Spike's Cartoons and Whinging

$13.86 Worth of Justice!

Anyone else finally get their CD antitrust lawsuit check in the mail?

Think I'll blow mine on a spindle of CD-Rs.

Did I ever mention I used to REALLY like Egyptology when I was a kid?

The rats are to be mummified, stylistically, in the New Kingdom fashion.

The New Kingdom, a late period in ancient Egyptian history, was pretty much the last great hurrah for Egypt. The collapse of the 20th dynasty brought a three-hundred year span of politcal chaos and foreign conquest by the Nubians and Libiyans, later relieved by the Late Period of the Greek Ptolemys. The New Kingdom also includes some of the better known pharaohs, like Akhenaton, (allegedly) Nefertiti**, Tutankhamun, and the Ramesside warrior-kings (Rameses I and his progeny). Ramses II, or Ramses the Great, or Ramses the Insatiable Egomaniac, is more or less responsible with covering Egypt stem to stern in those massive, stony effigies you see in all the vacation brochures.

New Kingdom mummies are a decent compromise. The wrappings and methods are elaborate enough to make things interesting, but without the sudden, steep downturn in mummy quality that became common in the later Greco-Roman period. Plus, there are plenty of well-documented, well-researched examples to work from.

Some New Kingdom mummfications were pretty half-assed. Mummies from that period have been found with intact abdominal organs and brains, for example. Not protocol. I'll try to do a better job.

Further reading:

--A checklist of known, recovered royal mummies, noting their various deformities, dental problems, and states of decay. Needs updating.

--An even better site than the first, with portraits of the surviving royal mummies and theories on the ones that haven't been found.

--AnimalMummies.Com, a project of the Cairo museum. Briefly mentions the massive acts of wholesale fraud embalmers perpetrated on the temple-going public by selling them bundles of rags instead of mummified falcons or cats. Also, insanely weird "victual mummies."

P.S.: Tiresome notes on "the pharaoh Nefertiti" below the cut.

**Have you heard about this? I say "allegedly" because I'm reflexively suspiscious of the contortions the revisionist historians have had to do in order to make this theory work. In what basically amounts to The Grrrl Power History of Egypt, the theory claims that Nefertiti ruled on after her husband Akhenaton's death as a pharoah in her own right, taking a male name, Smenkhkare. It's like... I dunno. Popular feminist archeology. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I prefer the more commonly accepted history: The one where the pharaoh Akhenaten ditches Nefertiti for a cute nephew named Smenkhkare, who is not Nefertiti at all.

By the way... when he died, Smenkhkare was buried in the tomb meant for Nefertiti in a woman's coffin, which is about the most hysterically catty thing I can think of.

Of course, some historians prefer the transgender-empowering version of the love triangle, where the male mummy in the female coffin is very neatly explained in a totally different way. Namely, Smenkhkare (the boy) actually became Nefertiti (the girl) instead of the other way around, and ruled as an official queen of Egypt. (Stop that. No puns. We don't do that here.) This would also sorta explain why Nefertiti was depicted as Akhenaton's equal more often than not... Cuz as far as the rabble carving the monuments were concerned, she was still sort of a dude. And that made her a co-regent. This of course, doesn't explain the couple's numerous daughters.

Long story short: Depending on your agenda, you can pretty much see all of this any way you want to.

The Rats.

Current pets, future mummies. Make 'em feel welcome!

Neil.

Age: No idea. Full grown, though.
Length: About eight inches, not including the tail.
Weight: One pound. That's pretty fat, for a rat.
Favorite Food: Noodles. Red meat. Walnuts. Tea.
Disposition: Very, very sedentary. Neil can't even be arsed to climb to the top of his three-level cage for food sometimes, and just waits for Beavis to bring something back down to the ground level so he can steal it. He pees a lot, too. He's called Pee Beast more often than he's called Neil. He enjoys being petted, but not held. He sleeps in a salt canister he's chewed the bottom out of, and knows his name well enough to come to the cage door when called.

Beavis.

Age: No idea, also an adult.
Length: About seven and a half inches?
Weight: Less than a pound.
Favorite Food: Chocolate. And corn.
Disposition: Slightly retarded, but loveable. He likes to rock back and forth, like a kid on the short bus. I'm pretty sure his left eye is defective somehow; it over-reflects light. Unlike Neil, Beavis does not regularly mistake you for a toilet, enjoys being held, and will fall asleep in your lap instead of trying to chew holes in your shirt.

Neil and Beavis' hobbies include tormenting one another, sleeping in such a way that I poke them to make sure that they're not actually dead, and falling off the coffee table.

They're both former feeder rats, I bought them a PetCo. Yes, I know, you're not supposed to do that, but eh. They turned out okay. Healthy, well-adjusted, and pleasant company, which is more than I can say for most people I've met in Chicago.

If things go as planned, they'll live out their little lives gorging on potatoes and chickpeas and what have you, and, when they shuffle off the mortal coil, meet something comparable to immoratality. In their own, special way. That is, if one of them doesn't expire at three in the morning and I wake up to find the survivor's eaten his buddy's eyes out.

Up next: I dunno. A FAQ, maybe? Might as well get that out of the way.

Grass Roots Poll.

Mummifying my rats after they die.

I mean it. The whole deal. Natron, palm wine, canopic jars, chants from the Book of the Dead, sarcophagi, everything.

I'd be catloging this all on the site, of course. And I wouldn't kill them. I like them, they're my pets. I'd wait until they died by themselves.

Damned gross or strangely fascinating?

Snow.

I've got nuthin' to say. Imagine that. Here, have a picture.

The Art Institute. Taken the day after my wedding, while having lunch with the in-laws.

I love nature. Especially when it doesn't clash with the site.

Hey, look! The Modern Tales Yearbook!

I guess I can talk about it now, if it's in the newsletter, huh?

So, yeah. Eric Millikin, another Modern Tales guy with his own strip, Fetus-X on Serializer, is in charge of compiling the Modern Tales 2003 Yearbook, in which about 4/5ths of Sparkneedle will feature. It's big and it's cool and it's almost done, and hooray for that.

I'll give you a minute to click alla those links.

Maira, the big, fat, surly pseudo-angel with pink hair you see hovering over this blog on the frontpage, made the cover in the lower left hand corner, so hooray for that. In case you think I suck, though, there are plenty of other good reasons to sink your cash into the Yearbook: Andre Richard, Tom Hart, Drew Weing, Jenn Manley Lee, Roger Langridge, Donna Barr, and Chuck Whelon, to name a few.

Should be available by the first or second week of March. I'll keep ya updated. A picture of the cover, complete with Maira in all her irritated glory, can be found in Eric's blog.

Meet My New Friend, Barbara!

I don't normally take up valuable frontpage space to link back to old blog posts. But this isn't a normal situation.

In January, I linked to Wiolawa Press in an "Atrocity Tourism" post. That post is here. And you might want to revisit the entry and check out the newest comments.

Looks like whenever Barbara isn't looking for tiny creatures in Michael Jackson's skin, she's Googling her name. And thank Jeebus for that.

Mind your manners. I'd like to keep her talking.

Barbara, I am very, very sorry for ever disparaging you. Please accept my apology, and know that I welcome you here as a friend. If anyone, including my own mother, messes with you on this site, I will ban their IPs.

A little help, here?

Anybody know of a radio station that has both an online stream and airs Loveline?

My reception is crap, and Mojo Radio out of Canada just changed format on me.

Goddamn the technophobes at Clear Channel. Goddamn them straight to hell.

One day left to register to vote in the Illinois presidential primaries, folks.

Hint hint.

Interestingly enough, the Internet seems to think I should vote for Howard Dean, but none of the candidates are that great a fit. I guess I'm just that hard to please.

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (79%)
3. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (78%)
4. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (76%)
5. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (74%)
6. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (71%)
7. Bush, President George W. - Republican (15%)
8. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (15%)

For a real scare, take the test yourself, and click through to the "Constitution Party" policies. Republicans, but without the pretense of admitting anyone who makes less than fifty grand a year after taxes exists.

When Fangoria and Modern Art Collide.

I usually hate modern art. Seriously. I mean, I HATE IT. Really, really hate it. And thanks to a year in art school, I'm pretty much an expert at articulating exactly why.

But I don't hate Patricia.

And now, I'll bet you don't, either.

Patricia Piccinini's latest show, "We Are Family," is seriously something to see. Anyone familiar with Charlie White's work might get an Understanding Joshua vibe from it, but unlike White, Piccinini actually does all the creature design herself.

She's recently made the jump from CG to sculpture, which is fine with me, since it's a much more impressive a feat than her previous, computer-rendered stuff. You can compare and contrast on her site, and there are clearer, more detailed photos of my two favorites, "Leather Landscape" and "The Young Family," here.

The installation's supposedly a comment on biotechnology and the future of genetic engineering. Unlike most modern art manifestos, I actually buy that one... Probably because it sounds more like she's explaining a long-held fascination than trying to justify three lines of paint on raw canvas by chucking in the word "decontextualize" every second paragraph.

Anyway, check her out. Be rocked.

More Sims Custom Work.

Once you get started, it's tough to stop.

Dag Gummit surveys his newest acquisition.

The purchase window description.

This took way longer than it should have, since I Googled up a photo of Elvis and traced over it Photoshop. (I wanted a recognizable portrait, but a photographic painting would have looked incongruous.) I just now noticed that the room rating's a little too high. That'll need tweaking, but the graphics seem okay.

Not sure what to do next. Maybe an outhouse, or the tire planter, or that scummy kiddie pool Lisa suggested? THE WORLD IS FULL OF POSSIBILITIES.

Fun with The Sims.

So... I've been getting back into The Sims, after a long bout of disinterest. It turns out I'll have half a year or so to wait until the sequel goes gold, so I might as well get a little practice in.

One of the nicest things about games like The Sims is how easy it is to customize. There must be a hundred sites out there that specialize in groovy things you can download for the game; I especially dig Seven Deadly Sims and Persimmon Grove. But recently, Matt and I were forced to start making our own crap.

The game comes equipped with a menorah and Christmas tree, but nothing with Jesus on it. The West Virginian shotgun shack of my redneck couple, Dag and Nellie Gummit, was feeling the absence. Something had to be done.

The painting itself, front and back. That's Nellie admiring it in the foreground on the left.

The purchase window description.

(Nellie's housecoat-and-curlers ensemble, along with most of the kitchen you can see in the first shot, is available in the Sloth section over on "Seven Deadly Sims.")

It's not bad, for a first effort. But I think it's lonely. Wonder if we could churn out a truck-tire planter for the front yard and a velvet Elvis for the bedroom....

Music Appreciation: Clutch - Nickel Dime.

Yeah, yeah, another Clutch song. What can I say, I'm enraptured.

Clutch - Nickel Dime

Another Clutch outtake. This one's about colonization. Endless, persistant, unstoppable colonization, and its inevitable progression starside. Or, to borrow a line from another Clutch song, "evolution's finest hour."

Nickel 'n' dime. Bit by bit. Moonbases and rovers. We may not live to see it, but we know it's coming. Not bad for a mob of brainy monkeys that dropped out of the trees a few million years ago, am I right?

Okay sound quality, lyrics under the cut. Have fun.

They landed in Manhattan
With rifles and hatchets
Stinking like the living dead
Eatin' local fauna
Like there wasn't a tomorrow
As it bled, how they fed, how they fed

Sacagawea is gettin' meaner
Nickel dime, nickel dime, nickel dime
It's such a long road that we travel
Nickel dime, nickel dime

My Latest Morbid Preoccupation.

As anyone who's seen The Others knows, photography was a less-than-common thing in Victorian England, and it wasn't unusual for families to prop up/lay out the bodies of recently deceased relatives to snap their pictures. In a lot of cases, especially those of children and babies, a photograph was the only reminder of them the family would have, or it was the only photograph they ever had taken. The bodies were usually well-dressed and groomed for the photos.

Perfect example. See her? Dead.

I like this particular photo a lot. Partly because of the drop of something coming out of the girl's nostril, marring the image the photographer was going for of a perfectly healthy and very much alive little girl who happens to suffer from acute flashbulb-induced narcolepsy. Partly because the girl looks a lot like my currently very much alive friend Petra.

Hm. I smell a cheesy supernatural suspense thriller plot in there somewhere.

This image, by the way, comes from Sleeping Beauty, one of the very very VERY few books published about Victorian memorial/death photography. You'd be lucky to find a copy these days for less than four hundred dollars, because life is not fair. Fortunately, there's a very reasonably priced sequel. Somethin' for the ol' Amazon Wishlist.

Of course, all of this has only reignited my interest in Victorian psychiatric photography, which probably an even harder itch to scratch. Kind of uncouth to published volumes of the forced portraits of long-dead British madmen these days.

Support Your Local Bookslut.

SAUCY.

Just a lil' image I did for Bookslut's Cafe Press store; hopefully they'll put it on mugs or t-shirts or somesuch. Everybody loves a bookslut. Drop by the site and partake in news, reviews, and discourse on all forms of literature, including the much-maligned comic book. Hurrah.

And if you're in Chicago, drop by the inetrsection at State and Lake and take a gander at the Open Studio, an artist's studio visible from the street via massive windows. The current resident does chainsaw sculpture. And he doesn't mind if you stare.

It's stuff like that that makes me wonder why the hell anyone would want to live anywhere but here. I love my town.

Against my Better Judgement: Kenya.

I shouldn't link Flash, I shouldn't link Flash, I ESPECIALLY shouldn't link Weebl's Flash. I'm sure everyone's already seen it... but it's like a virus, I can't help but spread it. Enjoy. From the guy you want to stab in the head over badgerbadgerbadgerbadger.

FREE SNORKEL WITH EVERY VISIT!

3/4ths of Odessa Spotted at Comixpedia!

Dig the new cover by Scott! Look near the top. Those boobs couldn't possibly belong to anyone else. Poor thing.

In other news, I've been busy (read: playing Neverwinter Nights) for the past few days, so there isn't much to report. It may be worth mentioning that Sparkneedle might see print soon, though. Stay tuned.

Only 9/10ths of the story'll be included since... well... the real, two-year-old ending sort of pisses me off. So, going against years of absorbed do-it-and-leave-it-alone comic advice, I'll be redrawing the last few pages. Trust me, you'll like it. The old ending was just obnoxious.

PS: All the screens and video previews for this game are making me puddle like a puppy on linoleum. I want to build a home for unwed mothers and teen runaways amongst a block of West Virginian shotgun shack housing, and then go about populating it.