I’m not normally a blogger. I don’t blog. But my friends are sick of me dumping my thoughts into their instant messaging windows, so I intend to fill this place with my mind dump. That, and Johnathon tells me I should blog, it’s good for the site apparently.

I hate adverts.

Let’s just get this out of the way before I get into the nitty gritties. I object to advertising on principle. Now, people need to know about new things, if a new book or movie or food stuff becomes available I want to hear about it, I usually want to read/watch/eat it. This could take the form of just a simple message like “Generic Brand Cola has released a new cherry flavour” or something that appears in, say, the news paper. Advertising things that have been around since my grandmother was a girl gets on my nerves. Just let me buy the thing when I go shopping, don’t harass me about it every 30 seconds and advertising for services I can’t utilise is something I really can’t stand. I live in a village; my local store is Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s. I don’t care about the great savings that exist in Morrison’s because the nearest Morrison’s is 40 minutes away. I am not going to drive for forty minutes to save 13 pence on ketchup!

So as you can see, I don’t like adverts much to start with. But, much to my horror, it’s getting worse.

I have always felt sorry for Americans. Your adverts, ‘commericals’, seem to last forever, have little relevance to the product and are more infuriating than rabid weasels clawing at your eyes while Joe Pasquale whispers sweet nothings in your ear. Whenever I switched on the TV when I visited the US I’d groan and tut and make a note to punish American advertisers when I am dictator of Earth after my inexorable rise to power. Similarly whenever I caught an advert on YouTube or some video streaming site I’d feel the same.

But now advertisers in the massive transnational corporations (TNCs) have realised something horrifying. Britain speaks the same language as the United States. For more than fifty years they’ve spent money hiring British actors or voice actors to do region specific adverts to appeal to us British but now they are simply airing American adverts complete with irritating voice overs, crude humour and utter irrelevance. These adverts stand out, they stick in my mind, they do their job perfectly. I now can’t stop remembering that I should be eating at Burger King and buying pregnancy tests and driving Hondas. However I don’t do any of those things, out of pure spite. Now sometimes it makes sense. KFC needs Colonel Sanders, without him life wouldn’t be the same. But seriously, TNC marketing execs, when trying to sell me a car hire someone not with a fine Boston accent, but a refined Queen’s English accent or hell; even Joe Pasquale would do better in trying to get me to buy your goods. Pay the money, do some glocalisation and I will buy your goods. It’s not hard, it will make you money, lots of money, and it will soothe millions of people in England who can’t stand your foul ‘commercials’.

Equally annoying is when advertisers try and convince me if I buy their things my life will be like a Californian movie stars. Maybe I don’t want to be an anorexic, insecure, egoistical, rich, bastard who considers foreigners little more than servants who occasionally shoot at you, living in an area where it never rains, snow is a feature of the mythical past which only shows up on TV and occasionally your home is evacuated for fear of forest fires. I quite like being a student and a comic artist trying to get the grades to go to a university where I will get an unimportant degree which will get me a dull job which will keep me alive till I have some kids upon which time I can die with a reasonable sense of satisfaction. I don’t need to know my clothes are worn by people in Hollywood, they’re clothes! They cover the unmentionables and make you look slightly more attractive at the same time. If they do that they could also be worn by Brian Blessed and they’d still be doing their job correctly.

Also annoying is the current fad with supermarkets. Hire washed up TV stars to endorse your store all you like but don’t try and make them pretend they actually buy their food there. No idiot who’d had half his brain removed, lost an eye and all sense of hearing would seriously believe Richard Hammond or Kerry Katona actually buy goods from these emporiums.

And finally, to round off this rant, I am tired of the use of foreign languages in British adverts. I’m looking at you Audi. You go through all the effort of hiring a nice refined careful English voice actor to give an air of importance and credibility and then ruin it by having him recite an unpronounceable German slogan. I don’t know what it means, I could look it up if I really wanted but I shouldn’t really have to. German cars are supposedly good but that doesn’t mean your company slogan should be in German in English adverts. You could just as easily say “By ze way, ve are germahnz ja?” at the end. It would be more effective and I could understand you. Not that I’d ever buy an Audi of course, unless it was to pile them up in a landfill where they belong.

It’s a Snow Day! The second this week. Today my sister and I made a snow man, deciding that as we’ve never had this much snow before it may be the only time in our lives we get to make a snow man which is 5’6 or higher. So… we did.

And then I did a comic about it.

My sister and I were to make more, an army in fact. My army of snow people was going to take over the world and she and I would rule as joint-monarchs. Unfortunately this snow man showed an unhealthy tendancy to melt when exposed to hair dryers. Needless to say, we decided to cancel our invasions plans and go back to the plan involving mutated hamsters.

This Snow Man then melted in the sun, collapsing under his own mass. Snow men are clearly not the best soldiers for earthly domination.

Hello all. Monday’s update is now up. Apologies for it’s tardyness, I’ve been offline for the past couple of days. (Was working all weekend, including being awake at stupid o-clock…)

Kirrus

I just thought I’d like to point out that it has been one year to the day since I did this page http://www.jaydenandcrusader.com/2008/05/05/2008-05-05/ which was important, it was the start of J&C’s new age. I can’t believe it’s already been a year.
Cuuuuuraaaazy!

Talk to you later guys

First, I would like to apologise to anyone I offend later in this post. I am currently drunk. And I am sorry.

Tonight was my honourary 18th birthday. So I went to the blue boar, the swan and the Oak. But not necessarily in that order. It was the first time I have got truly drunk. Or merry. Or whatever, I am not in full control of my senses right now.

It took:
1 half of strong bow
1 pint of strong bow

3 rum and cokes (I dunno what kinda rum, it was sorta amber,  old jerry’s? Sea jerries?)

1 shot baileys

1 bottle of hobgoblin cider

1 shot of old something rum.

Bottle of hobgoblin

shot of rum

hobgoblin (I remember drinking three)

Shot of rum

Apple sour

Coke

Water.

That’s all I drank.

I become posher the drunker I get. Very posh. I lose even more ability to balance (I am dyspraxic) and bec0me more posh with every drink after the first goblin. I can’t even see the keyboard right now, I trust the fingers. I like the feeling of being drunk, petrified of being sick (I hate that).  Very posh, I do so become. And clarify everything. Everything. I do so do. I become a pedant everyone is scared of. I feel no pain and actions do not quite match up with feelings. I felt I must document this in words. I find everything funny. God I love this feeling

I must thank Neil, Felix and Steven for making sure I got back to my mothers car and into her care safely. I could not even walk in a straight line. Thank you those people.

Thanks also go to Daniel and to Simon for coming out with me. George was unfortunately away. I feel sorry for him.

Bloody expensive though. 5.50 for a shot of rum and a hobgoblin cider? I will kill you folks at the Swan Wantage for your horrible prices.

Thank you though for giving me the coke and water as I attempted to sober up. Little good did it do.

Thank you again to all who helped me enjoy my honourary 18th. If I remember you in the morning. Good show.

Also sorry to Daniel’s friend (I presume) who had the short hair, was 24 and had the pieced ear on his left (my right) for not punching in me in the nose. Most gracious of him.

As I said before, I am thouroughly drunk. I apologise for everything before this here written if any of it should offend ye.

Oddly, I can recite tongue twisters much better than when I was sober. My mental arithmatic has likewise improved.

Johnathon said I should post this picture here, as well as on deviant art. so… here it is. Info after the picture

Madailéin Rowan is a potential character for Privateer, my little pet project.

The word twisp, I don’t know how I chose it but it is one I have always used for certain types of gun. Any gun I name with the word twisp in it is one designed specifically to cause pain. Massive, massive amounts of pain. Though it does also do horrific damage.

I am not sure how old Madailéin Rowan is, possibly about 32. I don’t think she has her own pirate ship… possibly just a fighter. She’s an army’s worth of pirates on her own.

Dunno if I’ll use her, I like her design. I just drew her because if I don’t draw something every now and then my brain goes kablooie.

Next time I’ll do some J&C characters.

Sorry, still not a J&C sketch and not, unfortunately, a scantily dressed lady, but instead I present you with a different kind of fetish fuel. A tiny robot girl.

It’s a scene from my novel. SEL is the little robot and was created by the guy with glasses, Adie, as the first ever artificial intelligence. SEL has just woken up inside Adie’s pocket, got scared and scrambled outside, not realising where she is, only to be spotted by the Emperor. This would normally be fine for a scientist and his creation, except that artificial intelligences are illegal… so here they are exchanging a worried glance.

Exam tomorrow, wish me luck!

I said I’d do one so I did one and here it is. More info after the pic.

As anyone with half a brain knows Futurama is back on the air. Yes, riding the airwaves on their might space ship.

Jayden is the Futurama fangirl so I thought I’d better get her reactions to this news. It was a little confusing at first how she’d react and how I could show it, but I like it. So here it is.

From now on Jayden and Crusader will update on Mondays and Fridays, as it used to. I am 7 comics ahead, so I have plenty of buffer. I will try to do as many comics as possible over the summer. If it becomes viable I might bump it up to Monday Wednesday Friday sometime mid-july, but I would prefer to play it safe for now.

This schedule will probably continue indefinitely, it depends how well I end up managing my time at university this October.

There will also be a very special comic posted next Saturday to celebrate Jayden and Crusader’s second year.

I look forwards to your readership in the coming year.

Oh, and I will remember to remind kirrus to change the “updates mondays” bit of the webpage, you don’t have to email us telling us that’s wrong.

Considering that I have, over the months, got a ridiculous number of google hits from “Can Anteater’s Kill you?” I have decided to come up with other random (mostly fake headline style) google phrases to con more people into reading J&C.

• Richard Hammond does not live in Wantage
• Drunk Elephant rampages through downtown
• Extreme underwater basket weaving
• Hitler’s left hand found in museum basement
• Recipe for the elixir of life was lost by blind priest
• Anteaters cannot kill you
• There is nothing strange about Michael Jackson’s death. There should be no conspiracy theories. He was not abducted by aliens, he was not eaten by an elephant, he did not escape to the Caribbean, he is not going to be the next Elvis.
• African-Americans do in fact have fully functioning noses, despite recent claims to the contrary.
• John Lennon never died, he just went away
• Telephone explosion kills 12
• Stalin’s corpse spotted rooting through dustbins. New Zombie plague?
• Looking both ways before crossing the street has been linked to autism. Parents, protect your children, protect yourself
• If you recite the alphabet backwards while humming Yankee doodle you automatically qualify for entry into an Alaskan law school

Now if that lot doesn’t get me some insane google hits I will be very sad…