Wednesday!

Post the news on Twitter using #piratehatsWednesday and join the Flickr group if you dare!

How to make a pirate hat

More info and other participants:

http://restructuregirl.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/and-now-for-some-fun-with-pirate-hats/

http://frommelbin.blogspot.com/2010/09/wear-pirates-hat-in-your-library-on.html?spref=tw

Awesome Linkage: Lesbian Unicorns, Shark Cancer and Digital Comics

Patrick Rothfuss is the guy who wrote the very brilliant fantasy book, The Name of the Wind (that utterly horrified me when it suddenly stopped - turns out he's writing a sequel, so I'm happy again!). The main character's a guy called Kvothe. Apparently he was once a lesbian unicorn. Or more honestly (and less amusingly!) the author made a joke about him being one, and Kvothe is now permanently a lesbian unicorn in the eyes of the internet (and I am so very much not helping with this).

This really makes me want to draw a lesbian unicorn. And wish that my fingers didn't keep writing 'unicron'. I did paint a unicorn last week though... and it's purple. The colour of being bisexual. I've decided that retroactively counts. Zazzle appears to have gone down, so I can't make amusing captions. Pity. I seem to compulsively consider unicorns a fit target for mocking captions. We could have had such fun...

Hat tip : ArchMage



Also, those stories and that big industry about the Magic of Cancer-Curing (s)Chark Cartilage? Debunked, as in kicked off the top bunk in the night as they rolled over on their pile of money. Sharks certainly do, probably, get cancer, and there's no reliable science to say otherwise.


An interesting read about the recalcitrance of publishing companies to seriously embrace digital media for its own sake: Please, Just Kiss Digital Comics On The Mouth Already ...and while we're on that topic, I've been sorting out my top webcomics page, so I've got pages for each update day (Monday, Tuesday... you can probably predict the rest!)

Vampire Cake Recipe

Just in time for Halloween, I've finally managed to wrassle a few sentences of sense of of an old stained manuscript. Enough sense, put together with my personal research, to write up the history of vampire cakes and begin to translate the care and creation of this delicacy.

A distinctive cake, it has a dark, dusty texture and a biting flavour with an iron tang, this traditional recipe has a fascinating history and a wide variety of regional alternatives.

You can read more about the types of vampire cake, and how to stop it disintegrating, along with my slow and careful translations of the actual recipe here on my Vampire Cake lens. I strongly recommend it, it's just perfect for Halloween.

The Best Geeky California Gurls Parodies

Okay, I'll admit to a certain fondness for Katy perry's "I Kissed A Girl" - without it, I'd never have discovered Jill Sobule's original version, and a myriad of disney femslash videos would not have been spawned.

The "California Gurls" song mostly just makes me cringe. And squint. However, there are at least two three awesome geeky parodies out there.

The latest one from Team Unicorn has Stan Lee, Seth Green, and Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff! And even better - quotes!

Geek and Gamer girls
We’re unbelievable (Tri-force!)
We all know
That Han shot first (It’s a trap!)
Anime
No dubs
We want originals
Ooooooh oh ooooooh
Geek and Gamer girls (Level up!)
We’re undefeatable
RPG
Achievement Unlocked
Browncoats represent (Shiny!)
We aim to misbehave
Oooooooh oh ooooooh

Geek and Gamer Girls Song - Watch more Funny Videos

"...virgin skin so white we're indoor only types"




Comic Con Girls
We're incredible
Slave girl
Leia bikinis on top
Star Wars chicks
So hot
We'll melt your lightsaber
Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!

The Problem With Cupcakes

A few months ago, Squidoo started up some 'clubs' - you find the homepage (headquarters) and make a lens using their template, and are included in that category. One of the most successful, apparently, is the Cupcake club, which ran a competition for the best cupcake lens, in a drive to get some attention.

Now, cupcakes scare me. Admittedly, when I think 'cupcake' what I'm thinking about are the little fairy cakes, so when I see some of the monster cakes that are basically muffins with icing, creeping over from the US, it worries me in a nervous, primeval, 'I'm about to be eaten by a giant lump of icing' way.

The problem with cupcakes is... you can make a lot of different decorations, add sweets and sculpt icing and sprinkle sugar and tint artistically or garishly at will. But what you end up with is a little tasteless cake covered in sugar. At least muffins are allowed to be carrot or raisin or date or ginger or chocolate!
Cupcakes are not. If they deviate from the rule of sugar and appearance in favour of taste or health, then they are shunned from tea parties! Expurged from recipe books! And worst of all, thrown in the oven, with a little ceremonial witch's hat. Such is the fate of those who dare too much with baked goods.

(This does remind me of the little lemon and chocolate vodka cupcakes my brother made. Not a good combination at all.)

No. Cupcakes enforce a strict code of conformity. You can deviate in appearance as much as you wish - in fact, it appears to be encouraged- as long as you do not commit the henious crime of adding substance or altering the soul of the cupcake. There is a drive towards purity - sugar, air, lightness!

It seems that the perfect cupcakes are the soulless, the substanceless - pure illusions. In fact, the best cupcakes of all are probably invisible cupcakes.

The cake is a lie and the poor Cube had to die for it

Sometimes you run across little moments of shared win, and you have to run out and share them. This last couple of days, it's been a little quote from an unknown Tech Support Person, that popped up on FailBlog yesterday.

I hadn't read FailBlog that day (yet) so the first I knew of it was when I started getting dozens of hits on my Weighted Companion Cube fanpage!

I do wonder though, how often they get 'the Cake is a lie' pulled on them? And I have a sneaking suspicion that the company this person works for has the initials AL.

Murdering Childhoods: My Little Ponies

Shimmer hung his head wearily, and paused to rest his foot a moment, blood dripping down his snout... he could feel the fresh pain of his wounds with every heaving breath, lancing sharply across his hide. The more deadly pains of torn and tired muscles dragged at his movements.

Around him danced his opponent - young, fierce, bloodthirsty Moonlight. She had waited until after he had defeated two other challengers before tripping up to take her place facing him in the arena. Foolish Petal had died swiftly, a blunted horn through her eye, but Damson had been tougher and worn him down. The sturdy male had succumbed at last to Shimmer's greater stamina and surrendered gasping and broken-horned. He had been led away staggering, to have his eyes gouged out and given to the young warriors to practice on.

And now Moonlight. He should have guessed it would come to this, but when she hadn't been in the initial line-up he had dared hope. Moonlight the killer, Moonlight the careless. He could not let the herd fall into her care - she'd kill for sport once she possessed such power, and maim at whim. Bloodthirst was a prized attribute in the herd, but not to the exclusion of sanity. And how he cursed his lack of foresight, he should have slain her as a yearling - but he hadn't thought she'd be a threat so soon.

A patter of blood fell on his face, as Moonlight flicked her bloody horn, mocking him. Both ponies were bloodsoaked, hooves red and dark, their horns spraying blood with every toss. The mud was churned and red from their battle, and from the great wounds suffered by the first two challengers. Canny old Shimmer had scratched Moonlight a number of times, but she was too quick, too strong, too vicious. His battle-scarred hide was criss-crossed now with new blood. And she mocked him, by splashing in the puddles until she was as bloody as he was.

Moonlight tensed and kicked, and Shimmer flinched and jabbed, then they broke apart again, circling...

He would not survive this battle. Even if he defeated her, some other young buck would take the chance to destroy him - or he would be casually shunned to limp behind the herd, left to the wolves... No. The best he would manage would be to bring Moonlight down with him, let the fight end with their horns buried in each other's hearts - and let the herd descend into anarchy tearing itself apart over who would take power.

Shimmer staggered again, strength flowing away into the dank mud around him, and Moonlight waited, poised, graceful and murderous.

This was inspired by *nai-XaIn's sketching a My Litte Pony at Doujin Overload and *AtomicFireball's [link]

When I was little, me and my siblings collected (from fairs and garage sales) a vast herd of MLPs (well, my brother was only five so he only had about four, out of the fifty or sixty). They were all secondhand, and we didn't even know they had 'real' names, and they often came missing most of their manes. We named them all, and knew their herd relationships intimately, and spent many long hours fighting turf wars between the herds, with the successful ponies committing murder and incest and betrayal with cheerful abandon (except for my brother's ponies - he got upset if we killed his )

The unicorns were by far the most prized - partly because we couldn't ever find many, mostly because they had stabby horns.

Sometimes they would invade the lego fortresses of the toy animals and stomp everyone. Other times we got out the giant crocodile.


Blood is so much fun.

Painted in ArtRage, about an hour and a half.

Terry Pratchett Recommended Reading: Nation

 Nation by Terry Pratchett

Nation

The first non-Discworld Novel in many, many years*.

Nation was very recently released, and I have to put it here. Nation is NOT a Discworld book, it's sadder and more serious and more sensible and far more openly philosophical. Nation is the perfect introduction to Pratchett, and while it catches a Discworld veteran off-guard with it's lack of black humour and slower, soberer pace, it makes up for it in depth. And the few moments of crazed Pratchett wickedness stand out even more strongly.
It's also a big book - the hardback has a beautiful cover, one that doesn't scream 'garish fantasy novel', the writing is quite large (as is typical in larger hardbacks) and it is long enough to be well worth the money.

What is it about? Well, think an alternate Victorian age, plague and a lost heir, as well as disasters on tiny equatorial islands... and the slow coming to terms with other ways of life, and thought, and piecing yourself back together. Think of dolphins. And gods, and traditions, and the sudden loss of everything.
Those who have read the Nomes stories will recognise the confusion of a tiny world suddenly exposed to the outside and learning that actually, they are so small they don't even appear on any maps.

If you need a book to give for Christmas, it is this one. But be warned, you may need to buy more than one...my family's already fighting over our copy.

*By Pratchett, that is. All those hundreds of thousands of other so-called books don't count