KJToo

Consulting the Wikipedia entry for mondegreen,1 we find the following:

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that yields a new meaning to the phrase.

“He played rubbery with his lips…”

When all is said and done, that phrase may not quite meet the definition of a mondegreen, but it is certainly a profoundly, incredibly incorrect interpretation of a song lyric. Just how profoundly, incredibly incorrect is the interpretation? Well, for starters, I didn’t even get the first word right. Here is the correct lyric:

“You played robbery with insolence…”

…and I played the blues in twelve bars down on Lover’s Lane. The song in question is “Your Latest Trick” by Dire Straits (as heard on the Brothers in Arms album) and, in my defense, it features plenty of lyrics that a ten-year-old boy would find unusual if not downright impenetrable. That it took me more than twenty years to correct my ten-year-old interpretation is merely a testament to the power of procrastination.

“You must have had a pasty made out of wax.”

I have eaten countless Cornish meat pies—pasties—in the past thirty-odd years; they were a staple of my diet growing up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the tale of how my Finnish immigrant ancestors came to adopt them is one I won’t go into here. When I was ten I knew that Dire Straits was a British rock band and that the pasty had its roots in the United Kingdom, so it didn’t seem at all unusual to me that Mark Knopfler would sing about wax pasties. Not unusual at all.

“You must’ve had a passkey made out of wax.”

There was a grand total of five entries in the contest, though I was sure that once the Fabulous Prize was revealed I’d see a flood of new e-mail. Every entry was correct, so everyone who entered had a 20% chance of winning the Fabulous Prize. Having cast the die2 I am pleased to announce that the winner of the contest is Natalie Metzger. Natalie will soon be receiving a copy of Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert.

Thank you to everyone who entered the contest. If you didn’t enter the contest for some reason, leave a comment or e-mail me at contest@kjtoo.com to let me know how I could make future contests (if there are any) more enticing.

1. Kudos to Sam Chupp for pointing me to this. [back]
2. I realize that I’m using this idiom incorrectly, but the winner was chosen by die roll and “[h]aving rolled the die” doesn’t sound as cool. Plus, misusing the idiom fits with the theme of the contest. [back]

Posted August 29, 2009 Comments(7)

I spent far too much time with Inkscape creating1 this comic based on an old forum discussion I stumbled across today. If you know the history of Bruce Wayne (Batman) and Dick Grayson (Nightwing, formerly Robin), you may find it amusing, but I make no guarantees.

1. I’m using the term very loosely here. The dialog is mine; the art clearly is not. [back]

Posted August 9, 2008 Comments(4)

One of the interesting things Bitstrips allows users to do is remix other users’ strips (provided the original creator grants the appropriate permission). The function is “Edit a new strip based on this one” and invoking it loads the original strip, complete with all of the characters, furniture, dialog, props and backgrounds into the strip editor. Once in the editor, you are free to manipulate the strip as you see fit: add a new character, delete a prop, change the colors, move the furniture, etc.

When blob published “To Each His Own” earlier this week, I was informed that I had appeared in a new strip.

Sure enough, there I am, sitting at the bar in the background. And seated next to me (though completely blocked from view by blob’s character) is our mutual friend, 5thHorseman. If you look closely, you can also see the back of codeshaman’s head, almost entirely blocked by the fellow who yells “Go Team!” in the final panel. I thought it would be cool to remix the strip from another point of view, so I hit the “Edit a new strip based on this one” button and started moving characters, furniture and props around to essentially put the camera on the opposite side of the room.

The result is “Meanwhile…“, and it takes place in the same bar and, in fact, at the same time as blob’s original strip.

If you look at the characters in the background, they go through the same motions from panel to panel as they do in the original. Now, however, 5thHorseman is completely visible and we’re having our own conversation in that comicspace, while the dialog in the background is “inaudible”. Oh, and codeshaman is there, too. See, each panel in a Bitstrip comic is actually much larger than what is displayed in the frame, which allows the author to set up a large scene in one panel, duplicate it in the next, then simply pan the camera or resize the panel to include only those elements that are important to each single panel. So, codeshaman is there, out of frame. As in the original, he’s seated to my right. However, he’s only actually in the final panel, as I deleted him from the first two.

Posted March 23, 2008 Comments(2)

Bitstrips allows you to assign a genre to each of your strips, the default genre being Comedy. For “Perspective“, I thought it best to go with the Experimental genre.

Posted March 15, 2008 Comments(0)

I was beginning to think my first Bistrip was going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy and that I’d never have an idea for a second strip. Then I started messing around with the editor and trying to figure out what I could do with my avatar. Messing around with the poses let me to my second strip, “Pumped Up” (click image to enlarge).

My third strip, “On Originality“, was born from the fear that I would subconsciously steal a gag I’d seen in someone else’s webcomic. The mini-strip (or “meta-strip” or “recursistrip”) was a bit of a pain to create, as there aren’t really any drawing tools or primitives on Bitstrips yet. I had to use the “speed line” effect over and over again for all the lines, and getting them aligned was a chore. I wanted to put some background color into this one, but there would have been no (easy) way to make the margins on the mini-comic white if I had.

The script for my fourth strip, “Bigger on the Inside“, wasn’t written until after I had the entire layout finished. I wanted to see if I could effectively create a gaming table that was longer than the one included in the Bitstrips furniture library. Once I had Chris Miller and Miscellaneous G™ (AKA GoonStar) seated at the table, I decided they should be having an argument, much to the dismay of the other gamers at the table. Special guest star: Jason Penney.

In retrospect, I really wish I’d kept the background color the same in all three panels to promote the idea that everyone is sitting at the same table. EDIT: I published a new version with a consistent background color across all three panels. Yes, it bothered me that much.

EDIT (again): I just published the final version of this strip. I found a bigger table that allows me to put together a proper-sized gaming group (four players plus a Game Master). This allowed me to do the strip in two panels instead of three and add a new guest star, SambearPoet. I also tweaked the expression on my face a bit; I figured two adjacent characters with closed eyes wasn’t a good idea. I’m leaving the second version here for posterity and comparison.

Posted March 14, 2008 Comments(0)