Like a wave, it is

    After finishing Bob and George last night, tonight I read through the archives of Three Panel Soul. It is short so far, with archives only extending back to late last year and a twice weekly posting schedule (I think) but the art is great and it manages to be sweet and funny and endearing and harsh at points. Not a comic with an ongoing story, which is unusual for me.

    Since Three Panel Soul has such a small archive so far, I have already moved on to the next comic in my bookmark folder, Casey and Andy. After reading the first few strips I was doubtful about actually liking it. I have read 49 of them now and it is still very up and down. There have been some great strips like this one or this one or this one. And by the time I reached this strip, I decided each of them is probably set in a parallel universe to reconcile the near complete lack of continuity.
    Then there are strips like this one, in which Satan explains that she gave women breasts to control men and drive them to evil. Which is, y'know, totally the kind of reasoning that leads to people saying women need to be kept covered for their own good, or that if a woman is raped it is her fault for luring men who can't control themselves. And it sure does not look to me as if the joke relies on subverting that idea. No, it seems to be played straight.
    And in this strip we see the girlfriend become a monster to get her way in an argument. Admittedly she is Satan, but I have yet to see a strip so far which includes women and does not go there to some extent. Except this one, which makes me wonder how it could have been written by the same person. The first appearance by a female character at least has the irrational hatred be a mutual thing. Other than that the primary purpose of female characters in Casey and Andy seems to be to annoy men.
    But it is early days, right?

Rawr

    I am up too late and Christian programming has come on television. Just now I have listened horrified to a man telling a story in which he stated outright that it was because the man in the story had remained faithful to his church that his son had returned alive from a war. He stated outright that if that man had left his church, his son would have come back in a box.

    People are people! They are not object lessons for others to learn from; they have lives to live in their own right. I am so very sick and tired of people talking about the hardships of others as a lesson for them, it makes me want to scream. Any god that would torment or kill someone - or refrain from doing so - for the education, reward or punishment of a third party is a disgusting, immoral creature and deserves our scorn.

    To calm down, please enjoy these images of Jesus beating up the Greek gods.

Cross-posted to atheist_rage

Today, kids, we have a very special guest

    Actually, for our last class tomorrow some of the other students thought it would be a good idea for us to have an informal party and have each of us bring some food from our background. Since I am not familiar with with any English or Scottish food that I would think appropriate or want to cook I decided to go with something invented in colonial Australia (even though I have no idea if any of my ancestors were living here at the time. So, today I will be baking lamingtons.
    They have the advantage of being easy too. Small rectangular prisms of sponge cake, coated in chocolate icing and coconut.

    Yesterday I disappointed myself with my writing. I did write 85 words of Discourteous Joe but allowed myself to be distracted and so did not write all of what I had in mind. It was however the first time I recall going back on something I was in the process of writing and altering earlier parts of the text. So that is (probably) good.
    Since I let myself get too tired to do everything I wanted to do with Discourteous Joe last night I finished with 113 words of my sekrit projekt, which I am tempted to name but won't because I feel like being stubborn about it. It is exciting again, which is good because I was experiencing a lull for about a week there and wondering if I should drop it. I still do not know if I will be able to maintain the necessary pace for it, but I certainly am going to try.

595 / 9,300 (6.0%)

    Still have not managed to meet my daily target once yet. Right now I am averaging about half of it. We shall see how that goes - my plan to focus on the monthly target as more important and treat the daily goals as averages to aim for but not fuss over seems to be working, as I am less anxious now about not writing enough words each day.
    So long as I manage in the end, that will be okay. And if I do not make it this month, I will set myself the same target next month, and again until I can. No more getting disheartened and dropping out for months at a time; so long as I am writing I am writing, target met or not.

    Word count is not always the best measure of progress anyway. Often I find the best way to improve a scene is to take out as many words as I can.

Baking is fun

( Beware of the cake )

    Also, which I forgot to mention in my previous entry, I have noticed a few promised postings of stories have been missed. Specifically Elegant Girl but probably others. Sometimes from forgetfulness and sometimes from not finishing when I expected to.
    Well, regardless of whether anyone noticed, I apologise for my laxness. To solve this problem, I intend not to post such announcements in the future. Stories will go up when I feel they are ready to. Although I will probably still express hopes about when they will be ready.