Well, this is a little bit disappointing:

Nicholas Gurewitch has just announced that he’s retiring his Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip.

Sort of.

“It’s really not as big a deal as it might seem,” Nicholas said today. “I’ll simply be producing comics at a pace I’m more comfortable with.” Monday newspapers publishing his strip received the surprising announcement from the cartoonist. “I’m making this decision for a variety of reasons,” Nicholas told them in an email, “but mainly because I want to do other things besides be a cartoonist.”

The PBF is one of my favorite comics, and not being able to enjoy it on its already semi-monthly schedule will be annoying. There’s nothing else really like it out there. I certainly wish the Dayton Daily News would print it and other more adult-oriented comics. Wouldn’t you love to open your Sunday funnies and see this:

Oh well. At least I have the crazy Internet on which to read this and other witty, unusual comics.

JAB

It’s amazing to me the number of hipster kids that are out there. I see them everywhere. The other day I was getting coffee and two of them sitting next to each other — inside, with scarves wrapped around their necks, of course — reading the same book: CHOKE, by Chuck Palahniuk. (Aside: Why do people like that man’s books? I’ve read three of them, and they all were pretty bad. Admittedly, Choke was the best of all three, but it still wasn’t good.) Maybe they were reading it for a class, or, I dunno, a book club. Like “Thoughtful and Angst-y Monthly.” Heh.

Currently, there is a small cluster of them sitting nearby. All are wearing a mixture of tight jeans, band tees, dark-framed glasses, scarves, trendy shoes, long coats, and accessories that run the whole “eclectic” gamut. Two of the girls are hot, but that is irrelevant to my point, though awesome. Glasses on girls is the shit.

It seems to me that in the intervening years since I was in high school, the “goth kids” that were so prevalent have been replaced by the hipster movement — which for the sake of discussion, includes “emo” and “indy.” I know there are still goth kids out there; occasionally, I see them loafing at the Waffle House or being depressed and in my way while I attempt to make a purchase at the book store. But I see them around much less than I did when I was younger. Shit, used to be you couldn’t go to Perkins or Denny’s at 3:00 am without tripping over ten of the pasty, black-clad little bastards. Perhaps emo became the new goth somewhere along the way. That clique was only just burgenoing when I graduated eight years ago. Does that make the indy kids the new punk kids? I still see them around quite a bit, though, with their mohawks and their Chuck Taylors and their Boy Geniuses. Maybe I’m just too old and “out of touch with today’s youth.” Though if being in touch with today’s youth means I have to like the bilge that is Death Cab For Cutie and other such music, which I shall term “pussy rock,” then put me in the nursing home already.

Damn. Three more hipster kids just walked in. I think they belong with the group already congregating. Maybe they’re part of Project Mayhem (Project Gayhem? Anyone? Anyone?”). Certainly enough of them Except I doubt Tyler Durdan would have worn a scarf. Robert Paulson, maybe.

Of course, I’m making these judgments as I sit in a coffee shop, taking a break from the project I’m working on, writing in my blog, while I wear my New Balance and black-framed glasses. Listening to the JUNO soundtrack, which is full of folksy and quirky music and is awesome, I realize that I fit into many of the same parameters for hipster kids that I just laid out. But I’m not hipster. I’m not trendy enough, and I don’t have the enthusiasm any more to maintain any sort of image. I find too much of it now to be ridiculous, not cool. And I’m not in school anymore. Once you get a real job (which sucks, but which is besides the point), it seems you leave behind a lot of the “image” baggage you once carried in school.

Is there a category such as Post-Hipster? If so, put me in it.

JAB

Does it make me a bad person because I don’t see anything inherently wrong with the idea behind Soylent Green?

For those who haven’t ever seen it and don’t wish to know the big “secret” of the film, I suggest not reading on. Continue at your own peril. Ye be warned.

Well, I guess I’m really not a nice guy, since I think turning people into processed food is a perfectly marvelous idea. Which is what happens in the dystopic future Soylent Green is set in. (If you’d like to read a nice summary of the film, I suggest Wikipedia.)

This should not, however, be confused with me proclaiming that we should give carte blanche to the Powers That Be to turn old people into food for the rest of us. Though that might be the perfect way to turn homeless people and people constantly on welfare into productive members of society.

Kidding.

First, let me provide a little bit of info about the film so that maybe you’ll understand what the hell I’m talking about. In a horrible future (2022, I believe), the environment is decaying, disease runs rampant, and the world is in the throes of massive overpopulation — so much so, that stairways of apartment buildings are packed full of homeless people — and the government has had to resort to creative, authoritarian methods to keeps things running. Not running smoothly, but just running. One company, the Soylent Corporation, produces these sort of nutrient wafers that feed over half the world’s population. Throughout the film, the main character, a detective (played by my man, Charlton Heston), tries to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder of a man on the Soylent board of directors. Stuff happens, more people die, Heston bangs a hot piece of “furniture” (def. “an attractive young woman who serves as both domestic help and sex object to the rich” — who says the future is all bad, eh? Again with the kidding.) at the dead man’s apartment, and then he winds up at a dead-body-disposal/food-manufacturing plant. Here he discovers, egads, that “Soylent Green is people!”

It’s at this point in the movie that I find myself, not shocked or horrified, but saying, “So what?” I think it’s a great idea that shows foresight, ingenuity, and an ability to make hard decision. As I see it, turning dead people into food for the starving, teeming masses is just another form of recycling. Really, where is the logic in trying to dispose of a bunch of corpses in a future where space is already at a premium? That’s about as logical as sticking your head up a butcher’s ass to get a look at t-bone steak, instead of taking the cow’s word for it.

To be fair, the film does try to twist the knife a little more near the end. Heston prophesies that soon, “they’ll be turning people into cattle.” This could be a valid concern, and I would have some issues with that. Recycling dead people and breeding humans for slaughter are two entirely different matters . . . though both have some merit.

Overall, the film is pretty damn effective. It’s an engaging sci-fi noir, and probably more importantly, it serves as a thoughtful warning of what might happen if the human race keeps on raping the Earth — or waterboarding Gaia, if you prefer — the way it has been since the Industrial Revolution.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make myself a snack. All this talk of food is making me hungry.

JAB

. . . at least that’s what I think I should be saying, except I’m not.

I’ve been stoked about Indy IV since it was first announced, back in ’00. This excitement has grown exponentially since then, especially this year, since the movie is coming out in a little over three months. The teaser trailer was released today and I just watched it, as you now can below:

And now I’m a little unsettled, like someone’s whispering in my ear but I’m alone. Or like when every time I watch el Jefe Bush speak, my stomach mildly churns, and I wonder, How could so many people have voted for this man . . . twice?

Sure, it makes me all goose-pimplely, as it should. But it just feels . . . off. I don’t know if it’s just that it’s been so damn long since a new Indiana Jones film (nearly 20 years), or if it’s that the bits of film featured in the trailer look too polished. Too cartoony. Almost like a caricature of an Indy film.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. After all, it’s only maybe a minute’s worth of actual footage. The film is still at the rough cut stage; the entire tone of the film could change drastically between now and May 22nd. Regardless, I’ll still be in theaters at midnight on May 21st.

But, man. I still got chills — the good kind — when John Williams’s awesome score faded in . . .

JAB

It’s done.

At long fucking last it’s done.

It’s safe to say that I’ve put more work into building this son of a bitch than I have since when I first sat down six years ago and thought, Huh. How about I make a blog? Perhaps that will finally satisfy these narcissistic tendencies I’ve been experienceing. Then I probably turned on the TV and thought, I dunno, what the fuck is “American Idol,” ’cause this was way back in 2002.

But I digress.

This “theme” (Gods, how I still hate that word) looks somewhat different than it did a few days ago. Someone in the peanut gallery remarked that the chosen color scheme made it look like “the pentecostal Christian affiliate of NAMBLA,” or something to that effect. Though a jackass remark, it did serve to make me realize something I was feeling but hadn’t yet externalized: I didn’t like the color scheme either. So a few hours of work later, and the site is no longer just some tarted up Catholic schoolgirl to whom I told sweet lies so that it would sleep with me; now I feel genuine affection towards it.

Thusly, here is the new color scheme; indeed, the new incarnation of JOSH BALES dot NET.

Hopefully it won’t suck.

JAB

Perseverance, aided by half a bottle of vodka, and here I am, having finally figured out WordPress themes. The main page looks pretty much the way it should, with a few small tweaks needed here and there. The other pages . . . not so much. They’re completely functional as far as I know, but the code needs some tinkering. Nothing major, but at two in the morning I just couldn’t move myself to give a shit about it.

Semi-regular posting and actual content will commence in the near future.

So . . . how’s everyone been?

JAB