I'm outta here.

Well, happy new year everyone.

I really don't have anything special to say anymore, so I think I'm just going to disappear for awhile.

If anyone wants to talk to me over the next several weeks, then send me an e-mail. That will likely be the only way to get ahold of me. I just don't feel like doing the online messaging thing or the message board thing anymore. But I seriously doubt that anyone really wants to talk to me that badly so it doesn't really matter.

See you again some other time.

Sayonara.

Happy Holidays.

To everyone who is celebrating, have a good one.

To everyone else, have an equally good whatever it is you're having.

Sayonara.

The Train Man

Everyone has been talking about Densha Otoko. I had heard the story, of course, and was interested, but never really looked into it.

Until this past week, when I watched fansubs of the J-Dorama that the story inspired.

Actually, I should clarify. I watched the entire series in 1 day. I was so captivated by what I was watching that I could not bare the thought of not watching anymore until I had seen the very end.

I had never seen a proper J-Dorama before, but I thought that this was just an amazing series.

BENOIST!!!

Sayonara.

Posterized.

As part of placing in the top 10 in the TFW2005 Super Deformed Transformers contest, my SD drawing of SkyByte has been incorporated into a poster with the other 9 winners. You can purchase a copy of the poster and see what it'll look like on the first4figures website. It's $29.99 US, which I guess is expensive for a poster, but only 500 copies are ever going to be made available. Plus, this is the first ever project that is both 100% licensed and endorsed by Hasbro and 100% created by fans. I think that's pretty freaking cool, myself. And hey, it's pretty much the first thing that I ever had a hand in that is going to be published so widely. I don't get any money out of it, but that doesn't really matter here. It's just neat that I can say that I drew a part of something and now you can buy it. And hey, maybe when I'm all rich and famous and have risen to the heavens with my god-like superpowers, it'll be worth something. Ha ha.

I'd say that it'd make a great gift for the holidays, but it looks like they won't be ready to ship until January, so just buy one for yourself I guess.

Sayonara.

The Finality.

It is here.

I saw it. It took an entire year to see it, but I did.

Godzilla: Final Wars is out on DVD starting TODAY!

Naturally, I woke up early, rushed to the mall just after it opened, bought myself a copy, rushed back home, and watched it. These actions should not be a surprise to anyone by now.

There was a short moment there were I was thinking "OK, now what?", because I waited so long to see this movie. It's like accomplishing a goal and not knowing where to go from there. This feeling was fleeting, however. I know that there are several more films out there that deserve a DVD release in North America, and more being released in their native countries all the time. So come on! Which company is going to show come guts, step up to the plate, and give us Ultraman: The Next?

Until then, I think I'll be pretty happy watching Final Wars about 200 more times.

Sayonara.

The Anime Drawing Updates.

I'm finished teaching for this session. It was small, and there were not nearly enough people, but I still enjoyed this one. I think everything went pretty well, and most all of the students who were there seemed like they wanted to be there. The last class was great, and I really saw an all around improvement in the students' drawing.

The next session is starts on January 28th. In addition to teaching Anime Round 1 again, I'll also be teaching a brand new class called Anime MegaMix. It's going to be made available to everyone who has at least completed Round 1. Things are still in the planning stages, but I can say for the moment that it will have a few lessons that I haven't been able to squeeze into any earlier programs yet, as well as a significant portion of the course being dedicated to working with colour. From the reaction I've gotten so far I'm fairly confident that it will run, but I'd still really like to see more of my prior students who I have not seen for awhile show up for this class. I sometimes run into people who were in my classes years ago and they ask if I'm going to be doing another new round. Well, this is it, so I hope to be seeing you there.

Ok, that's enough shilling for one day. This post means absolutely nothing to anyone outside of the Toronto area. Oh well. Come back later for something more interesting, I guess.

Sayonara.

5 years of Pie.

It's hard to belive that it was 5 whole years ago when I released the article "Ninjatron: Published Poet", exposing how the evil Poetry.com has manipulated would-be poets into parting with their money. The article was a huge hit, and even nowadays I get comments on it. People are still talking about this ridiculous article I wrote, and it's even been used by poetry enthusiasts online as proof of Poetry.com's deceptive ways.

I thought it'd be fun and interesting to retrospectively look back at this article, talk about it again, and maybe dust it off for those who have yet to read it.

While I will admit that the poem I wrote, "Pie is so Good", was indeed a silly and stupid piece of nonsense, I certainly do believe in its message. From it's first line down to the conclusion, it delivers an only slightly-skewed version of the truth. I really do like pie. And macaroni and cheese as well.

Sayonara.

Splat.

Yeah, so I updated finally. Took long enough, huh? Well, as you can plainly see by now, it was a pretty big deal to get everything in order. There's new stuff all over the place, so take a good long look around and let me know what you think.

Yes, the images on the upper right and left are random. If you reload the page, you'll likely get new ones. Some images on the right are rare. I wonder if anyone can guess which one is the rarest of them all? Just try not to kill all the bandwidth.

Ninja Radio is back too. New tunes, better music player, higher quality sound, cool random background.

The message board has also gone through some changes. I upgraded the software and added 2 new forums. Please check it out and post.

And that's it. I'm done with this site for awhile. You can read about my reasons why elsewhere, but long story short is that I want to do something else. I didn't want to just abandon the site though, so I worked really hard over the past few months to get this place into a state that I was happy with. I grew tired of the previous design and I think that the current look is more befitting of the name "SykoGrafix". If I was going to stop, then I'd only stop after going out with a bang. Or rather, a splatter.

That all said, this weblog will more-or-less continue as usual, as will the message board. The site is not going anywhere any time soon, and I'm not saying that I'm never going to update again, so stick around and keep in touch. I want to know what you think of the place now.

Sayonara.

Jingle Bell Nothing.

So it's December now. That's nice, I guess. I like Christmas and all that. But I don't like Christmas music. I really don't like it. I get so tired of it. I hate walking into a store that's playing Christmas music and hearing some fat opera guy wailing on and on about Bethlehem or figgy pudding or whatever.. It's annoying and sounds terrible. Does this really make anyone feel festive? Not me. It makes me want to burn things.

You know what else I hate? Songs like "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree". You know, that sort of Christmas music that tries to be hip. Oh yeah, these songs are just so edgy and have tapped into the pulse of the nation's youth. Rock and roll Christmas. What the hell is up with that? These songs are not cool and they never were. They suck.

Just play regular music, dammit.

Sayonara.