O= /) FLIPPERSMACK 018 `= culturemag for a penguin generation http://www.flippersmack.com/ x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x This issue is dedicated to those who have fallen victim to last week's terrorist attacks. September 11, 2001 will be a day none of us will ever forget. We are strong, and together we stand to voice our concerns, opinions, and emotions. Flippersmack- a flock built on unity. pinguino [pinguino@comicartist.com] tABLE oF cONTENTS Writing Challenge ..................................... pinguino Comic Strip Reviews .................................... Melinda [poem] Untitled ........................................... Monk Attack on America -special edition- Freedom-Loving People ................................. pinguino Response to WTC Attack ................................... Kilna [poem] unfathomable .................................... Melinda Big Brother Invades .................................. SlapAyoda my journal entry last night ............................... Monk .x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x FLiPPERSMACK WRiTiNG CHALLENGE!@#%#!%@#! : Write a story about a penguin who lives in the timeline of Tori Do. He lives in the Galapagos, and his name is Kennai. He is a creature of habit, an accountant who works in his local kingdom. He opens an anonymous letter one day that had been slipped under his door. "Meet me at the eastern waterfall at midnight. Come alone." Finish the story. The one we like the most will be the winner. Flippersmack will publish the best story submitted to us in Issue #20. The winner will get signed comics and original art from Penguin Palace. The deadline is Sept 23, 2001 .. 6pm PST. Mark it down!! Please include your name, nickname, email address, and snail mail address with your submission. We will keep private any information that you ask to be private. Stories can be sent in text format or Microsoft Word. Please spellcheck before sending. -.x.x.x.- A Comic a Day Keeps the Grumpies Away by Melinda (scgal1@excite.com) Okay, so it's been decided (by an ever-so-wise) group of peers that I should review webcomics on a weekly basis, mainly because I already read them. A lot. Every day. I'm going to start with those I love and go from there. If you have suggestions for comics that you think I MUST READ NOW, go ahead and email them to me at scgal1@excite.com. Grazie. This week's offerings: Sinfest, by Tatsuya Ishida http://sinfest.net/ : This comic actually holds the honor of being the one that started my addiction. A tech-writer friend of mine from the snowy North (aka Canada, eh) turned me on to it and through Sinfest, I found my way to Keenspot, home of many of the great comics on the web. It's sick, it's twisted, and at the same time it's amazingly political. Tatsuya is perhaps the only person on Earth who can actually get away with making God a hand-puppet master. His characters include Monique - a very hip hoochie who's damn proud to be a hoe, Slick - a teensy little man with a definite Napoleon complex and complete pimp attitude, Beezle and Squigly - Slick's partners in crime, Seymour - who, along with Ezekial & Ariel manage to make devotion to God a laughing matter, God & the Devil - who provide the most comic fodder of any comic character out there (IMHO), the Dragon - (perhaps a nod to Tatsuya's heritage?) Eastern to God's Westerness and of course Percival and Pooch, who show why cats are better than dogs (again, IMHO). Tatsuya's strips range from ninja parodies to blatant pokes at the commercialism that is America. My personal faves are strips that involve God and hand-puppets. Nothing quite like watching God make fun of the Devil using an Uber-Goth hand-puppet. Perhaps one of the best parts of the strip is the fact that you can walk away for a few weeks, come back and not feel lost. Strip storylines are usually contained within 5 strips or so, and the entire cast gets a good enough rotation that it's hard to get tired of any of them. Even potentially annoying characters like Ezekial and Ariel are made amusing when going duck-hunting with the Devil. Besides that, Tatsuya's got a great hold on that dry, semi-cynical wit that always tickles. Definitely worth reading every day, which I do. And so should you. Real Life, by Greg Dean http://www.reallifecomics.com/ : If you are at all a techie or have friends/relatives/significant others who are techies, you will find something to relate to in this strip. Greg has basically taken his computer geek life and comicalized it (and no, that isn't a word, I just made it up). The characters exist in reality, which is probably why there have been so many times when I have been reading it and thought, "Hey, I know someone just like that!" The main characters include: Greg - the Ultima Online playing, sword loving shirt ninja, Dave - his Quake loving hardware junkie best friend/roomie, Tony - his pure evil, inventive buddy and other roomie, and Crystal - Greg's "I'm a nerd but hide it well" girlfriend, who I think is the only thing keeping these guys grounded in reality. Greg's passion for Pepsi makes me a fan right off, but its storylines like trips to Fry's Electronics (the geek Mecca), computers who not only talk to their owners but sabotage each other in fits of jealousy, and chain mail and sword adventures with the mail man that keep me hooked. The scary thing is, Greg really owns the swords he draws into the comic strip. He's majorly into gaming and tends to put up some decent links for those of you who are looking for strategies and other gaming needs. He's also branched off and added a new comic to his list of hits, called "The Forge." It's at Swords Online, and features a talking sword named Robert (who wishes his name was Xanthes). It just started, so now's a good time to start reading that one. It's got the same real feeling to the dialogue as Real Life, only in a medieval-like way. So go, read them both. Trust me on this. -.x.x.x.- Untitled by Monk (monkstah@hotmail.com) i fell asleep behind the steering wheel. luckily the car didn't move. i could have forgotten how to brake properly. i dreamt i was behind the steering wheel. a car sitting still at a red light in the middle of nowhere with buildings sneering at me through their broken glass windows. the car wasn't on though. i dreamt i was dreaming about being behind a steering wheel. i thought about turning the car on and going somewhere in my dream. i settled for just sleeping and letting the car horns honk around me. i was behind a steering wheel. stuck in a parking lot reading a story i heard about. a guy fell asleep behind a steering wheel and started dreaming about being behind a steering wheel. he started dreaming about dreaming. philosophy makes you so much smaller these days. -.x.x.x.- Attack on America - Special Edition Flippersmack feels that it's important to cover the recent events that have hit our nation. It's affected us in different ways already, threatening our civil rights, touching us emotionally, and causing an almost-hysterical reaction. If you don't want to read about the subject, do not read on. Join us next week for our sex-themed issue, instead. Feel free to join our discussions at the Penguin Palace Meeplist discussion group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/penguinlist/ -.x.x.x.- Freedom-loving People by Pinguino (pinguino@comicartist.com) It's been a week since the tragedy. I don't think anyone I know was killed. I'm not sure. I was asleep when it happened; my friend called me and told me to turn on the TV. Terrorists had flown planes into the World Trade Center. Thousands of innocent lives extinguished in the name of religion. The world watched: hearts white-lipped with fear and overwhelming grief. Americans are all suffering a rollercoaster of emotions - we seek an answer where none exists. The terrorists wanted to disrupt our lives and tear apart our nation. This event brought us closer together. Last Friday at 7pm, the nation shared a candlelight vigil. Fear the power of the Internet. A friend and I stood with some strangers next door, singing "God Bless America." They shared candles with us. As I drove home an hour later, I saw a group of thirty teenagers standing at a streetcorner with candles - teenagers who generally live in apathy. There is a flag saluting in all of us. Wax drips from our candles of hope. Tears fall free from our faces. There are endless stories of Arab Americans being harassed and tormented by their fellow Americans. Kids throwing glass bottles at foreign taxi drivers. Marines calling into radio stations saying that they'll beat the shit out of any Arab that crosses their path. A call for concentration camps and forced removal of Arab peoples from our suburban lifestyle. What century is this? Did we not learn from our mistakes? America was created to be the land of the free, a place where those persecuted for religious beliefs could rebuild a peaceful land. Arab terrorist groups attacked our freedom. They do not represent the entire Arabian community. You can't judge a person's beliefs by the color of their skin. You never could. Don't let the media speak for them by flashing a few seconds of media footage of Palestinians cheering in the streets. They probably don't have the same beliefs as the guy who runs the 7-11 down the street. Don't let history repeat itself. -.x.x.x.- Response to WTC Attack by Kilna (kilna@kilna.com) For our leaders: "Never confuse motion with action." -Benjamin Franklin For ourselves: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin Freedom is not an intangible concept bestowed on us by fate. Freedom is the direct consequence of our actions, and lost freedom is the direct consequence of our inactions. Our present liberty is the result of our forbearers' willingness to fight for our way of life, and our successors' will be the result of ours. Our nation, as the WTC towers, has been shaken to its foundations. In this hour of chaos, do not allow attempts at temporary safety to strip our basic freedoms. Wired is reporting that our legislators are trying to do just that with cryptography. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html Let your congressman, your senators know that you are not going to give up this essential right for a false feeling of safety. Let your representatives know that cryptography is an essential part of privacy in your daily life just as having blinds on your windows. Let them know that e-commerce is built on cryptography. And most importantly, let them know that restrictions will only hurt private citizens, since the bad guys already have the tools. Banning encryption will only force encrypted data into the least significant bits of other data, for no other reason than a false sense of security for those who don't know how technology really works. Let our leaders know that you cannot preserve freedom by taking freedoms away. -.x.x.x.- Unfathomable by Melinda (scgal1@excite.com) Anguish of the masses crashing through The devastation left in the wake Of someone's hatred. A million whys on the lips of tear-stained faces Blurred by the wailing of mothers suddenly childless Lovers suddenly single Children suddenly missing a parent A brother A sister. Numbness and Shock wrap their arms around us Cushioning the blows that images assault us with. Disbelief giving way to a universal sorrow As the shadow of an army of sacrificed souls Falls over us. Those who feed their children On candy and stories of an EVIL COUNTRY Dance and cheer in the streets. Do they not feel the chill of the shadow? Leave us to our mourning Let us drape ourselves in black But do not tempt our wrath to show itself to you. Our buildings have been destroyed Not our spirit. -.x.x.x.- Big Brother Invades by SlapAyoda (slapayoda@yahoo.com) Now that those of us who were fortunate enough to avoid being directly affected by last week's tragedies have had time to recover and regain our senses, it is time to work together to prevent another frightful occurrence of even longer-lasting and wide-reaching scope. I'm not talking about another terrorist attack, and I'm not talking about an American invasion of the Middle-East. The problem I'm referring to is the widespread anti-privacy campaign currently taking Washington by storm. Major news agencies have already reported on a bill passed by Congress to allow the FBI -unwarranted- wiretapping privileges, but it went seemingly unnoticed in the endless stream of reports coming from New York. It's sad that some of the more extremist players in Washington are using this unfortunate attack on our nation to attack the privacy of Americans. Among the current proposals being discussed in Washington, one of the most intrusive and pointless measures deals with encryption. For those who aren't aware, encryption is a valuable method of protecting your personal privacy. It works by scrambling a message into an unreadable collection of jargon, until decoded with the correct algorithm or password. Unencrypted email is sent in plain-text across the Internet and can be easily read by anyone with access to the computers between the sender and the recipient (ie - anyone who happens to work as an admin at a major ISP). The government is proposing that all tools used to encrypt data, which they claim are used only by "hackers and terrorists" to "thwart law enforcement", be modified to include a "backdoor password" so that law enforcement agents can automatically decrypt any data encrypted with such software. This would make any software not complying with government-spying standards 'illegal'. This is a completely ridiculous piece of legislature for the following reason (among others): if Osama bin Laden's terrorist sect, or any other criminals for that matter, are planning on committing a criminal act, why would they use encryption software approved by the US government when they could simply use the software they already have, or simply opt to use the 'illegal' software which will continue to thrive with or without the government's approval? It makes no sense. This is simply another piece of legislature that will have no effect on real criminals and will criminalize the actions of legitimate citizens. To learn more on how to protect your freedoms, read this article posted on Slashdot.org: http://slashdot.org/yro/01/09/16/1647231.shtml You -can- fight for your freedoms. * Begin BASE64-encoded message * RmlnaHQgZW5jcnlwdGlvbiBsZWdpc2xhdHVyZS4gQmUgZnJlZS4K * End BASE64-encoded message * -.x.x.x.- my journal entry last night by Monk (monkstah@hotmail.com) expression. 2 doves, repeatedly striking glass. i can safely say that i have yet to feel 10 million pounds of steel and concrete fall on my head. i hate the intelligence community. i hate passenger planes. i hate suicidal people. i hate war. shock is such a small word for how i feel right now. it would almost compare to an alien standing next to me and saying hi. we, human beings, just don't realize how small and insignificant we really can be. boom. firecrackers on the 4th of july. closing a city down. poof. the city that never sleeps does, covered in man-made snow. i hate tuesday. -.x.x.x.- Grieve with others across the world at the following sites: http://www.phonelosers.org/wtc.html We set up a message board for people to express themselves and leave messages about those they care for in NY and DC. - Colleen Card, PLA http://www.dubistkoeln.de/condolences/ We express our sympathy with the victims of the horrible terror attacks, their families and friends and want to demonstrate our solidarity with you. - Caynan, Book of Condolence -.x.x.x.- Flippersmack Archives: http://www.penguinpalace.com/ http://www.nettwerked.net/ http://www.ghu.ca/ +-----------------------------------------------------+ Flippersmack (c) 2001 Flippersmack All Rights Reserved. pinguino rocks muh socks y0.