In other words, this person is a conservative Christian who thinks stories about magic are evil unless you slap the name C.S. Lewis on it.

I paid the outrageous ticket price and dragged my wife with me so I didn’t look like a lonely, old child molester scouting for victims in the dark. The Princess and the Frog was an absolute delight, an old-fashioned fairy tale with a twist–yes, it’s the first black princess and the first Disney movie besides possibly the now buried Song of the South that primarily features an animated black cast.

While not perfect, it hit all the right spots and for this reviewer who thought the movie was evil because it had a bad guy using voodoo–just because a cartoon features villainous magic doesn’t mean the entire story is evil, otherwise you can throw your Bible in that category too.

Here’s one more idiot comment, one which I figured would pop up somewhere: The animation was great with the music..but I thought the movie had racist…..I mean the white frog catchers chasing the frogs of a different color….Cant we get past this?

The movie was hardly racist, in fact, it had the guts to have a poor black woman trying to overcome the odds in–much like the very white Cinderella. This reviewer is reading way too much into that scene and besides, those “white” frog catchers were the racist depiction if any–they were drawn like redneck hillbilly swamp stereotypes.

Large media companies putting out popular entertainment are often fearful to depict a “poor” black person for fear of contributing to stereotypes, that’s why we get inaccurate period pieces with everyone thinking the races got along. That scene of white frog catchers trying to nab “black” frogs was one of funniest in the movies and the kids loved it.  And the frogs prevailed.

The main character Tiana is black and wonderful and she believes in hard work even when the white dominated landscape is apathetic to her dreams. Isn’t it time we had a black fairytale from Disney? And the music was such a refreshing change with New Orleans inspired jazz. Let’s just enjoy it for what it is, old fashioned animation fun.

Lastly there was this user comment: word to the wise that movie wasnt good at all i dont no why it was so bad but it just was i am very sorry

Word to the wise, punctuation is still necessary and I don’t know why you’re an idiot, you just are–sorry!

I can’t stand people who review something as “bad” but can’t give a reason. Reflect a little first. Maybe it will come to you. You don’t have to like the movie, but you should know yourself enough to know why you don’t like something.

Okay to be fair there are winners and losers in every game, but I gave it a shot. I tried working my way up in a mortgage branch, starting in compliance then moving to office manager and then training to be a loan officer, and for awhile I thought I was actually headed “up” for once as far as income even though the work scared me shitless (sales is never fun). Piff! Housing crisis crushed that avenue. Lost my job after the company investor pulled out.

Then I figured, well, with all of the article writing on the web I could maybe find a way to write for money–at least part time. So I did get a crappy call center job and started to write for pay per post blogs like Associated Content, Today.com and Examiner.com (where I tried posting cartoons as well).

Associated Content is the only site I believe treats its writers decently. Today.com kept changing the rules and after I left they removed the header graphic and placed in a bunch of ads. They also treat their writers like kids in a grade school with “special rewards” instead of monetary compensation (which is what they originally offered). Examiner.com buried me after a little while by constantly dividing every writer up into sections and new categories and then even duplicated my title for ”Horror Movie Examiner” by giving it to another writer. So to hell with that.

In theory, Examiner.com is a great place to write–but they have so many writers now you only get a small piece of the action. It’s like thinking you’ll get paid well at a newspaper when there are 100 other people writing for the editorial page and maybe you’ll get seen and maybe you won’t. A paper has to believe in a writer and then promote them which is why they put money on the line first. Examiner.com just makes sure you can write and then it’s all about boosting content, not the name value of their writers. If you already have name value you might be able to exploit their system since their pay per view rates were quite good.

Then I took an internship with CDInsight.com where it was pitched that they hire off of internships. That doesn’t seem to be the case, because I now believe they sucker interns in to get free article writing. I will say, to be fair, the editor did give me some feedback and tips to improve my writing, but there was no further opportunity and I never received a thank you from the owner of the site for participating or a recommendation/referral for my writing resume/portfolio even though I was told I did a good job (unless they were lying to  me).

All of the CDInsight.com interns helped boost the site content up and push for images and videos to be added–the site was in the dark ages and still is to some extent (and I thought my old school HTML was bad!). The parent site is TheCelebrityCafe.com which has since relaunched with a more professional layout. Three months of free work and I was at another dead end.

Then I tried partnering up with a colleague from my old job at the mortgage company which looked promising. I would take care of the marketing while he sold the loans. Unfortunately, I think he bit off more than he could chew. He just got married and his wife gave birth to a son.  I never heard back from him after doing a database setup and then had to call the whole thing off.

So I’m back to cartooning because I’m sick of chasing money. Originally I burned out on doing it fulltime because I was always stressing out about getting payments, having a check bounce, or having a project take forever because there were so many changes needed. This time around I plan to keep a parttime job of some sort to alleviate the stress and then aim for projects I want to do and manage them better. My problems in the past resulted from not setting proper expectations with clients and I believe I’ve learned quite a bit from my mistakes.

And really my goal this year is to get several book collections done. I have 3 done now and I’m working on a fourth one. Then I’m drawing new material for several collections with exclusive material. I’ll be showing previews of the work on the homepage.

For this New Year I realize what I want and that is to return to my creative efforts. I am a cartoonist, whether it makes financial sense or not. When I worked in the mortgage biz I saw the brutality of the business–people who wore nice suits and ties and then came to me to vouch for them to get a loan from the Advanced Checking store because they couldn’t make their car payment. I mean I saw grown men cry because they had to go home and tell their wives they got laid off for not meeting their sales quota. On the flipside I saw guys earning 7000 a month. Winners and losers, but even those making it in the game didn’t seem very happy about the work and wanted to switch careers. 

Sales is an ugly profession, but even I as a cartoonist have to sell my work. You put yourself on the line and wait for somebody to either say “Yes!” or crush you with a rejection. I don’t judge salespeople too harshly for sometimes being annoying–it’s either that or they can be under someone’s thumb in a regular desk job (which is where I’m at now). There isn’t much escape from the grind unless you’re a Hilton.

True freedom really is if you can be paid for your own artwork, a rare gift indeed.

Ignorance is bliss I guess…

I admit it, I’m a former all out Christian metal fan who then said to hell with it. But when you grow up in that environment you always do long for the music of your childhood, so recently I’ve been trying to collect some of it in CD form since all I have are cassettes from the the late eighties to early nineties.

The trend I’ve noticed, though, when trying to locate some of these old CDs is that the Christians selling them are raising the prices fairly high. Now normally this would make sense, but cynical me remembers when I was into that movement and I gave away numerous cassettes to friends and strangers in order to promote Jesus–for free! I thought that was the idea. I didn’t think Christian rock was about money.

My naive sensibilties were shed along with my faith. I came to realize that “The Church” is just as much of a business as any commercial venture–only they’re tax exempt. Sales, customer service and entertainment value gets a pastor more parishioners which means more donations which increases his take home pay, as an example.

The one CD I’ve been looking for is the first Vengeance Rising release called “Human Sacrifice.” It is one of the first Christian thrash releases done back in 1988. I consider it a classic along with Slayer, Metallica, and other thrash/speed metal releases of that time period. The evangelistic nature of it doesn’t bother me because it’s either God or Satan in a lot of the early thrash music and I treat it like fantasy literature.  I also like it because there was so much controversy about the lead singer getting pissed off about financial debt resulting from a band squabble and then he became an atheist.

So why is it that Christian metal fans are putting that CD up for auction on Ebay so that it goes up as much as 60.00? I just lost one bid that was a bargain for 25 bucks. On Amazon.com you can find the same prices.

Unless these are not Christians selling the album, I would say there’s a moral dilemma here. The original intent of the album was to proselytize and convert, not to generate revenue with auctions or “rare CD” prices. The other part of the dilemma is a Christian willing to pay 60.00 for an album when maybe that money should go to the poor.

I hate to be nitpicking on Christian Rock fans, because I believe you can be both charitable and maintain your hobbies, but I’m not so sure the religion itself is compatible with that kind of thinking? Jesus was about self-sacrifice to the point of wandering without a home and early Christians were put to death. The only Christians that come close to that in modern times are either Christians stuck in fanatical Islamic communities or monks and nuns–and we always get cute NPR stories about how nuns don’t obey the Pope and aren’t the fuddy-duddies we think they are.

I will eventually get my hands on Vengeance Rising’s “Human Sacrifice,” but I refuse to pay sixty bucks for it. I’m not sure why it hasn’t been reissued? Some of the later albums have. And by the way, all of the former band members with the exception of now atheist Roger Martinez have come together under the band name Once Dead which was taken from the second album title. Once Dead put out a pretty good album, but it still doesn’t compare to that original “Human Sacrifice” release.

It’s too bad Christian Rock takes itself seriously, otherwise we could use a Christian music tabloid. There is so much “unChristian” activity that goes on behind the scenes that would shock fans. Christian Rock is most definitely an entertainment business and not a ministry.

Now if anyone knows some of my work on religious parodies they might be surprised by my attitude. The thing is, generally speaking, I like religious people. I think they’re wrong, but for the most part they’re nice individuals. I just feel they’re wasting their time, though I know where they’re coming from because I used to be the same way at one point in my life.

And so this time around we got to talking about how bad things are getting in the world, because that’s the sales pitch. I said that actually I believe things are getting better which always throws the evangelistic angle off. And I mean it. I’m an optimist who thinks that while we always have ups and downs progress is inevitable, even if  it is slow sometimes.

I’ll take slow and steady progress over the empty promises of religion any day.

Life is unfair, obviously we all can’t be rich and famous. I was born to look funny by the second grade because I had to wear glassess that seemed to get thicker by the year. However, progress now gives me the option to have lightweight glasses or get lasik surgery. A simple example, but a very telling one because I don’t think progress is always dramatic–we tend to take the little things for granted.

What religion really exploits is violence or the idea of that our world is going to shit because of it. There’s no doubt that we live in a violent world, but again, things are getting better. Every time we go through something as horrific as genocide the world has to eventually face it’s own “evils” and find a better way to get along. It is going to be a long and difficult road but we are safer now then we have ever been. There’s a nice video lecture on the subject if you want to check out a summary on the subject of decreasing violence at Ted.com by Steven Pinker.

Even the societies that are still bigoted to the point of violence against those of another race, religion or gender are now being stirred up because we are becoming a global community. Blame the internet. It is bringing new ideas in to stomp on old traditions. I belive the west, as imperfect as it is, provides many social models that work, like allowing women to do whatever the hell they want and allowing for the co-existence of all religions. Sure we have dumbass politicians, but all countries have that and at the very least our media can question them publicly without getting hanged.

While I don’t agree with a one world government, which is the apocalyptic doom of fundamentalist Christians, I do believe strongly in a global community. One that feeds off of each other and finds ways to cope with everyone’s differences. The more individual freedom the better because freedom brings wealth–also greed, scandal and bad hairdos (Trump!)–but the money means better living for all.

With that said, I still hate my goddamn morning job I’m keeping to pay my pricey mortgage–but I do love my freelancing, my cartooning gigs and getting to write about trivial matters such as my favorite horror movies. It’s a pleasant life overall, or at least so far.

So if a Jehovah’s Witness knocks at your door, tell them to cheer up. Life is getting better and that we don’t need their god. Offer them a beer and a smile.

I just wrote a post for my Horror Examiner archive on Halloween 3, the film everyone hated because Michael Myers wasn’t in it, and was watching the movie again for reference. My post explains why I actually like the film, feel free to read it here.

But when watching the movie I keep coming back to the odd decision on the awkward nudity with Stacey Nelkin. I’ve always like eighties horror nudity, partly because it has to do with the taboos of my childhood, but also because it feels sexier than all of the plastic you see exposed today. That may be just my age catching up with me.

Stacey Nelkin was completely hot, similar to a Jamie Gertz with thinner lips and she also reminds one of the lead female in Sword and the Sorcerer. It was obvious she should be nude at some point in the film because of her upper proportions, but then all we get is a blurred shot of her behind a shower stall and Tom Atkins pulling one part of her lingerie down to expose a nipple. What?

That happens to be my beef with Season of the Witch. Not that Michael Myers doesn’t show up and start slashing up bodies, but that Stacey Nelkin isn’t fully nude. At the very least we should have gotten a full tit shot.

So what went on behind the scenes? Was there not enough money in the budget to persuade her to show her entire body? I find that hard to believe. Was it some executive that said no to such a scene? Was there a nude scene edited out? With a despised and ignored film like Season of the Witch, I don’t know if we’ll ever get those answers.

Continue to read strip…

New strip on Examiner, and I’ve only watched the first season of True Blood if you’re wondering about the comments.

I’m amazed I got to a second strip this week after taking a vacation. It wasn’t exactly a planned vacation because originally I was supposed to meet my parents in Idaho–but after mapquesting the drive at 8.5 hours I said to hell with that. Since I already took the time off from my morning job I had to do something with my wife.

We went to Quinault Resort, an Indian Casino on the beach. Kind of disappointing for the price. For 139.00 we got a cramped room compared to staying at Shilo Inn down the road for the same price and getting a  spacious room (which is where we stayed last year).

Apparently Quinault doesn’t think couples like to watch TV in bed so you have to sit on the small couch. As for the fireplace it divides the already tiny room. The balcony? No balcony, it’s one of those fake looking ones that extends out about 3 inches so you can lean against the railing–the kind they built all over downtown Seattle. Why any hotel alongside the beach would use that design is beyond me. You look forward to a balcony when you go to the beach.

The view was nice and the beach was fairly empty–this is at Ocean Shores where you can drive on the sand and aim for small children and seagulls. We ended up eating at Shilo Inn because Quinault’s main restaurant had terrible service. Pretty much people felt like an inconvenience from what I saw and the staff looked unhappy. My wife noted the restaurant was named “Emily’s” after the founder who had her face smiling on the wall. Long dead, it’s hard to say if she would be pleased with how her restaurant is being handled.

Oh well, we came out 40 bucks ahead on the slots. I can’t understand how many old people just sit at those machines all day long and lose their money. We met one old woman in the elevator who said, “Don’t let them fool ya, the golden years are a pain in the ass.”

Gee, I’m looking forward to getting older.

Read Entire Strip…

I’m planning to see if I can have some fun with it. And this time I’m experimenting for my own sake. I don’t plan to please anyone else because I’m just in that mood. I guess I’m tired of snide comments by people cooler than me. As if I can please the entire internet community who all have different tastes in humor and don’t understand that funnies can be many different things–even unfunny material.

I also think it would be fun to mess with people with an updating comic strip that directly responded to reader comments. I don’t expect anyone to hold back their opinions, I’m just saying I don’t know if I give a damn what people think. And maybe my characters won’t either.

Already I’ve gotten one comment from someone who thinks this first strip is a jab at Sarah Palin and is stupid. Not really. I don’t have anything against “nailing Palin,” but I’m just trying to get a feel for the characters or what I call the birthing process. It means I’m going to hit and miss until I find the true nature of the characters. So be it. If you think it’s stupid, fine, don’t read it.

BTW, does anyone else think that Sarah Palin should pose nude in Playboy?

I am satisfied with AssociatedContent.com. They’ve always been pretty straightforward, though I’ve heard their pay per article has decreased. Still they pay based on impressions and even though I haven’t submitted anything recently, they still give me a little change based on what I consider to be the agreement we made when submitting my articles.

Examiner.com started out being a blogger’s dream due to the high pay per impression, then they started subdividing their categories or neighborhoods or however they’re calling it. What it means is that everytime they divide things up, you tend to get less impressions and pretty much you can get buried. I do have to admit to the sin of not always updating regularly, so maybe others are doing well and I deserve to get lost in the mix. Certainly, there are some top Examiners who have rabid fans (the Twilight Examiner for example).

The other thing I found offensive though is that once you claimed a category, I thought it was yours. Not the case. I asked for Horror Movies Examiner, got it and then found another person was given the exact same title. At the very least I thought they wouldn’t do that, but as this site grows I think many writers will become lost. The pay rate may be high, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing if you can’t get noticed and the impressions decrease.

But I don’t have any real gripes with Examiner.com, it is a blogging business after all and if you’re good at doing your own marketing I’m sure you can make some money. I plan to see if I can try doing some more with it. I was naively hoping though that these sites would provide the exposure and let creative writers and artists concentrate on doing good work.  It’s like anything I guess, you have to spend more time on the promotion than the actual product.

The major gripe I have is with Today.com. First they started out by imitating Associated Content and paying for one blog post per day. And if you keep up with the posts they offer to give you another blog. So I did a simple pop culture blog, managed it daily for a couple of months, slowly grew the traffic and then when the time came they offered another blog. So I did History Horrors, a blog about the cruelties of the past. It had a lot of spikes in traffic as people were fascinated with the morbid material.

Then Today.com started changing their polices. First they wouldn’t pay per post for the second blog, only impressions. Okay, fair enough. This was, after all, hobby writing for a little extra change.

Then they stopped paying per post for the Popped Culture blog or rather the main blog. That I found annoying as did many other bloggers. When asking why, the answer was that if we worked hard enough we would get our pay per post option back. However, we were never given a threshhold as to how many visitors we had to have.  I stopped caring about doing a daily post and subsequently the traffic began to slow.

The impressions they paid for (2.00 per 1000) were still not bad if you matched them up to an average you might make using Google Adsense, but then you didn’t really own the content. In other words, they could take it away from you or not pay up on the impressions. Which appears to be what they recently did with History Horrors. It no longer is under my stats. I can still add posts but I’m not going to get paid for it.

I understand a company changing its policies on occasion, but not paying on impressions is breaking the minimum agreement, the fine print be damned. Guess what Today.com is doing instead? In a recent mass email I received from them–since they don’t notify you when your account changes–they say they are now using reward points:

“Be the first to participate in the blog network that offers rewards. Earn Today.com Rewards Points to spend in the Today Rewards virtual mall.”

What a bunch of bullshit. Reward points are the equivalent of your boss handing out stuffed toys and candy instead of monetary bonuses. The problem seems to be Today.com management either doesn’t know what it wants to be, or is having a hard time making money or is making money but is getting greedy for more. What writer in their right mind is going to want reward points? I guess they’re going to get a lot of kids writing for them. I refuse to be patronized like that. I don’t consider myself to be a professional writer, but even a hobbyist shouldn’t be toyed with.

I predict that a lot of these pay per blog sites will go the same way. They will monetarily reward their superstars, but treat the smalller writers like they’re insignificant children. I guess that’s how the game is played in the real world too. I had false hopes of “content investing.” Submitting material that would earn the equivalent of royalties and continue to earn. It doesn’t work when these companies don’t live up to their initial offers.

So far Today.com is the biggest offender that I know of. I have a wait and see attitude on the others, but mainly I don’t give a shit about them anymore. I’m just going to work on updating my own small, but proud site. It’s old school in many ways and I don’t care. If sites like Today.com expect the writer to do the content plus the marketing and then pay them shit, then what good are they? Might as well promote your own site even if it is small.

The first one is The Judas Chair

The second one is The Bloody Eagle, written by contributor Chaz Wood from the UK. That one, good Lord.

I think both are a good reminder why we have restrictions on torture, even for our enemies.

This last week I wrote an article for one of Examiner.com’s special projects. The theme was the current recession. Since one of my subjects is Horror Movies I went through a couple of homes from well known classics that would be hard to sell–”cursed homes in a bad economy.” This also notes the new Sam Raimi film coming up, yes, he’s back to his horror roots for once. Check for the Raimi news link at the bottom.

I also posted interesting news plus the trailer on the upcoming film release of “Antichrist.” The premise is based on if Satan created the world. I will be definitely seeing that one in the theater. Could there be a better time for horror movies? They keep coming.

If you want to enjoy a guilty pleasure you can go back in time and watch The Car. I have to admit, I never saw this film until this last weekend. Here’s my comments on it.

For the time being I’ve had to put my other comics blog on hold. My original goal was to restart several of my comic strip series but then for some reason people came out of the woodwork requesting comic strips for their sites. I’m hoping I can share some of these with you in the next couple of months.

Fact is, Methoshop has posted a Pac Man parody as a header for their games section. Turned out quite nice plus you have some retro games available there too. Methodshop updates pretty regularly with stories on gadgets if you’re into keeping up with the Joneses.

I’ll be updating new games myself this week on Swensonfunnies. I need a doppleganger to do some work for me. If you like the features and cartoons, pass the links around.