Yeah, okay, this choice was basically a no-brainer. It’s the only feature there is for April 2002. But that doesn’t make it any less notable. This is the only feature on the site that was written while this place was still nothing more than a homepage for our Hat! Ragnarok Online clan, and the page was called Totally Hat! We would become Jux sooner, rather than later, and the page would go in the new direction you all know and love so much. This feature remains an entertaining read, even a full year later. For the record, none of us has played RO in a long time, because it is no longer free…much to our disappointment. Especially for Kitty.
Once it got there, it decided that its life was over and died.
This was one of our tougher decisions. Before we did a re-vote, this category was a four way tie. But when push came to shove, I changed my original vote, and elected this feature the winner along with Kitty Vertigo. And it deserves it well. I probably should have voted for it in the first place, since I pushed for it to be created. I went log file diving to find the conversation that this feature was inspired by. That Board Room discussion went on for over 6 hours, though, so all I can realistically post is this excerpt. Kitty Vertigo: OH GOD!!1′ CrossedReality: lah lah? Kitty Vertigo: ITS AN ALIEN LIFE FORM!!!!!!!!!1 CrossedReality: Oh god? Kitty Vertigo: growing underneath my desk Kitty Vertigo: lol… at least its not what ifound last time i cleaned my room * Kitty Vertigo looks at it Kitty Vertigo: is it a frog toy? * Kitty Vertigo looks closer and gets a whiff CrossedReality: what did you find the last time you cleaned your room? Kitty Vertigo: EWW!!! ITS AN OLD DEAD FROG!!! Kitty Vertigo: i have no idea how it got in here Kitty Vertigo: probably through my broken window Kitty Vertigo: i think its just mold this time though Kitty Vertigo: im gonna need some carpet cleaning stuff CrossedReality: …an old dead frog? really? Kitty Vertigo: yeah Kitty Vertigo: it was dried shrunk skin on a skeleton by the time i found it though CrossedReality: holy hell Kitty Vertigo: yeah Kitty Vertigo: i should’ve been like “Hey kurtis.. want a cool froggie toy?”
Believe it or not, this started out as another four way tie. You wouldn’t expect that from how the voting ended up, would you? Kenny, Travis and I all changed our votes upon second thought. Two things strike me as really damned funny about this comic. The first is that Unnamed Blob became a regular character. I just put him in there because I was too lazy to draw anything complex, and I didn’t even care enough to name the poor bastard. If you notice, in his first appearance, “unnamed blob” is in lower case, whereas later it becomes his name. The second funny thing about this feature is that I posted it because none of us had done anything that day, and we felt bad about it. Yeah, we felt horrible about an entire day without a feature. We go longer than week from time to time now. Ah, the good ole days, eh? For the record, I fucking hate horseradish.
Voting: Dead Jux Day (Graeme, Kenny, Laurie, Travis)
Oh come on, I find you attractive, I’ve made it clear that I want to fuck you, would you just let me straddle your face already and leave it at that.
When it was posted, this was our first guest feature. Little did we know that the author would eventually become a full on member of The Jux Entente; currently the only of our visitors to pull that little feat off. There are a few more interesting things about this feature. It’s out first ‘serious’ feature, but certainly not the last. And it’s currently the only Jux feature to be posted on another website with our knowledge and prior consent. I hadn’t made up the copyright rules for the site. If you’re curious, we get first publication rights, and exclusivity for a year. Which means that all of our guest authors (and us, as well, technically) can start re-whoring their older articles pretty soon, if they want. Just thought I would throw that little tidbit in there.
Bob the Builder: WHAT IS THAT BITCH DOING TO MY EYES?!?!
This particular feature is best remember for the fact that I let Terra Branford beat the shit out of Bob the Builder, whom I had revealed to be a hard drinking, hard whorin` mother fucker the day before. I love children’s television programs, I really do. Many people thought this particular day of the four day contest lost a bit of its luster because I appear to take the cheap way out of a situation at the end. Nothing could be farther from the truth. That horrible shortcut was planned all along! Bob the Builder would eventually pave the way for Surly Guy, who did our question and answers column until I got sick of it. Maybe he should come back, but without his crack-addled sidekick Jesus. Only time will tell. Stay tuned this June for when Terra defends her crown in the Contest of Champions MMIII! Oh, also, all of you people who thought I took this idea from a classic series of Inquest magazine features, back when it was good….you are correct.
This Picasso feature either reveals or solidifies three of the running jokes in the series. 1) Kitty clings to the ceilings for no real reason, and unless he wants you to know he’s there,
you don’t. For all you know he’s been in every single grey-floored Picasso feature I’ve ever done. Think about it. 2) Picasso keeps a handgun strapped under his left eye at all time, and can fire it in a moments’ notice. 3) Animals are evil. The ironic thing? Since this feature appeared, real nude photos of Natalie Portman have appeared on the internet.
The Cherokee Center for Family Violence looked basically like any other house, except it was built like Fort Knox and we were escorted there by a kind policeman.
There are a few things about the voting for this feature that I just don’t understand. I don’t get why Travis didn’t vote for it. It’s a wonderful telling of his early life story, even if it does leave a huge chunk of shit out. Anyway, this feature managed to cause the first minor crisis of the site’s history, when Zen’s mother found it. Up until that point, we hadn’t really thought of our parents reading what we put on here; an oversight on our part. And the feature is obviously not very kind to her. But it all turned out fine in the end. I have no clue if his mother still checks this site, ever, but mine read it almost every day. You get used to it. Another funny thing about this feature is that it is the ONLY feature to ever have its title changed after it was posted. Originally I put this feature online as “Document”, because the file Travis sent me with the text in it was called that, and I had no other title, and the damn thing had to go online. That’s why the .html file is zendocument.html. Later he asked me on AIM why I hadn’t titled it right, and was sorta mad…until he realized he hadn’t put the title in the file. But I went and changed everything to read “Untitled”, which is what he intended.
This is the only award won by a guest author. But it deserves it. To fill up our Mario Week, which was leading up to the release of Super Mario Sunshine, I asked Spelling the Vacuum genius Elliott Hoffman to do something for us. And this is what he came up with. Would the feature be as funny without the illustrations, or the fact that his opinion is just plain wrong? I don’t think so folks. I do not think so. Maybe one day we can convince Elliott to stop drawing his little appliances and join us to write full time. Until then, you take it when you can get it.
I loved Eternal Darkness. Hell, I still love Eternal Darkness. I can’t believe that game is almost a year old. Anyway, guess what? This marks the first time a Spelling character has made an appearance in a Picasso comic that wasn’t written for a guest comic. The one with Teejo was created for Elliott to put on his site; it only later appeared here. This Picasso feature also has a red balloon in it. Yep. Oh, look at the voting for this one. Aren’t you glad I changed the way I titled Picasso features?
I’d say something here, but I’m still laughing my ass off at how badly all of you did. Travis thought there was something wrong with the GEORGIA border. I didn’t even think I did that well when I made the image. Jeez, you people scare me. That’s why I made the second one so easy.
First used by the Israeli military in their invasion of China, these creatures are intimidating on their own and more than capable of destroying entire cities when assembled in hordes.
I got the idea for this feature when I read on CNN that they were actively working on cloning a mammoth. It may be the best scientific idea ever, but, damn, it’s also sort of funny isn’t it? Can you imagine ten years from now? “Gorillas are going extinct? Bah. I’ll clone a few thousand. We’ll drop them in Russia, see if they can live there. If not…we can make more. No big deal.” We’re too lazy to save our animals, but we’ll clone the hell out of them for fun and profit.
This was our only pre-revote unanimous choice. Zen was exactly 14 days late delivering this feature, but at least it was good once it got here. Very good. A lot of our newer readers won’t get the underlying joke in it, but, alas, that’s their fault. And mine. For changing my signature image. Not much to say about it beyond that, really. Ding hasn’t come back again since August, and he might never, it appears. Now, if Travis wins the comic award for August 2002…what does that say about the quality of Picasso strips during this period? Was Zen really just that good this time around? I’ll leave you with this to decide…
This is my children’s book. It’s actually a parody of “How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight”, which none of you have probably ever read, but I have, because from time to time I’m required to be a children’s librarian. As such, I don’t feel that it’s a real Picasso comic. There’s no punchline. There’s no violence or profanity. There’s a damned cute teddy bear. I love this feature. You should too. I’m a little bit upset that this feature didn’t gain its second, and winning, vote until a tie breaker was held, but that’s alright. I can’t expect everyone to appreciate the sublime quality that’s hidden within. Or maybe I’m just overly attached because it took a damn long time to do 😉 If you’re nice, one day, I actually will do “If you give an unnamed blob a cookie.”
Best Feature of September 2002, Text Comedy: With Salmon
AthenaFalconess (11:52:09 PM): i’m back AthenaFalconess (11:52:28 PM): with salmon
Let me be entirely honest about one thing. I’m not overly fond of using pasted IM discussions as features, even though I participated in one. In general, unless they are heavily edited, they drag on well past the point where everyone has lost interest and include a few too many he’s and haw’s that no one wants to read. I also hate sea food. As does Kenny. That being said, even though I voted against it, this is a damned funny feature, and the best of the chat log features currently on the site. Part, but certainly not all, of the reason for that is because the feature is brief and doesn’t drag on like our other chat features do. By the way, Kenny was right, and, as far as I’m concerned, he won the damn argument. Hah! Oh, and, Zen was the only person in the world to find his choice funny. That includes me. And I wrote it.
Ladies, gentlemen, others…this was the single hardest choice in the entire voting process. When the first votes were tallied, it was a two way tie, between this and Picasso: As Translated By Billy The Intern. Okay, no big deal right? We had lots of ties. All of the others were settled by a simple revote in light of the other choices, and a bit of discussion. No such luck here. All of us were too damn stubborn. Laurie actually came out and said that she just didn’t like the other Picasso comic. I liked both of them, but, I liked the uniqueness of the non-Hobart one more…as well as just how weird it ended up. Anyway, the tie failed horribly. So I went to extremes. I picked out someone that at least three of us know, and who hardly reads the site, so he’s basically impartial: Scott Hankinson. I gave him two URLs and told him to decide. He liked Hobart. The rest, as they say, is history.
September 11th, 2002, was the only time this site has suffered downtime since it was begun. If you came to the page on the first anniversary of the attacks, all you saw was that image, and a brief message stating that we would be back the next day. And indeed we were. I saved the index.html file I had uploaded for that day as a feature in our feature archive. And that feature won this award. We will not be taking the site down for September 11th this year. But the first anniversary was certainly worth remembering. It’s hard to believe just how long it has been, isn’t it? Most of us are sick of the images by now, but, really, the event never quite loses the punch it had.
Graeme finally expresses the inner him. He obviously desires to be a punk dinosaur gangsta. Just try and picture that.
This feature came out of nowhere, and it is one of my favourite ones on the site, bar non. If we had been voting for overall rather than just by months, this one would have been in my limited number of choices for the winner. That one line above inspired a damn Halloween costume later on, for Christ’s sake! This is the longest feature Kitty has ever done, and, reading again during the voting, it makes me wish he would try more stuff like this. Maybe make up his own personality quiz or something, I don’t know. I’m just rambling now.
This Picasso comic has a lot of “lasts” in it. It was the first and last time that I used photo backgrounds in a real Picasso strip, although those will probably come back…mark my words. It was the last comic in the “Kitty is dead/missing!” storyline, which is also the last storyline in Picasso history! I will probably never do another story, because, quite frankly, Picasso and continuity don’t mix. If I do decide to start another plot, it won’t last longer than two strips. If you’re really careful, you can spot how Kitty was rescued in this strip…even though Picasso isn’t the one to do it. You thought I just forgot about saving him, right? Wrong! And, proving this comic isn’t all about lasts…it’s the first time Unnamed Blob is called “Youbee”.
Josh was keeping a firm grasp on Kevins left hand. He was still young enough to be unashamed of his fear of the dark.
Trick was the first time I placed an honest-to-goodness piece of my actual writing on the site. There have been a few more since then, such as Zero, but most have been “short-shorts”, the subclass of short stories. This is the real deal. I have yet to update the html page, although I should. I’ve tweaked and edited the story a bit since then to help the language along, for one. And I’ve changed my least favourite part of the story, which is the ending. There’s now an extra paragraph. But I’m not going to post it online, because the new version isn’t the original Jux Halloween story. This is. Enjoy it; I still think it’s a damn fine piece of work. It’s also, currently, the only html file on the site that deviates from our normal color scheme.
Poor Paul Furler, didn’t know what to do. His house was invaded by evil Pepsi Blue. He tried to resist, but it fizzled and fizzed, and now my friend Paul is dead, boo hoo.
My addiction and love of Coca-Cola isn’t secret, but I don’t broadcast it either. Kenny, on the other hand, has written multiple features on soft drinks for the site, some about his withdrawal from Dr. Pepper, but plenty more about his hatred for the latest novelty drink of the day. This is the best of the bunch, because it has poetry in it. And, also, because Pepsi Blue is one of the foulest substances ever forced upon man. Why do people drink it? WHY?
Best Feature of November 2002, Comic Strip: Hobartnesay
Okay, first, let me explain the title and clear a few things up. This feature is “Hobartnesay” because it sounded a lot like, but wasn’t, the same as the title of the first Hobart-only Picasso comic, which was “Hobartinsay”. Now, the Hobartinsay came from Speak ‘n Say. Hobartnesay comes from his name. The character’s full name is actually Hobart Nesay. And now you know. This is the first time Hobart appears in a costume, although it wasn’t the last. While he has yet to dress up again for a mainstream Picasso comic, he appeared as “Saint Hobart” in a Spelling the Vacuum guest strip. “Coach Hobart” isn’t far behind, I assure you. By this point, I don’t think anyone was doubting that Hobart was a much better character than Bobert. Whereas Unnamed Blob is Picasso’s mood-swinging sidekick, Hobart is just the straight man for everything. He’d probably move, if he had anywhere else to go. The other votes for the month went to my one-two shot “priceless” comics that accidentally introduced, and then deliberately killed, the mini-Travis.
But, as long as we are here to entertain on a mostly daily basis, I will continue to defend Hobart’s right to say “Fuck this, I’m going to be in my trailer.”
This was the very first article to appear in our “Juxtapositions” column, which is used sporadically when we have to write editorial-style features. I wrote it because my father had criticized me for how much profanity we used on the site. I contend now, as I did then, that he was just plain wrong. And that is why there will continue to be very few Picasso comics that don’t include a profane line somewhere in them. Despite this, I did not vote for my own article. I think Kenny’s is better.
People have asked about, and been angry about, another Juxtapositions article in this month. We leave it up because it was put up. The debate is archived as well. I’m a historian, which means I’m not in the habit of destroying any sort of history, and I wouldn’t let it be done here.
I don’t have nearly as many stories as someone who works in retail, but I’ve still got ’em. A third one of these is slowly building, and it will be targeted mostly at my fellow staff members…just you wait. Something else interesting about this category. I’ve not asked Zen about it yet, but according to Laurie, when I originally posted his choice for this category…he didn’t like it. He felt that I basically made her come off as a slut. Apparently, he came around to the fact that I was insulting everyone. Except Kenny. Because he really doesn’t exist.
December was actually a pretty slow month for Picasso comics. The main one that went online was 2/3s sprites . I posted a sprite comic . But I only did that because I thought it was funny, so, it’s okay. This category was originally locked in a four way tie, but both Travis and Kenny decided to change their votes to this feature. I stood my ground. As much as I like this feature, I still prefer my Wigu homage more. Obviously, it’s just me. Lucca is pretty cute…
Remember my last video feature? Guess what! This one has more content!
Travis and I voted for this feature, and to be hon
est, I think we’re the only two people to ever watch the freaking thing. Somewhere between 10,000 and 50 people downloaded my first video feature, where the joke was that it was a video at all. Next to no one touched this one. Maybe they were remembering the first one (which was actually quite funny, in its own way) and decided not to take the risk with the second one. Maybe they just didn’t want to see it. Either way, they were missing out. Despite how it may look, this feature actually took a decent amount of time to make, so, please, watch it. Please?
Best known to the world as “That President even Graeme can’t remember”, I think I’m going to write a song one day entitled: “Who the hell is Millard Fillmore, and why is his rotting corpse going through my garbage for change?”
I fucking love this feature. Which makes it even more surprising that I haven’t finished Part Two yet, eh? I am working on it, and it should appear in the month of April. How’s that for a promise? I’m afraid that I doubt it can be as good as the first part, though. I must have been on fire or something. I just…I love this feature. I remember exactly what inspired me to write it, and I think I’ll read it again to give me the gusto to finish the second part, which should go at least through McKinley. On the plus side, who’s going to forget Millard Fillmore now? Me, that’s who.
This is in the top five titles for Picasso strips ever. As for the comic itself…don’t you just love the little bits of skull and brain and tossed into that gunshot wound? Made it really messy. This is the feature that I was worried to post until I got Zen’s approval. He agreed. And voted for it. Word up, j0.
The worst part was that the two girls from the second set of kidnappings had been found. Their bodies had been discovered nailed to the ceilings over their respective parents beds at 5:00am on the 15th. In both cases, the families slept through the event.
The four had been taken to an area hospital to be treated for shock.
The decision on this one was a bit unique. Everyone voted for Zero, but while some people voted for all of it, others voted for specific segments (which would be strictly adhering to the rules). I decided to just award the win to the whole thing, and give the link to Segment 6b, since it has links within it to all the others. Now, a lot of you are wondering: When, if ever, is Zero going to be continued? I don’t know. Segments 1-6 make up the first “act” of Zero. The second act is still in my head, and I’m planning on working on it one day. What happened to Zero was my novel. When I started working on it with most of my free time, I just didn’t have time for Zero. Now I’m editing my novel and writing the 3,000 short story ideas that I had while I was writing my novel, but didn’t do because I was too busy working on A Man on a Hill. Segment 7 of Zero may appear one day. I wouldn’t put it past me. And it will probably be preceded by a compiled and edited first act. But, until then, enjoy what you have, no? People waited a long damn time when Dickens’ serialized things!
The Stephen King*: You know, what this could really use is a twenty page story from a character’s life that has no bearing on the plot at all!
The asterisk above references the bottom of the feature, where I say that Stephen King is one of my favourite authors. Anyway, this feature was written after the Zero 6b debacle, where I ended up just hating something I had written. So I rewrote it with more dark conflict. Yay! In spite of that, what the feature says about me is not what I actually do to fix things I don’t like. At least, not all of the time.
With the exception of the features where Picasso turned into a tree, this has the least action and/or dialog of any Picasso comic, ever. And it’s still funny as hell, and I still don’t know why. And I wrote it. That’s bad, isn’t it? I think it’s just the look on Picasso’s face as the duck tries, desperately, to quack. Why does it quack when it knows English? Because that’s evolution folks.
We assumed that it would be nothing good, but we weren’t quite sure HOW not good.
Why did I pick this moment to start the series? I don’t know. There are so many to cho
ose from than limiting my field of vision was hard. That’s why there will certainly be more of these to come. I can’t believe how stupid all of this seems in retrospect. How stupid a LOT of these stories seem. But the funniest thing of all is actually the voting. The three male Jux members of old voted for this feature, which was a no-brainer for the month…Laurie did not. I guess you had to be there. Or have a penis. Either one. But we love her anyway, folks 🙂 Her choice was pretty good too, by the way.
That’s the entire feature folks. A single panel Picasso comic. Don’t bother going to read it at this point, no need. What’s funny about this strip is that it was originally four panels long, but I decided the punch line was really in the first panel. The rest was just baggage. Also, for whatever reason, Unnamed Blob is off color in this strip. He’s too light and sickly. Then again, maybe he was sick…after all, those cookies sure aren’t healthy. For your information, in the four panel version, the reason no one was buying their cookies was because Hobart was selling full freakin` cakes, good ones too, for only $5.00 in the next booth. Cutting the extra three panels from this comic means that Chef Hobart has yet to appear. Looking at the voting again, March was a damned good month for Picasso.
It was about two minutes ago, and Im feeling great.
This story is basically ever person who has ever been in an unrequited love situations fantasy. He has a dream about this girl he’s in love with, and when he sees her boyfriend at school, he beats the living shit out of him for no reason other than he’s there. I can only imagine how good that feels. Where does the title come from? I’m finally going to tell you. Listen up. It’s from a Beatles song.
That is it for the first year of Jux Entente features. There’s some good shit up there for you, folks. I leave you with this last thought: we are about to go to a numerical feature-naming system. I shudder to think of what doing all the links in this feature is going to be like next year.
The Jux Entente 