Kickstarter … Expectations

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I found myself randomly browsing through old Kickstarter projects that I’ve supported over the years today, and I’m not sure if I was a little surprised or miffed at the results…

Since 2011, I’ve supported 13 projects total….

Project Funded Est Delivery Done?
Theater Hopper: Year Three Dec 2009 n/a Y
Kris and Scott’s Scott and Kris Show Jun 2011 n/a Y
STRIPPED: The Comics Documentary Sep 2011 Jan 2012
The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive Feb 2012 Apr 2012 Y
Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded May 2012 Oct 2012
I AM BIG BIRD Aug 2012 Dec 2013
Fight for Space – Space Documentary Aug 2012 Dec 2013
d20 Monkey: First Edition Nov 2012 Feb 2013 Y
9 Year Old Builds Her First RPG… Apr 2013 Jul 2013
Code Monkey Save World May 2013 Nov 2013 Y
Penny Arcade’s “Downloadable Content” May 2013 Jun 2013 Y
The Webcomics Handbook Jul 2013 Oct 2013
The Doubleclicks’ New Album “Dimetrodon” Feb 2014 Jun 2014

 

Now the last one literally just finished, so no harm there, but you can see that all of the others estimated delivery dates at the max of Christmastime last year, but they’re still not resolved – some by a month or more and some by over a year!

And granted, there are a few that probably should get exceptions:

  • The LSL one for all I know might be done – I think the game is actually for sale on iTunes now, but I never got my copy because I was under the impression that I could get an iOS version for my pledge and I think they only ended up doing Steam. I don’t really know because I pledged back in 2012, so I honestly don’t even give a shit about the game anymore, plus rumor has it that Al Lowe cut ties with the developers and won’t be doing any more anyways, so that’s a bummer…
  • And the 9 year-old’s RPG … I really just wish that I had backed out like so many other people because I think we all kind of got suckered. I wanted to give the lady the benefit of the doubt during the firestorm she was enduring, but as far as I can tell those who got anything are still only tinkering with a test version. At least it was only $10…

As for the rest, you can see that most of what I help to support are movies and books – all by indie creators – and so I get that they don’t have the resources of a big developer, but timeliness is still somewhat of an issue and you get to a point where frequent communications can only take you so far. And granted, some of these guys have been better about it than others – I guess it’s just something to think about when you’re bidding on a project, that it could literally be years before what you’re pledging sees the light of day.

For some, it can kind of make or break your perception – example, I gave Kris & Scott a lot of leeway on delivery of their DVD because I’d already seen most of the content on PATV anyways, but I know I was really pissed about the Theater Hopper book when it finally came in the mail – just because I had to harass the author multiple times and it took literally a year for me to get mine … plus it really rubbed me the wrong way when I discovered that he had ’em selling in his store before the rest were shipped out to backers… 🙁

It’s also interesting to see how even your interest wanes over time – looking back at that list, I’m still eager to see how Stripped turned out (which is almost done!) as well as the new Webcomics Handbook that serves as the follow-up to How to Make Webcomics. As for the rest … meh, maybe the Big Bird doc will be cool, but the space one has kinda lost me and the others I’ve already spoken my case on. In a way, it’s funny how Kickstarter can really be a double-edged sword – it’s a great tool to help fund a project if you’ve got the audience and the energy, but at the same time these things can also end up sometimes doing more harm than good if you aren’t careful.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ll certainly still be using Kickstarter whenever a worthwhile project comes across the ether … it’s just interesting to take a step back and look at the raw data from time to time, even though sometimes it’s a little shocking to see what you find! 😯

Silicon Valley (HBO)

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(via BoingBoing)

Could be interesting … has a few actors that I’m a fan of, like T.J. Miller and Kumail Nanjiani … although I’m kind of surprised that there’s almost nothing out about it so far and it premieres in April… 😕

Thank goodness I’m sick!

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…or else I wouldn’t have had the excuse to lay around in bed playing this cool, little flash game all day!

packetjump

Or at least I think it’s flash. Might be HTML5 or something – I dunno the specifics behind it, but it reminds me of all of the great, little games that Just Laugh used to help promote for the likes of nStorm and KewlBox … nice and simple, that you can play with 10 seconds of instructions, and yet are so incredibly addictive that you find yourself playing 1,000 times in a row until your wife finally comes in just to find out what that weird, bouncing noise is from… 😉

Of course, with this one it doesn’t help that the game was developed by my web host, who just so happens to be offering $50 cash money to anyone who can beat the high score! Funny how many other things I could be doing to earn $50 right now instead of this … except that I’m sick, so there… 😛

Dream Journal : Weird Randomness, Part 2

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I was on a cruise ship with some friends … and we were in our car … because apparently this was a boat where you could do that. And we were kind of lost driving up and down the ramps of the parking garage decks on the boat trying to position ourselves to be the first ones off the boat, except that we couldn’t get down to the deck where the ramp to land was because I guess they blocked it off while we were at sea.

…

The wife was going out dancing with friends … which is something that she normally doesn’t do … and there was a red dress involved … and, well … va-va-voom! 😯

…

The baby was born, and he was super small, and I was holding him … and then suddenly I wasn’t! I frantically looked to the floor because I thought that I had dropped him, but it turned out that Sara had just snatched him out of my arms real quick. Needless to say, I was mad because I had kind of panicked, and we had a little shouting match over not doing that again…

…

A short while later, Sara was sitting down to feed the baby – we had a bunch of people at the house, but they didn’t really play a role in the scene – and I sat down next to her, and when I went to take him after she was done feeding, I couldn’t help but notice that he was bigger than before – like, a lot bigger! Think previous dream was like just the size to fit in two hands, and by the time he was done breastfeeding maybe half an hour later, he was nearly two feet long. I had a feeling that something was wrong! 😕

movie thoughts … We’re the Millers

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MV5BMjA5Njc0NDUxNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjYzNzU1OQ@@._V1_SY317_CR0,0,214,317_[1]I was really surprised just how not terrible this movie actually ended up being! We needed kind of a dumb comedy after a somewhat chaotic evening and We’re the Millers seemed to fit the bill, and yet barely 10 minutes into it I started to get the distinct feeling that it was actually going to be pretty good…

I mean, seriously – an orca tank?!

When I first watched the trailer, it really looked like the plot was going to feel forced – drug dealer has issues, finds wacky solution, gets into mayhem along the way – but it was honestly executed in kind of a fun and surprisingly also sincere sort of way that they really seemed to see the family aspect by the end of the movie.

The expected twists had a nice way of still catching you by surprise – like the baby, or the tent scene.

I don’t know – I guess it was just surprisingly fun, and I know that I’ve used variants of the word surprised entirely too many times in this relatively short post, but what do you want from me – I’m sick!

Still don’t necessarily feel bad about not seeing it in the theater, but for a late night on-demand rental, it was probably worth the $6 and then some. 🙂

 

Why am I so passionate about gay rights these days?

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I know that I tend to go off about this a lot these days, and I’m sure that I’ve lost a few Twitter followers and Facebook friends and soured the perceptions of a few family members along the way, too, and that’s just going to have to be ok.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know where it all started. I’ve personally known maybe enough gay people to count on one hand, and I wouldn’t even consider any of them to be  really good friends, as much as more co-workers and acquaintances. But that doesn’t matter – you don’t have to know someone personally to believe that they deserve to be treated equally.

It’s to the point where a lot of times I feel rather silly that we’re even still fighting about this topic, but deep down I know that if I shrug my shoulders and walk off, and enough other people do the same, then another ten years from now we’re just going to keep having this same argument over and over again.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so to speak.

It’s just civil rights for me, plain and simple.

  • Until 1865, African Americans could be kept as slaves and were counted as 3/5ths of a person in America.
  • In 1920, women  were granted the right to vote in America.
  • In 1965, African Americans were guaranteed the right to vote in America – a right which was technically granted in 1870, but then quickly eroded away by discriminatory Jim Crow laws.
  • In 2014, gay Americans are allowed to marry in 14 out of 50 states, though legislation is frequent both to retract this right as well as reinforce other discriminatory acts towards them in the name of religious freedom.

Not even 100 years ago, none of the women in my life would’ve been allowed to vote, and a mere 50 years ago, black people were just then granted not only the right to vote, but also the right to sit at the same lunch counter and use the same public restrooms as white people.

That’s crazy, and to think that similar discrimination still exists today towards other Americans simply on account of who they are is unconscionable to me. It’s not right, it’s not fair, and I don’t really care if it makes anyone uncomfortable – we have to change and fix it.

We were wrong when our ancestors thought that it was ok to keep slaves, just like we were wrong when our ancestors thought that women weren’t equal to men. And just like it wouldn’t be right for someone to be persecuted because they were Jewish, or Italian, or atheist, it’s not right that here in the land of the free, some people are deemed more acceptable than others in the eyes of our government.

If someone wants to personally dislike gay people, that’s fine with me – history is full of jerks and by no means will they be the last.

But if they want to use their collective power to keep gay people beneath them and deny them rights that they themselves enjoy today, then that’s not right and I do take up issue with that.

Not to mention, specifically with regards to gay marriage I don’t understand…

  1. How is the “the sanctity of marriage” not impacted by the astounding divorce rate here in America?
  2. How is it that I’m able to be married and not even believe in god, though a gay person can’t even though he or she might?

It just doesn’t add up to me, so yeah, it’s a hot topic in my world, not because someone close to me is personally impacted by these rulings on a daily basis, but simply because what’s happening here just isn’t right, and until we can look across the landscape and gay people enjoy all of the same rights as you and me, then fair warning – I’m probably not going to shut up about it.

And no doubt somewhere even further down the line, there will be something completely different that raises its head and challenges societal norms all over again, and then our children’s generation is going to have to decide if they’re going to be accepting of that strange and new or if the cycle is going to persist. The best I can do is strive to see that they’re not still dealing with the civil rights faux pas of here and now, and I do think that we’re making progress.

It may not be going fast enough, but social justice never does or else it wouldn’t be required in the first place. 😕

Disney’s Frozen … Gay Agenda … Bucketful of Crazy

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Whoa boy – where do I even begin with this one?!

So fellow humorist Linda Sharp brought this little gem of ignorant homophobia to light this afternoon, and admittedly at first it didn’t really seem like anything worth spending much time on. I mean, sure, I think the woman is fishing off the deep end for any correlation between Disney’s latest classic and the insidious gay rights agenda … I only made it through about half a pass of “what about the children?!” and “I’m not here to judge homosexuality – I just think that it’s a disgusting sin and participants should live their lives in a shame hole”-esque mentality before I was just about ready to let it go and walk away.

And then she started dissecting the song, and for some reason that really got my gears a grinding…

I think my initial ire was simply because it’s a really good song, and it’s been nominated for awards, and from a production-standpoint, it really stands strong as one of those classic ballads that tends to drive a Disney feature home, alongside the likes of The Circle of Life and Colors of the Wind and You’ll Be in My Heart – it really is that good!

But performance quality aside, it was in really digging into the lyrics that she took issue with that really painted a picture for me of the anti-gay agenda, if you will, and frankly, it’s kind of frightening when you look at it from this angle…

(from her original post – italic emphasis left intact…)
Lyrics: “Let It Go,” by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (Italics added for emphasis of homosexual messaging/attitudes mocked.)

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen
A kingdom of isolation
And it looks like I’m the queen

The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside
Couldn’t keep it in, Heaven knows I tried

Don’t let them in, don’t let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know
Well, now they know

Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
I don’t care what they’re going to say
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway

It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can’t get to me at all
It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I’m free

Let it go, let it go
I’m one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You’ll never see me cry
Here I stand and here I’ll stay
Let the storm rage on

My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back, the past is in the past

Let it go, let it go
And I’ll rise like the break of dawn
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand in the light of day
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway

You see, I get that not only gay people, but lots of people who’ve faced challenges throughout their life are identifying with those lyrics and finding solace in the idea of learning how to accept themselves when societal norms have fought against them otherwise – I’ve already read comments ranging from the likes of fat people, people with physical and mental disorders, nerdy kids, band geeks, people of different races … the list goes on! And while I don’t necessarily believe that the lyrics were written with any one of those hardships in mind, it is pretty great that people were able to find that kind of comfort in something as simple as a song from a children’s movie.

On the other hand, however, the ugly side of what this interpretation tells me is that quite contrary to their beloved hate the sin, love the sinner defense, the reason why this crazy lady’s opinion is so disturbing to me is that if you single out all of the lines that she has a problem with, it’s all the ones with the singer trying to come to terms with herself … because the religious activists of this ilk absolutely do not want people who are struggling with being gay to come to terms with it because they’re against it, and god is against it, and blah blah blah, whatever…

Which is kind of fucked up, if you ask me – because people are ridiculed and harassed, and some are met with hatred and violence even from their own families, and some even commit suicide as a result of this one thing about themselves that they struggle with, and to make such a statement that these kinds of lyrics offend you also makes a pretty ugly statement in the faces of those same people looking to those lyrics for support – you’re wrong, and you shouldn’t let it go, because you deserve everything that’s happening to you on account of who you are.

It’s this kind of mentality that gives me little pause when I use the word hatred in reference to those arguing against gay rights because the idea that you don’t want to see gay rights liberated, in fact you’d prefer that they get stuffed back into the closet where they weren’t bothering you … whether they made you feel more comfortable because they were out of sight, out of mind … is nothing but hate, pure and simple. You can’t look back at the last twenty years of what gay people have gone through, and even look to today and consider that you can go get married right now and they can’t, and continue to hide behind your religious beliefs without also acknowledging that they’re pretty hateful to this other segment of the population that you don’t necessarily agree with.

And the thing is, nobody ever asked you to agree with them. They simply asked to have the exact same rights that you enjoy to this day – marriage rights under our state, local, and federal governments, freedom from the same types of discrimination that we’ve already deemed unacceptable on the bases of race, creed, gender, or age in the past, the ability to walk down the street in public without being shunned by their fellow man.

If there’s one positive thing about that crazy lady’s post, it’s surprisingly in the comment section because there are already many people even of her very own church who very much disagree with her ways of thinking, and several have been very vocal of the fact that they think she’s off base. But not all do, and there are still some who agree with her every word, and those are the ones that we have to be careful about because they’re the type who are paranoid to believe that everyone and everything is out to get them, and anything that is relateable to gay people is an attack on Christianity, and regardless of a body of work’s true intent, if they want to find something to raise their anti-gay pitchforks about once again, they’ll make those inferences with a bible in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.

It’s scary to get such a raw and unfiltered look at what you’re up against, but if anything it just helps to seal my own position all the more because there’s no rationality whatsoever in thinking that there’s love in telling someone to bottle up their problems and keep them locked inside. There’s no love, no compassion, no honor from these people who preach against gay rights, even if they do swear that it’s in there between the lines in that big book of judgment of theirs…

Dream Journal : The Explosion

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I was in a large building – like a shopping mall or a court house … the formalities seemed to fall somewhere between the two. A bulk of the story leading up to the event was really just me walking around with friends, being excited about finding a certain place to eat, and so forth…

Then I kind of got separated from my friends and instead found myself in a lobby of sorts. There were teller stands spread every so often across the marble floor, so it might’ve been a bank, and there was a guy in the middle giving what sounded like an important presentation. It was then that I noticed two tennis ball-shaped objects in the pockets of my coat … that I didn’t recognize.

I felt them up inside of the pockets, for fear of pulling them out in public and scaring everyone, but I knew that they weren’t mine and somehow I knew that they had to be bad. After pacing around for a while, I finally found a long hallway that ended in a staircase leading downstairs, so trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, I quickly pulled them out of each pocket and threw them down the stairs as far as I could…

It was about 30 seconds later that they exploded.

What was strange was that although the blast drove everyone outside, even though it was sheltered enough by the hallway that nobody got hurt, a subsequent and much larger blast in the streets ultimately drove everyone back inside. I remember laying on the plaza sidewalk in front of the huge building, and people were shouting for us to get inside so that they could close the heavy guards in front of the doors of the building. My Dad, surprisingly, was lying a few feet away, calling out and asking if we should try to make for the car, but as the smoke settled in over us to where I couldn’t even see him anymore, I yelled that we’d never make it and grabbed his hand to lead him inside.

The whole time, I wondered whether I was one of the bad guys or one of the good guys…

The Legacy of The Tonight Show

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I used to be a big fan of The Tonight Show, presumably because it was the one that my Dad always watched.

Loved Jay Leno – he was a funny guy, and typically would stay up late with my friends so that we could watch Conan, too.

“Stay tuned for Conan!”

It all changed for me a few years ago in 2010 when the whole Leno/Conan thing went down that really left a bad taste in my mouth, and I stopped being a fan of both Jay Leno and The Tonight Show because my view on the whole situation is that the one person who could’ve done something (Leno), didn’t.

But this post isn’t really about that, and although I didn’t watch the actual episode tonight, I’ve watched a couple of the clips that are up on YouTube already and I’ve been reading a lot of the media coverage about the whole thing, and what a big deal it is to be moving the show back to NYC for the first time since Johnny Carson left (although I was too young to watch even when he hosted in the 80s/90s), and even how Jimmy Fallon is tweaking the name of the show to be The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon instead of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon … also because that’s how Carson and even the older hosts before him did it.

And I guess all of this kind of got me thinking about, really, what an institution The Tonight Show has become, much like Saturday Night Live – another show that the comedy fan in me would still like to watch, but I just can’t bring myself to do it, and even looking at Jimmy Fallon himself … I never really watched him on Late Night simply because of sour grapes over the whole Leno/Conan fiasco, even though the clips that I’d randomly watch online were mostly entertaining and I’d always enjoyed him starting out on SNL as well.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that after watching his extraordinarily humble and earnest introduction from a few hours ago, I think it might finally be time to give The Tonight Show another shot…