Shortly after cowboy caleb made my web host dance, comes the news that we’ve been tomorrowed. New readers have been sending kind comments and such, but to the wrong people… so here’s a brief primer on who’s who and what’s what on Squarebrain.

I’m Ray, and I do the writing around here. People wishing to gush about the pretty pictures may send their raving fanmail to Zeng, who does the art around here.

Our update schedule is kind of wonky; we’re still having growing pains, I’m still tweaking the page layout, Zeng is working, etc.

Thanks to all of you who linked us, and thanks for the comments! If I may make a small request: if you want to show our strip on your site, could you download it to your computer, and upload it to your own site? Our bandwidth usage has surged, and at this rate I fear for its integrity. Yes, I know our work is copyrighted, but unless you try to sell it/claim it as your own/fail to give credit or whatnot, we’re not going to humtum you, okay?

(Yes, I am looking at alternative forms of licencing, so don’t worry)

Alright, now that’s over with, here’s some real freaky news: zombies exist! In Cambodia, no less. Adri, I don’t know you, but if you do turn into a zombie, for the love of God don’t come back to Singapore!

(Disclaimer: I highly doubt it’s true, but it had you going there for a minute, didn’t it?)

You trust yourself to take notes during class; yet when end-of-semester revision comes, you realize your notes are anything but complete. Here are some choice extracts from my notes, written by me, during lectures and/or classes.

“Bleah… then lecturer talks about a whole lotta crap. I don’t think it’s important. Blah. Blah blah blah!”

“See below”
*Scrolls down a few pages trying to find the case summary
“See above”

“Blah!”
(Seen occupying the space meant for a case summary.)

“You missed a lot of stuff here.”
(Thanks.)

“Gawd she’s long-winded.”

“wtf is that?”

“see para 74 of their whining”
(A reference to a negative CEDAW committee report on Singapore)

“The guy tried to escape, but didn’t make it, was shot on TV. Woot!”
(A reference to Nicolae Ceacescu)

“Alright, I switched off about here.”

“He made a comeback selling porn”
(A reference to the non-legal aftermath of Barclays Bank v Quistclose)

“Okay, this whole chunk is bullsh*t lar”
(written after about 7 lines of copying down a side-story that was utterly irrelevant)

“Aww, his heart is in the right place.”
(On a judgment by Lord Denning MR)

And my personal favourite:

“She’s mooning me again!”
(On a member of the female persuasion with low-slung jeans, who was sitting diagonally across from me, who was bending down to pick up her dropped pen, who, in doing so, exposed most of her… um, upper backside, so to speak, for the whole Lecture Theatre to see)

Woke up today, trudged to the fridge for my morning glass of milk, and was greeted with a picture of Olinda Cho (a Singapore Idol finalist).

Having only just woken up, it took a few seconds for the image to actually sink in. And few more long seconds later, my brain coughed up its first question: ‘Huh?’

This was immediately followed by ‘Who stuck this picture here?’ and ‘I didn’t know we had Olinda fans in this house!’

So I voiced out my confusion to my mother, who’d been watching me stand there staring at the newspaper clipping with a get-out-of-my-way look in her eye.

Me: “Who stuck this here?”
Her: “I did.”
Me: “Why?”
Her (sagely): “So that whenever I look at it, I’ll think ‘I cannot become like that!’ and I’ll have motivation to exercise.”

Heh.

*For the record, my mother, who is in her late 40s, plays tennis at least twice a week, golf roughly once a week, and goes on what I shall charitably call “jogging” (she’s old lah, cannot blame her speed) fairly regularly. She also appropriated 3kg dumb-bells from somewhere and uses them whilst watching TV.

This one time, I got back home just in time to see her using our staircase for - you guessed it - exercise. Up and down and up and down.

So no, I don’t think that fate awaits her.

**Given the recent spat of retractions and apologies and threatened lawsuits, I feel it is only smart to insert some sort of disclaimer here. I present this (and other stories) only as humorous anecdotes; rest assured I do not mean to insult, defame, libel or otherwise piss anyone off. Break a leg, people!

On a related note, I am very sorry to see that Acidflask has taken his blog down. Good luck with your future endeavors, and here’s to hoping everything blows over.

Edit:

Everything (well, as much as could be collated) you need to know about the Acidflask (and nilsinelabore) situation, from Singapore Angle.

Someone made a tetris game that uses an algorithm specifically designed to thwart your skills as a puny human.

Unfortunately, it’s for linux.

Fortunately, Mac OS X is based on linux unix.

Even more fortunately, some guy on slashdot has helpfully tipped us on how to compile the thing on a Mac.

So I’ve kindly compiled it for Mac users, that you may suffer the agony of being defeated by a lowly game of tetris. Windows users are out of luck.

Before you click, this program is distributed under the GNU licence, and is presented AS IS, with no warranties whatsoever. It’s been tested on Mac OS 10.3.9, but I suspect it works in earlier versions just fine.

Here it is. Unzip it and double-click on “bastet” to play.

[Link, via /. via pressthebuttons]

Edit:

No sooner had I written this up when Zeng informed me the strip had been updated. Enjoy!

So I’m talking online to a friend of mine, and she’s just sent me some animated gif of an anime chick with bouncing boobies. Which is actually pretty cool if you think about it. Me, I prefer a nice rear view to a nice front view, but to each his own, yeah? In any case, the following is a transcript of what happened afterwards:

Rayonnair says: why else would i have the most beautiful ass in the world* gracing my desktop
[someone] says: cause guys are daft when their testosterone takes over their mind
Rayonnair says: and girls love it =)
[someone] says: no
Rayonnair says: prove it =)
[someone] says: how?!
Rayonnair says: present evidence
[someone] says: guys enjoying porn

At which point, I was positively snorting with laughter.

Come now. When was the last time you saw a girl attracted to a pussy-boy? Because that’s what a guy without “testosterone” is… a pussy-boy! Testosterone-man, on the other hand, exudes fertility (me have big ‘nads!), security (me have big pecs!) and survivability (healthy offspring will pour from my loins!).

Testosterone-man is the Alpha Male. In his younger days, he is Brad Pitt. In his older days, he is George Clooney. Hands up, anyone who remembers Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Yes… you people know exactly what I’m talking about.

Women are biologically hard-wired to feel attraction towards testosterone-man. It’s a pattern repeated across all animals that reproduce sexually - Alpha male = sexy, period.**

And what of men? Well, men like boobies. Men like legs. Men like hips. To be precise, men like seeing these things. Because to a man, they represent fertility (I am not diseased!), security (your children’s heads can fit through these hips!), and survivability (my teats can feed the armies of Mordor!).

Ladies, before a date you make yourself presentable, yes? A non-negligible amount of time goes into visually enhancing yourself; choosing the right clothes, making up, wearing heels, et cetera. Not to mention the effort expended in trying to make it look effortless.

And so we arrive at the irony of it all. Guys, generally, are pumped with testosterone. You (women) attribute our enjoyment of pornographic materials to said pumping. Yet you yourself pander to our basest of desires! The very thing you protest against (me like boobies! *grunt*) is the very thing you implicitly aid, abet and acknowledge.

Testosterone-man?

You know you like it!

*The most beautiful ass in the world, of course, belongs to Keyra Augustina (go run a google search you lazy perverts).

**All of the most attractive, intelligent, witty, coherent, and (counter-intuitively) sweet girls I know, acknowledge this as truth. They acknowledge it without bitterness, nor resentment, nor stubbornly burying their heads in the ground (e.g. “Oooh, society made me that way”). You know who you are, babes… and we love you for it.

Seen whilst playing Text Twist (as opposed to hitting the books):

Well, make it a part of your dictionary, damnit!

It is done. And with that, I’ll never look at the Law of Equitable Trusts and Obligations again!

At least, until I get into the working world.

So much has happened in so little time. A life uncommon went down for reasons I can’t rightly discern. Casinos and 2D cows are coming to Singapore. A new pope got elected. Some dude called local bloggers infantile. Tomorrow.sg was launched.

It’s all cool, man. It’s all cool.

Adrian, don’t worry about it. It’s the intarweb, shit happens.

I have nothing to say about casinos, but these people do. (Link seems to be 404′d at the moment… check here instead) [via Tomorrow.sg… mmm, going to have to get used to that].

Those cardboard(?) cows seem to be popping up everywhere. I vaguely remember cowboy caleb (or somebody) having pictures of cows humping each other but I seem to have lost it.

The pope… well, I’m sorry, but he’s 78 years old and we’re likely to have to go through this election process again. Like, soon. What’s the point of electing a leader so old, anyway? Is there some other devious ulterior motive at work? Me smells a rat. (Get it? Rat? RAT-zinger? Hahaha.. hah.. ha.. okay so that’s not funny.)

As for the “infantile” label, I accept it with honour. Here in Singapore, the best way to criticize is to jest. Anything more serious leads to scary things like lawsuits. Though admittedly, nobody ever changed state policy with jokes.

And Tomorrow.sg sounds like a capital idea. It remains to be seen whether the admins can keep up the soon-to-be ludicrous moderation rate. Don’t really think much of the site layout, though - all muddled and crowded. But hell, who am I to talk… Squarebrain is pink!

Onto more serious matters. I’m well aware that the comic hasn’t been updated in over a week. That’s partially due to me trying to learn a semester’s worth of work in said period, and partially due to Zeng’s new job. As you may know he’s working in KOEI as a graphic designer (or something like that). He’s only on probation, so his work performance directly affects his continued employment. Working in KOEI is a big deal, especially for freshies with no experience, and as a result Zeng throws a lot of time into it.

Long story short, he’s finding it really hard to keep things up. So until further notice, we’re cutting back on strip updates. Maybe I’ll start doodling in this space, too… give that S$139 Wacom tablet something to do besides make my iBook look cool.

And now, back to the books.

Stumbled across this old article (2002) while browsing around Wired. Excerpt:

Semen ‘makes women happy’

Women exposed to their partner’s semen during sex may find themselves feeling happier than those who use a condom, say scientists.

Scientists in the US believe the mood-altering hormones in semen absorbed through the vagina help to boost women’s mood.

There you go, guys. Make your woman happy!

Jenna Jameson (a porn star) has collaborated with a game company to make - that’s right - a porn game. My initial skepticism (Jenna Jameson? But… but… she’s fugly!) gave way to amusement when I read a review of the game on Wired.

As expected, the goal of the game is to make Jenna come to an orgasm… a task which the reviewer (a woman, I might add, and Wired’s sex columnist to boot) had some difficulty achieving.

But the part that made me laugh came in the middle, when the game’s creators were talking about the feedback they’d received from subscribers about what they wanted in a game of this sort.

XStream3D depends on subscriber feedback for direction as the game evolves. “That way we don’t waste money developing features no one wants,” says Abram.

So what do people want?

“You’d be surprised at how many subscribers tell us they want smells in the game,” he says, musing on the possibilities offered by the Scent Dome.

*Nasty laugh*

I really don’t know if the average human being has the physical dexterity to click a mouse, press some keys, crane their necks to smell a device and pak chew cheng all at once.

It also begs the question… what exactly do those customers want to smell?

Oh, and Trisenx had better re-design their Scent Dome, which currently looks like a medieval torture device. Unless, you know, you’re into that kind of thing.

Taking a brief break from the stuffy confines of equity and trusts, I stumbled upon an entry from the tourettes-syndrome blog.

Of all the equitable maxims around, I like Equity taketh no shit best. :)

Yeah. It doesn’t take any - it just throws it back at us.

I watched Steamboy with Zeng and a couple of other friends on thursday. Two things struck my mind: 1) the movie has no female leads; and 2) animators get absolutely no credit for throwing away a decade of their lives.

Steamboy took 9 years to make, and it shows in the insane quality of animation. But the majority of the people who view this movie will probably be unable to appreciate it beyond “oooh”-ing and “aah”-ing. At this point, I really have to say it sucks to be an animator.

Good luck, Zeng! =)

Speaking of movies, somebody with a sense of humour has made a… well, 133t subtitled version of Episode III’s theatrical trailer. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, and well worth the 13MB download [via Boing Boing]

Also via Boing Boing is news that chocolate may fight cancer. Apparently a compound that naturally occurs in cacao beans stops breast cancer cells from multiplying. This, combined with already ongoing investigations as to chocolate’s ability to reduce blood pressure and soothe sore throats, is good news for chocolate lovers everywhere.

Oh, but it has to be dark chocolate. You know… the sexy, bitter version of milk chocolate.

And pet owners, please don’t feed it to your pets. The very stuff that has women addicted to chocolate (theobromine) is the same stuff that will kill a dog (or cat).

Edit

I forgot to mention, Steamboy’s music is like listening to the original Star Wars all over again. Powerful leitmotif, bombastic brass, thumping percussion… am I the only one who hates the background-noise approach soundtrack composers are taking nowadays? “Oh, I want the music to take a backseat to the visuals” my arse. Cinema is not just for the eyes.

A government agency plans to give $970, a camcorder and some clothes to poor families, so that it can test the effects of pesticides on their children. Sound like something out of a conspiracy theorist’s recruitment brochure?

Actually, it really happened.

Last November, Stephen Johnson, the Environmental Protection Agency’s acting administrator, thankfully cancelled the plan. “I am committed to ensuring that EPA’s [sic] research is based on sound science with the highest ethical standards”, he said.

It’s so heartening to see that some people in power still adhere to basic human decency. How wonderful it is that politics have been put aside, and decisions have been made based upon what’s actually fair and true!

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday canceled a controversial study using children to measure the effect of pesticides after Democrats said they would block Senate confirmation of the agency’s new head.

…

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, had joined with Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, in demanding the study’s cancellation as a condition for confirming Johnson’s nomination by President Bush.

Yes, America is truly an enlightened country, where ethics and equality are paramo– wait a minute, say what?

I wonder if the people over there are even bothered by this.

I have this guy on my MSN list who’s nickname once read: “A freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother”.

In my case it was “compass”. Yes, it’s a true story. How I confused compass with condom I will never know.

Zeng’s internet connection went down, and he is now living through what is my worst nightmare: a computer with no ‘Net access!

Unfortunately that also means the comic is stuck on his cavernous hard drive until he gets intarweb access again. That means no comic on monday; and it remains to be seen whether he can get it fixed by thursday’s comic. Here’s to hoping.

American learns japanese. American goes to Japan to teach English. American gets culture shock.

American writes about it.

Absolutely hilarious. Excerpt:

One day after class, a ninensei girl walked up to me, and out of nowhere proudly exclaimed “Spread your legs!” Perhaps mistaking the look of shocked bewilderment on my face for misunderstanding, she stuck her chest out and repeated it even louder - “Spread your legs!”

She then produced a book of colloquial English expressions. Apparently. She’d taken the phrase from the police section…you know, “Get out of the car! Against the wall! Spread your legs!” She had just randomly selected “Spread your legs!” and decided to hit me with it one day.

But imagine one day a 14-yr old Japanese girl walks up to you and just shouts out “Spread your legs!” I had no idea how to react to that. If she’d whipped out a gun or a a samurai sword or even a small woodland animal I could have dealt with that, but “Spread your legs!” left me completely incapacitated.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the teacher leaned over and asked “Oh, is it correct?” I somehow pull myself back together and say no, it’s not. Well, technically I suppose it is, but…just no. So then she asks “Why?” Oh Lord.

This was not in the job description.

Ah, Japan. What would we do without you?

Admin:

• Login - 2

Syndication:

• RSS v 2.0

News Categories:

• Comic
• General

News Archives:

• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006
• August 2006
• June 2006
• April 2006
• March 2006
• February 2006
• January 2006
• December 2005
• November 2005
• October 2005
• September 2005
• August 2005
• July 2005
• June 2005
• May 2005
• April 2005
• March 2005
• February 2005
• January 2005

• April 2005

  M	T	W	T	F	S	S
  « Mar				May »
  				1	2	3
  4	5	6	7	8	9	10
  11	12	13	14	15	16	17
  18	19	20	21	22	23	24
  25	26	27	28	29	30

Site information:

Powered by WordPress version 2.1.2

Nonsense compiled and generated in 0.135 seconds.

Site best viewed in 1024 x 768 resolution or above. For optimum viewing, use Firefox.

Site design by Lin ZE and Roe YS.