9-10-97

Hail,

First, a couple questions to anyone who can answer.
One:  Does anyone recognize the tune Daria and Jane are listening to in "Esteemsters" while waiting for Sick Sad World?
{It's called "Spit" and it's by a now-broken up band called NY Loose, from their "Year of the Rat" album - Wraith}
Two:  Has anyone made a tab for "Ice Box Woman"?  I don't play the guitar, or I'd make one myself.  I'd give the drum part a shot, only we haven't even seen the drummer yet.
Three:  Does anyone recognize the Sick Sad World font (the one used in the logo)?  With or without the drippleys (or whatever you call them).  Also, does anyone know where I could get the font?
{Sadly, this is an in-house font.  I don't know of any plans to make it generally avaliable - Wraith}

I finally went out and got a VCR, so the Ramblings should be getting more interesting.  ;)  This weekend I'll be having my own Daria marathon.  I've already found out something very disturbing, however.  There seems to be about 8.5 minutes of commercials per episode, plus about 1.5 minutes for the intro and ending sequences.  This means that there's only about 20 minutes of show in every half-hour.  Which is about 4 minutes less than most shows on TV.  MTV really crams too many commercials into their programming.

I've been reading some of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books recently, and I noticed something.  It's probably a coincidence, but, if it's not, it would point out one place the writers get their great sense of humour.  In "Road Worrier", there's a Sick Sad World that goes like this:  "Can monkeys surf the net... and corrupt our kids?  Chimpanzee Chatrooms, next on Sick Sad World", and it shows a picture of a chimp smoking a cigar and using a computer.  Now, in the Discworld books, there's a character called The Librarian.  He works at the Unseen University, the Disc's premier college of magic and big dinners.  He was accidentally transformed into an orangutan in a magical accident and has since resisted all efforts to change him back.  So far, a couple mon... er, primates (he hates the M word, and will give a short biology lesson - that no monkey is capable of bouncing someone up and down by their ankles - to anyone that calls him one).  However, there was a Discworld shirt that showed many characters using a computer, with chat-room-ish text below them.  One of them is the Librarian, although his caption is "Oook", which is his normal commentary.  (My favourite is Death, WHO TALKS LIKE THIS.  His caption reads:  WHAT DO YOU MEAN, TURN OFF CAPS LOCK?)  Now, I don't know if any of the writers are Terry Pratchett fans, but it's an interesting similarity anyway.

Wraith

9-02-97

Hail,

Amazon.com books has The Daria Diaries listed now.  An 80 page paperback to be released Dec 1, 1997, for $12.  However,  I have no proof this is the trade paperback that's been mentioned, since the author has a list of psychological books she's written (several about women or children or family dynamics in particular).  If it is based on MTV's Daria, this is an astounding, but promising, step up.  It would be an amazingly true-to-life story.  It may be worth getting even if it isn't based on Mrs. Morgendorffer.

Part three of Lawndale vs. Godzilla is up, so go check it out.  And I may as well take the opportunity to remind everyone about the contest (wink wink, nudge nudge).

I know I haven't been doing much with the Ramblings lately, but expect more activity in the coming weeks.  I just got paid today, so it's time to go VCR shopping.  Sometime this week I'll have one.  However, Ultima Online, my other time taker, is entering a final beta test state.  The last character wipe happened last week, so I'll be spending time there building up my character to go explore the really neat places I couldn't get into before.

Last week I managed to hit my disk quota of 5 megs on my www server.  I was faintly surprised, since I hadn't expected it quite this soon.  That's what caused the "document contains no data" error some of you received trying to look at one of the episode summaries.  And when I called about more space, the sysadmin said you'd have to be doing something pretty serious to use more than 5 megs.  And I haven't even started an image archive yet...

Nothing in particular to mention about the show today.  The ideas floating around in my head haven't congealed quite enough for my tastes, yet.  I do want to mention something in "Road Worrier" that has, amazingly, nothing to do with Daria and Trent, but read on anyway.  In "The Picnic Game", we get Trent's addition of a dromedary, then Daria's addition of a Eurocentric world history, then Jane starts to take her turn before being interrupted by Trent's driving.  Now, this means that Jesse added "the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney".  This was brought up in an e-mail to me that has since been delegated to the electronic void from which it came (hmm... e-mail as a virtual particle.), and I'm only now getting around to really thinking about it.  Those of you looking for a romantic interest for Jane, take hope at this.  If he's always like this, he'll fit right in...

Wraith