Last week was a pretty big post with a longer comic than usual, which took a fair while to do so this week I am filled with a deep sense of “can’t be arsed”.  Hence I fished the ‘back of a napkin’ style first draft of last weeks comic out of the bin and took a quick crappy photo, dug out some older comics, and spewed none-sense to link it all together to get.  And so…

Mercy On My Soul prouuuuuuudly presents:

*Jazz Hands*

Director: “You can see the 3 strips were originally written as one, and we tried to cut it down to fit in a 3 or 4 panel sequence, and we thought we could just have the first section and leave it to stand on its’ own but at some point Dave, that’s our lead production guy here at MOMS, Dave said ‘Why are we cutting this into a single strip – this is 3 strips – let’s make 3 strips for it.’, and we just all felt so strongly about the story that I don’t think there was really any disagreement with that – it had to be told the way it was meant to be told, and that meant 3 full strips.

“Funding was an issue, a worry I and the producer tried to keep off set as best we could – some of the bigger special effects we had planned had to be cut.  Originally this sequence had budget for 3-colour and I think there was room in there for an animated ‘blowing out’ of the bulb.  All that had to go but we made the three strips up, each separately with their own title lines.  I think early on in post production we knew we were going to chop the titles off the second two strips – we felt the blog post was probably cutting into the flow enough already and we at the comic team didn’t want to add any to that.  Of course in the Signed Collectors DVD Special Directors Cut Extended Edition Box Set, you get all three original strips with titles as well as the merged one piece product before it was cut for blog integration.

“Yeah there’s a little known mistake that slipped by the boys over in post production, well [chuckles] slipped by all of us really but fans love the occasional mistake to spot so we figured we’d leave it out there in release.  It’s in frame 9, which you’ll see here wasn’t in fact in the original script at all – we just improved that whole box on set – sometimes you get the right toons with the right script and that sort of thing just happens and we had great chemistry that day.  Anyway it’s the podcast line and rather embarrassingly there’s a misspelling on the word ‘Commentary’ and I guess we were just so… in the zone, you know, artistically, that nobody noticed it.

“Of course that line was delivered by Bob Michaels, who was a real inspiration throughout the whole thing.  In many ways this was his big brake – he’d been seen before on a comic about public transport, well, he says he was in that – I’m afraid no-one still on the team quite remembers him and we can’t see him on any final production footage from that one but he insists he was on set…

“Either way he didn’t have a speaking part in that strip.  A while after he came up again in a post about lust, but it was one short line – he was very much a small supporting actor to the Lady of that strip, who we all know and love of course, Sally Sonatta – a brilliant actress I’ve had the pleasure to work with a few times. […] Oh… we have a clip?  Do we have a clip?  Sure – yeah play it…

“But yeah, Bob here was really given a much bigger part than he’d ever done before and he just knocked our socks off, which is pretty funny when you consider that he doesn’t even have feet himself. [chuckles]”

Bob: “Yeah I remember the day the curser issued a click event on me and dragged me into that first frame.  I don’t think anyone expected I’d get the part, I know a few others had been tried out before and after me and some of them much bigger stars in MOMS productions but when they dragged me back in and gave me the full script – I just new this role was for me.

“The monologue was terrifying, [laughs], almost as terrifying as balancing on those chairs for the photo-blog panel.  I feel quite strongly an actor should do his own stunts which was handy because there was no budget left for stunt doubles anyway! [laughs]  But yeah the monologue, I think we ended on about… 26 takes before we finally got one we could use.  It wasn’t just the script - I don’t think readers realise how hard it is to act cross panel like that – well – I didn't realise till I was doing it.  Throwing your voice into another frame is pretty tricky and then to completely ‘Fill the Box’ with your voice – remember we were speaking in dark speech bubbles the whole time too, just to throw another thing you have to think about into the mix! [laughs]… it was one of the most testing things I’ve done in my career.  Still we nailed it in the end and the buzz you get when they call a wrap on that sort of scene – it’s what makes this job so… it’s what keep you going for the next panel.”

Director: “Oh I’d love to do more extended productions but budget constraints usually pin us to 3 box’s.  But I wouldn’t rule it out – maybe even longer strips some day or multi-part stories. [chuckles] We’ll use whatever they make available to us – we live for this stuff.”

Alright enough of this silliness.
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Phil
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(To be continued…)

So the economy is in crisis and the world is dangerously unstable.  We’ll see unemployment and inflation rise, interest rates fall and commerce halt.  There’s little to be done about it at this point and every political pundit worth his salt is taking this opportunity to blame the current breed of leaders, and I’m afraid I don’t have a formed opinion to join the mud slinging level of this debate with so I thought we could take a minute to kick a few ideas about on a higher level of economics.
Specifically, our social structure.  Economics you see, is as much a shared perception mutually imposed on the world by anyone who can.  That sentence would be a great one to unpack but I want to move on so I’ll just make the connection that shared perceptions are fostered by our shared societies.  The rules that make people rich or poor are decided by… well… ourselves as a collective whole.  We in the UK are part of the great Capitalist West.  Our society is driven by the ability to better our own wealth and security on an individual level, then a collection of laws is laced over the top of that foundation to cap or muffle the raw and dangerous greed that might bring, and ensure that while the drive to gain more is in place, those who don’t win still find room.
Massive generalisations and a simplistic take sure, but it’s enough to make the point that it’s a system, and then to mention that it’s not the only one.  The other system well known around the Western world is Communism.  A cut down simplistic take on that would probably say that in Communism, private wealth is much harder come by, and the focus is on everyone working equally hard in whatever they do for the good of the state.  Total wealth is divided equally… well… let’s just go with that… and so a cobbler is paid the same as a doctor.  Both work, both get a share of the pie.  Here the emphasis is on all things being to build up the state, and that if everyone is given only what they need, then there is less waste, and the society as a whole is stronger and more luxury can be added to all.

There’s a lot of problems with both.  Socialism, to go a step further than Communism and in fairness, I probably better described Socialism back there, lacks personal incentive that drives entrepreneurs, while Capitalism suffers from a degenerating cycle as the total amount of real resource slowly diminishes against the amount of printed money.  We’re going into a recession, if not a depression right now, and this is nothing unexpected or surprising.  It’s quite predicable and it’s happened time and time again.  So I was kicking about the issues in my head one night when I got bored of pinning down the paradox’s if Capitalist society and decided it’d be all together easier to start from scratch.  By this time it was late and I wanted to go to sleep so I didn’t get far, but I’m going to go back at it now with keyboard under fingers and share the raw drivel as it comes out my brain so we can all share in the joy of my wasted time. :)

(More continuation to come!)

At first I started off by considering Socialism.  I mean.. I like it – who doesn’t in a ‘airy-fairy’ kind of way.  It’s the idea that everyone works to better each other and they cuddle each other and make wuzzy wuzzy noises all day long.  It’s never really lived up to the expectations but the idea’s lovely, and, perhaps inescapable, because the population is rising yet the need for labour is diminishing as technology aids our industrial production levels of all things.  Imagine a world not far from now where robotics and AI handle so very much manual and service labour that all jobs of that type disappear.  In many senses it’s happened to a few industries in the last century – but anyone who follows the news of tech will tell you what’s come before is truly nothing to what we’ll see.  What can you do then with all that extra population and no need for the labour?  You need an institutionally intentional ‘dolist’ section of society.  A section of society who are not expected to gain employment but to live on state provision.  And why not?  If there’s enough resource produced by automated process’, only a minority, who would live much wealthier lives for the trouble, need to work.  What can happen here is for the wealth gap to become enormous, or resources like food become scarce and expensive and at best the dolist are forced to rioting and more likely war comes about.  So you can have socialism, with very limited benefit for the working few, but then who’d want to do the rubbish jobs?  And whatever way you play it population will grow till it over burdens the resource… no… no… I’m getting lost down this path.  We could add in some population control but I’m seeing a very dark and unrestful civilisation coming about from all this good intention – I just don’t think it’ll work.

(Three part comic today!  Oh how I spoil you)

I don’t think adding a dash of Capitalism will make things any better, but we do need to address the motivation factor as well as the ‘occupying the masses’ issue.  Working people have a lot less time to riot in the streets and with income dependant on work because food is privately owned by people who make a living selling it… they have to go to work to get it.  But Capitalism has a problem when it passes one generation to the next.  The following generation have the previous generations wealth and so aren’t as motivated to work to maintain it, nor as worried about losing it until it’s gone, because there is less experience of hardship to fear.  The churn I eluded to before is also a problem.  Capitalism works by you getting paid by your employer for making blocks in a factory, then you go to the shop and buy those blocks with that money, which passes it back to your employer so he can pay you to make more blocks.  It’s churn, and there’s no real money exchanging hands.  Sure you don’t buy your employers products, you by someone else’s employers products but they buy the things you spent your working life making so it all balances out.  The money… which is just paper in many ways, just moves around like an endless street magicians ball and 3 cups trick.  Each generation finds it harder to balance the spiralling books with a balance at the end of the page.  Generational wealth being passed on also causes unfairness – allowing children of the rich to have a better start and greater resource behind them to become themselves rich, while people from poor backgrounds have to compete with absolutely nothing in an open market against their endlessly funded counter-parts, and that creates a massive layer of discontent and lack of motivation anyway.
Seems to me we have a big problem here with our generational pass on… so… can we ditch generations? 

Ok… fresh page.

Here’s what I got so far.  Everyone is born equal, given a standard of education made as fair and equipping as we can.  After compulsory education, you can apply for further education, or an innovation grant to start a business, or a job in the civil service or a nationalised industry, or a job in the private sector.
Further Education:
Those who succeed can gain jobs in the public or private sector or go on for more education.
Business Route:
Those who succeed in business succeed, and may keep the wealth they gain, and employ etc…
Those who don’t may get a job in private or public sector.
Public Sector:
There’s always a job in the public sector for every citizen.  The pay may be basic for many jobs but even if every school has 10 teaching assistants per class and every civil service department is staffed to the gills if we’re paying dole we may as well attach a job to that.  We could have much shorter work days for the dolist level worker, and have 2 shifts to a normal working day of our current society but this isn’t really a dolist level as there is work to be done and pay is hopefully enough to enjoy life comfortably.

But… this is pretty much what we have now… how do we solve the generational issues that will make this system ultimately unfair and unsustainable?  Ok… not thought this threw but lets say one generation is not allowed to share resources directly with the next.  Education is standard and equal to all who are equivalent stages of it (compulsory, and various further levels).  If you start out in business you write your business plan and apply for resources from the government, not your parents or private investors, the best people and ideas are supported proportionally.  Private investment can be acquired from any personal wealth *within* your generation, but not that of your parents and above – being born to wealth by no means guarantees your lifestyle will continue in that manner once adult – everyone succeeds of their own merit and every generation has a hard beginning.  Accommodation, contracts and tenders, salary grades – they’re all channelled through central points, so a tender for a contract from one firm generationally out of sync with all a company who could provide that service can do business but only if they aware awarded the tender by 3rd party – no direct favours or dealings.  Inheritance goes to the state, but is redistributed out to the people in the form of education and grants for business and innovation.  And on the flipside, the richer parent groups do not have to pay more for their child's education or health services than those on lower incomes (or at least not as prominent and difference… there would be difference on indirect taxation to those funds of course).  You’re not higher burdened to provide for your children but you can neither advantage them beyond good parenting.  In effect – boom and bust still exists but isn’t a population wide simultaneous recession, instead a planned isolated reset of the clock on every single 10, 20, or 30 year birth group.  And as one generation is in education, one just getting started, there’s 2 in full productive swing, and one retiring.  I think we could balance that maybe.

I don’t have a name for this… anyone got an idea?  And I’m sure it’s horribly unsustainable for obvious reasons that haven’t jumped to my mind just yet but… I think there might be something in that.  See how it goes anyway, I think we can introduce another ‘track’ or expand on the public sector group there to ensure real commitment to the sciences and stuff.  Perhaps extend Education into Academia and make it a stronger element of this made up society than it is in our current real one… or maybe there’s a better idea altogether.

Ok – I’m done,
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Phil
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For those not seeing how the comic ties in I’m using it to be cynical about how blogs that think about problems with the world are pointless, alike the one above.  Sort of self-deprecating cleverness.  Ok maybe not funny… but cleverness eh?  No?  Oh… well, maybe next time.

The White Lie
And so we come as casually as possible in the hopes that everyone watching would think that the huge time gap between this entry and the last of the same series was a planned and intended break like the spotty faced young professional in an ill fitting suit running for the bus stop attempting to change to a walk in the last 10 yards as the bus pulls mercilessly away, mocking him with some coincidental and ironic rear advertising slogan that I can’t be bothered thinking up right now.  I hope you’re completely fooled by my casual approach, and perhaps aided by your sheer joy that this series has not been forgotten and then it’s death was in fact greatly exaggerated (which keen readers amongst you will note as a hat tip to the last one in the series), and are willing to suspend your disbelief and read on as if the previous parts were but weeks ago.

For those of you who know to what I refer, that intro is best read when you assume the voice of Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation and has come out out of my head in such a fashion possibly due to the 2 hours of his reviews I just watched.  But enough of the small talk, let’s get down to our lessons!

White Lies are another sort from the ‘lies most people do’ category but unlike exaggeration for pure entertainment covered in the last part, they’re rarely fun to deliver.  White Lies are little falsities you spit out when you’re only options are to cause pain with truth, or use a lie, and ideally in a situation where there would be little consequence, or the consequence of the lie would be less than the pain of the truth anyway.  Let’s think of an example:

Bob enters the scene wearing the most ugly T-shirt space age science and careful negative design man could possibly make.  He stands next to his good friend Fred and says aloud…
Bob: “I love this T-shirt.  I saw it in the shop and thought ‘Wow!  That T-Shirt is awesome!’  I love it so much, I’ve placed all my self esteem and will to live in the mutual acceptance of my choice in T-Shirt that I now require from every other person I ask about it! Do you like it Fred?”
Fred: “Oh… wow… yeah… man that’s umm… that’s a great T-Shirt.  I wouldn’t worry about anyone who has a negative opinion of it though – if they criticise it, no matter how valid their reasoning may be, I can tell you Bob, it’ll be born of pure jealously because man - *that* T-Shirt is so fan-dab-idose-tastic that I don’t think it even need a second arm hole, nor could it befit from a little extra fabric to cover two small gaps revealing your slightly hairy nipples – it’s just… it’s just perfect!”

Now ok… you have to imagine Bob is the kind of person who never suspects sarcasm because I may have allowed a little more Yahtzee style speak influence my example there… but you see the basic premise.  Fred is using a lie to guard Bob from the consequences Bob eluded to should he discover the truth.  As a good friend, Fred might later try to engineer some cunning situation where by he spills beetroot over Bob’s T-Shirt making it seem as accidental as possible in order to spare Bob the eventual realisation when to many critics wear thin the fragile white lie Fred has placed, or indeed it may be Fred’s hope that Bob’s fanatical devotion to this garment will wane before the lie gives out and when the truth is learnt, though Bob may feel slightly betrayed by Fred’s uncovered lie, he will not descend into a deep pit of depression and despair over the affair.

And with this we see where the name comes from.  ‘White’ here standing symbolically for ‘Good’ as it does in all Medieval Fantasy, Religious Imagery, Current day MP3 Players, and South American racist organisations.  White Lies are lies on the side of good, and as traditionally lies have not been welcome on the side of good (though we’re working to change all that with this very series of course), only the smallest of lies really get reluctantly awarded this title.

So how do they help you?  Simple.  They help you make peace, they help you keep friends, they can make you popular amongst the plentiful supply of insecure people in our society.  We all use a white lie at times, and casual use will keep most things in balance – but master this set and you’ll have your own cult of devout followers with as much fanatical support for you as Bob has for his new T-Shirt.  White lies are support from the masses, and support from the masses is weight with many an important person.  I never intended to mention politicians so often when I started this series which seems odd when you consider that ‘lies’ and ‘politicians’ are two words that could easily appear one above the other on most of the Family Fortunes results sets that is likely to contain either one, but here they offer such a good example of White Lie Mastery in their every day manners and actions when at political events meeting voters in brief and civilised settings.  “Oh you are looking well” they say, “Is that real diamond?  Oh wow it’s not?  Well you really can’t tell – are you sure?”  The politician is assuming they’d rather hear that than have hurt feelings by saying the jewellery looks cheap, knows there’s no likely negative consequences for saying it looks nice, and has just gained personal support from the person for saying so.  Master these at an early age and you could very well find yourself the elected leader of the known universe by 30.

Your homework for this session:
Make 5 strangers like you by complimenting something they take pride in that actually sucks.
Extra Credit: Make someone who dislikes you like you using carefully placed and sincerely executed White Lies.
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Phil
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Hey hey!

So Christmas was good.  A very welcome break with a good series of days off and nothing to worry about.  I think Christmas started the weekend before the big day when I went shopping with Caleb.  That Saturday I really needed to get all my shopping done and done, so it was a marathon trip to the Trafford Centre with a checklist of names and my shopping wingman to help keep me focused.  A retail centre novelty fountain of coffee and six hours later, we sat down in a mock New York Bar & Grill for a well earned thick cut burger, and then into the Odeon to finish of the night.  Actually, not quite to finish off - after that I dropped in on MJ and saw an old friend from uni who was over too, swapped stories of IT horror and played the recent Prince of Persia release till the early hours before heading home feeling something like I imagine Santa does the week before Christmas, having just made his full logistics inspection of all the big day preparations and setup.

The following week saw me briefly in the office but mostly playing x-box, watching DVD's, and wrapping presents.  That line of activity, minus the present wrapping continued through the holidays so indisputably that in hind sight I must confess I did not contribute much to the success of Christmas.  I think I'm still riding on the wake of a few years back when my family made me suffer though a Butlins Christmas.  I think my parents now take especial care to make sure I have a hassle free Christmas which is perhaps a bit undeserved, but I had been working a lot lately and I was too glad of the rest to rock that particular boat, but I can at least say how much I appreciated it.

The Wii featured heavily, with all members of the family from nephew to Grandma taking part.  My parents have since kept the daily fitness program going and are now desperately searching for a Wii Fit to add to their collection of glossy white Nintendo wonders sitting amongst the other LED baring array of home entertainment devices under the TV.

Sues has also made a Christmas appearance in Merry Old Rochdale, having stayed a few nights up to today.  We mostly shopped (although I should make the point very clear that in no way this a suggestion that this is all she would want to do, and as I do, I should say that Sues has extremely broad cultural and experiential horizons that she is ever seeking to increase and enrich), and watched a little West Wing, but for both of us as well as time to catch up it was a time to unwind and relax isolated from the normal working lives that consume our thoughts perhaps that little bit too much.

And so no we are here, staring 2009 squarely in the eyes.  For me 2009 is likely to be full of challenge, we've got a pretty steep project map laid out at work that stretches the whole year through that may require nothing short of weekly miracles to keep it running up to speed, but on the plus side, the project is a fresh one, rebuilding our core systems from the ground up with a chance to make good on the hindsight and lessons we've learnt from the current system.

Outside of work, I should make some effort to take care of my body a little better.  I don't often give thanks to the poor thing, it's not a bad one and this year I've been hard on it and it's not let me down.  I should be grateful and not push it through another 12 months in sleep deprived caffeine induced elevated heart levels - I might not make good on this I know but I should maybe join some club based exercise thing or something.  Put a bit of regularity into the week and of course, new ventures bring new people so that should add a new element to social quarters.

Anyway - here's to 2009!  Hope it's a good one for you all,
Until next time,
Be good,
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Phil
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