Ray Brinzer

I was away from my family on Valentine’s Day. I decided I wanted to send Felabi something nice, so I set to work creating an image for the occasion. After several hours, however, the Gimp crashed, and I lost all my work. I wasn’t up for doing it all over again, so I went to sleep, and didn’t send anything special.

Later, I discovered the existence of South Park character creation sites. After playing for a bit, I used this one and this one to create base characters for my family, tweaked them with the Gimp, and made this little scene as a late valentine “card”.

While this sort of thing doesn’t require much in the way of artistic ability, I’m pleased with it. Felabi, in particular, is easily recognizable, and the whole scene is very reminiscent of my home.

There are a good number of in-jokes, here, by the way. And in case you’re wondering, “Caillou” is a children’s television show. Johannes loves it.

I’m using this as my desktop, right now. I’m not sure why anyone else would want a cartoon of my family on their desktop, but just in case, here it is.

Every once in awhile, I turn on the television. The other day, I watched a few minutes of Star Trek: Voyager… an epsiode called “Basics“, it seems. As I joined, some portion of the crew was in a cave. One of the first exchanges I caught was this one:

NEELIX: Captain, none of the search teams were able to find plants of any nutritional value.
JANEWAY: Then tell the crew to start turning over rocks. If anyone balks at eating these, tell them it’s an order from their captain. They may be the difference between life and death.

The “these” in question were, apparently, mealworms. So… there are these presumably nutritious, non-poisonous critters. Wouldn’t one be inclined to wonder what these things were eating?

Now, I’m happy enough to accept squishy science for the sake of a good story. And one might offer any number of charitable explanations for this situation. But my distinct impression was that the writers just didn’t put any effort into what they were writing.

And really, why watch it then? (I turned it off.)