[25] Take Them Away

console

< Piro >

"somethin's gotta give"

Tuesday - October 10, 2000

Yea, somethin has to give today - and I'm afraid that it's the rant ^_^ Not that I ever have a shortage of things the chitter about, it's just that I don't have a lot of time to type much of anything this morning. I've already been to a 7am gathering and I have a pretty stiff deadline for tomorrow night. happy happy, joy joy.

Not to mention tomorrow's comic. Thankfully I'm a little ahead on that - the sketches i did for it last night made me chuckle. I should be able to finish it fairly early tonight.

Oh, and regarding Monday's episode. First off, I really DID finish it pretty early on Sunday. Largo usually posts them around midnight his time (which is 1 am here) - but the doof fell asleep and i had to post it myself in the morning. Gomen. It's all largo's fault. :P

Go easy on him - he had a hard week.

Secondly, I asked the question in the forums regarding the use of brackets to differentiate between Japanese text and English text. I experimented with using different fonts, italics, and even Japanese text w/subtitles (which was too unruly). The consensus I gathered was that brackets were clearest, so I have changed mondays and Friday's comics back to their bracketed goodness. I guess I like them better myself.

I also finally fixed a problem with the MT code that has been bugging both largo and I for months - that extra space between the header and the comic. Turns out there was an extra "br" tag in the table, between "tr" tags. Ah, Much MUCH better.

As you can see from the screenshot, I've managed to fix up and color the image and design for the 'speak l33t' t-shirt. largo and I have been trying to line up exactly how and who the shirts will be printed by all week. I *really* want this to be a nice shirt/sweatshirt. If we can't manage any other alternatives, we will have a variation of this for a white or grey t-shirt available via CafePress by the end of the week. The CafePress stuff is nice, but i really want a darker shirt, and they can't do that for us yet.

Anyhoo, i hope you like the design. And pay no attention to my cluttered desktop. :)

Lastly, I did a little gift art of Bimbo and Ralph for Poe over at Exploitation Now - which was a hella lota fun to draw. I get a real kick out of Exploitation Now - just enough ribald humor without crossing that taste line that Clay's THL stuff does. :) And I remember doing a grafitti peice for a senior prank at my high school too... ah, the joy of Krylon. Thanks Poe.

Ah, not so much of a rant today as a ramble. Be good people, tomorrow's strip should be pretty funny, as we discover more of piro and largo's bad habits. :)

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< Largo >

"G.T.O."

Monday - October 9, 2000

[Largo] - 15:40:00 - [link here]

Yes, you can blame me for Monday's episode being late. In my defense I had a very good reason for not updating it on time… It's such a great reason really, if you knew how great this reason was, you'd understand… Although I am not at liberty to tell you my reason … for reasons… of national security or something.

I think I'll spend today talking about whatever it is I'm watching this week, which happens to be "Great Teacher Onizuka" a drama / comedy. GTO is a set in modern times, with a man named Onizuka who wants to be, now pay attention... a great teacher(o-sensei).

Originally there was a long running manga series called "Onizuka" which had a much younger, and much more violent Onizuka then the person seen in "GTO". In the manga, Onizuka was the leader of a gang, and his daily routine mostly consisted of beating people up, getting girls, and trying to get enough cash to buy his cigarettes.

GTO takes place in a timeline a few years after the manga ended, where Onizuka is now twenty-two and has decided to do something useful with his life and become… now get ready for it.. a great teacher.

Initially (this is cut out of the anime for those of you who have not read the GTO manga) our hero decided to become a teacher after a failed one-night stand with a high school student that ends with her ditching him for her teacher. He decides he should become a teacher himself for the girls… Lucky for us this motivation is quickly put to bed(pardon the pun) early on in the series as Onizuka realizes there are more important things in life, like… ohh.. I don't know… ethics? morality? doing good? a gigahertz cpu...

Onizuka as a character is really complex. Though he's presented to us as immature skirt chasing(nanpa) dreamer early in the series, he quickly gains maturity as a teacher. It becomes obvious that although he must of been of ignoring it, he has a kind heart and wants only to help the students get through their difficult lives.

Each episode or "lesson" as they are titled, generally will focus on a particular student or issue. While not all lessons do this, you'll find most early lessons will follow this format as they develop the characters.

If I was to put a general theme on GTO, I'd say the series is about healing old wounds. Many of Onizuka's students represent various issues found in the real world, although some of his solutions are not orthodox… safe… or legal … he seems to pull off saving the day. To this end Onizuka helps others in order to heal his own wounds.