Okay, so it's been a while. I had to focus almost exclusively on making sure that I graduated this year, and I almost didn't. However, I managed to get my act together and I have added another degree under my belt, and will be continuing on to acquire my master's degree. Even though that occurred, I was still lazy in updating. I guess I should apologize, but keep telling you I do this comic whenever.

I honestly considered just not doing the comic anymore during my absence. I decided that I won't though. I just enjoy the comic itself too much. I can come up with the comics easy enough, but the real problem is doing the comics. Webcomicry is a lot harder than people give it credit for. Sure, my comics might take 2-3 hours to draw scan and color, but look at how well they turn out. Think of how long it takes people to do other comics like Ctrl-Alt-Del, MacHall, or VG Cats. People who read web comics rarely, if even at all, appreciate the amount of time it takes to do comics. Most people just want their web comics now and on time all the time. Not that such a desire is bad, god knows that part of the reason people read the comics is because we artists agree to do them at a specific time, but if you think webcomicry is easy, try a actually DOING it sometime. Except for sprite comics, for the love of god don't do them. Which leads me to the one thing I hate about webcomics: Sprite comics. The people who do them are nothing more than morons to me. They use copywriten materials or they change them slightly in their comics. They just copy and paste them wherever on a static screenshot background and add poor dialog to them. Now, some people might actually write good scripts for these comics, but they don't do their own art, which to me, is part of the whole webcomic experience and without it, such comics are just big waste of time. As far as I can tell, only one person can do sprite comics well, and that is Brian Clevinger. Anyway, doing a webcomic will give you a new found respect for really good comics done on time, be it every week or three days. People like Scott Kurtz, Tim Absath or the fine people at Penny-Arcade consistently create well-drawn funny comics ON TIME. Look at me: I can hardly make one comic a freaking year. Then again, I'm not a professional at this. My art sucks and my jokes are almost 100% insider, but damnit, I still like doing them when I get the chance.

I guess the next thing to talk about would be the video gaming. Jesus Christ, I've done a lot. Played through innumerable games, but I think it would be best to note my recent addiction to the Dynasty Warriors series. These games are based on the great Chinese tale Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Of the series, DW5 is by far the best yet. It has it's problems, but is still worth playing. I have also recently re-taken up playing Ragnarok Online, which is a pretty fun game, at least it keeps me entertained during my three-hour classes. Some of the others I have played were Dynasty Warriors 4, Gladius, Viewtiful Joe, Neo-Contra, Metroid Prime 2, Halo 2, Otogi, and tons of others (hence the procrastination of comicry).

As you may have noticed, Fandemonium is coming up again, and I will more than likely be going again this year, although I don't know what I will be doing there. I might compete again, or I might try to pawn some art stuff or books, but like I said, I'm not sure.

Something that I noticed : Does this comic remind you of this comic? It does to me! Great minds think alike it would seem.

I can't say when my next update will be. We will have to wait and see.

See ya in the Future!

~Western Oracle

Alright! Big news this time! First and foremost,  I have acquired a job. A really good job. It is an internship at Idaho Transportation Department. The pay is good and I know several people there already. What does this mean for the comic? I have no fricking Idea. I'm predicting a 90% chance of no change in comic and a 9% chance of this thing not being updated and about a 1% chance of this being stopped in it's entirety. While I would hate to have this thing end,  we all have to grow up sometime.  I am no longer just an average college student. I have a job to do and a career to start thinking about. It happens all the time. Makes me think of Marcy Playground's song "Cloak of Elvenkind". Chances are that this will continue on it's chaotic path, randomly updated and me always feeling that I have let you all down somehow, despite my general apathy towards making comics or doing anything productive.

Next Item on the menu today is where I would usually place my gaming achievements. However, a very interesting discussion was started on the topic of next generation games and consoles. This is my response to This post on Naz's Blog.

"Ok, I agree with Naz on this to some extent. While I would love to see videogames with much more story (oh god, would I), I just don't really see this happening. I think one of the next trends will be to re-release all the older videogames from our childhood-teenage years with graphical and mechanical touch-ups. It's already happening. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. No, if you have played the original games, and yes if you have not. People who haven't played the old ones, assuming they try the oldies, will find the graphics unbearable and can not handle the numerous flaws that we had to deal with when the game is first released. It is those flaws and how to bypass them that made the game such a piece of nostalgia.
 
However, I am Glad to see some really great games re-released, but it seems that doing such things is all some companies are planning for some systems ( Nintendo's GBA for example). It is stopping any 1st party ingenuity by just throwing out all the games we played 15 years ago. Why is this important? Because 1st party companies have the most money to throw into game development (Plot, Music, etc.) and have the greatest ability to work within the limits of the Consoles capacity (Graphics, sound, interface). Essentially, with the exception of a few 3rd party companies, 1st party companies have the ability to produce the best games

The other trend I see is the continued emphasis  on graphical enhancement over content. This is what makes consoles marketable. Would a noob to the gaming world look up what genre they might like and research which games and console would be best for them? HELL no. We might, but the average user would consider two different things: Graphics and cost. That's it. That has ALWAYS been the struggle in the console wars since the beginning of time. Then once they have made a choice, they stick with that company until the end of time, or somebody slaps some sense into them. I used to be a Nintendo fanboy myself, but the recent generation of consoles really slapped me out of it. Few gamers, if any, ever come to that realization. Until such time as the companies who produce the consoles decide that the market is no longer graphically driven, the emphasis of content over graphics will never come to be. People who want to see the change occur (myself included) have very few options to take. We can pay the console companies a hefty sum for a development packet to produce new games, which would inevitably suck due to our lack of formal training in many departments of game development. Actually, some companies (cough*NINTENDO*) don't even sell the development packs to people. You have to be a well known and world renowned game producing company to get them. Due to this there have been people and companies who have even tried to create an open source console. How cool would that be? If you ask me, really awesome. However, support for those consoles are negligible at best. Anybody remember the Indreama project? I sure do. I also remember it tanking. Badly. The real problem with performing the necessary events to produce change are covered by my next argument.
 
My next and final argument against this is the simple fact that we as a society are on a trend of laziness and stupidity. Statistically, the common person has read 1 book in the past two or three years, or something close to that. Most people these days don't want to read or hear a story, they would much rather be dazzled by polygonal vectoring or watch something explode or see some sort of soft core pornography. Anytime there IS a story that people "enjoy", it is generally very boring and intellectually shallow, even by the general populace's standards. Most people who play videogames these days (generally the playstation generation) don't want to "slog" through text or story. They would rather virtually disembowel something with a knife (not that a virtual stabbing is such a bad thing, as long as you are 18 or older) or play virtual sports, than play 15 minutes of any thought inducing game genre. VIRTUAL SPORTS for Christ's sake!! I believe this due to the uncoolness of being smart and/or reading that has been developed in our culture for a long time (possibly as long as 100 years). Videogames are rapidly becoming a lot like television in that respect. How many people in the general populace watch the history channel? Or the Discovery channel? How about just watching the news? I would guess not many. They are all probably watching Who wants to marry a millionaire, or Outback Jack or some Bullshit like that. The same thing is happening in videogames, or already happened, depending on your stance.
 
However, RPGs, Strategy and adventure games will always have a plot. It is almost a requisite for these types of games to have one. Perhaps, with the increased graphical capability of the next generation consoles, these types of games will have a much better ability to convey both plot and emotions, but the general videogame player isn't likely to play them.

Essentially, I don't see the end of the current trends anywhere in the near future. Due to the laziness of society and greed of  production companies, we will be on this trend for a long time. Until we manage to make a open source game console which would be cheap to manufacture and produce games for it, or force change of games by boycott or whatnot (like that will happen) Game companies will have no reason to listen to our complaints or even feel the need to change."

Like I said, this is a very interesting conversation. Both sides have many good points. If you feel the need to comment on it, post something on Naz's Blog, or perhaps in the forums, but preferably the blog.

Alrighty! See you later!

PEACE!

Yeah, so...

This was supposed to be a book only excusive, but I'm lazy and my life has been threatened (read: I'm lazy), so I had to put something up.

Sorry for not updating recently, many things have been happening. First and foremost, I am still looking for a job. I think I may have this under control, but you never know.

There have also been several other interesting events that have occurred. Phil, who is currently stationed in South Korea, will be heading to Iraq. Another good friend is also heading to Iraq, with a quick stop at Ft. Bliss. Hopefully they will be ok. Also, a friend of mine recently held a wedding ceremony. Congrats to him and his wife.

In the game sector, I have played many great games. I am still working on FF Chronicles FFIV. I'm still playing PSO, and still willing to be joined by anyone who wants to game. Also still kind of playing Disgaea, but I've kind of stopped playing. I have also started playing Gladius, River City Ransom EX and Dynasty Warriors 4. I also started playing Final Fantasy again. Also completed Ninja Gaiden and unlocked everything but the evil Ryu costume (very hard mode is a bitch). Quite the game collage.

So, I have yet to start commercially printing books, but if you are interested in buying one, contact me with the mail me button about the book.

~Western Oracle

3/25/04- Okay, so it's another few weeks late. Big whoop. You guys are already use to this. It's not like many people read this crap anyway.

Some official announcements:

First, I've moved the tag board up, as per the request of a few people. At this point, a 1024x768 resolution is a must to read this comic

Second, We now have forums! This way, we get to save our crazy conversations and now others have incriminating evidence against those who post there. There is a thread that has everyone listing their favorite SA comics. Please, If you read this comic at all, sign up and tell me your favorite comics.

Third, The Purple Monkocracy (this production company), is now a sister company to P.M.P Inc. (formerly P.M.S. Inc.). Any shareholders should have been contacted and things might be a little bumpy as the new management sets in to PMP.

That being said, Time for current events. The ever faithful Nerdmobile, had to go into the shop recently and required a little over $800 to fix. Apparently, many things need fixing. The technicians said " I'm surprised you managed to get it to the shop without it exploding on you or something." Considering that I drove to Mountain Home and back just two days before taking it in to the shop, looks like the Kaetzel luck is still in full power.

Though it's spring break, I really haven't played many games. I mostly play PSO at night, which is really fun. It'd be awesome to meet readers of this comic online, but that's fairly doubtful. I did have Disgaea for a while, though. That game made it hard to study for my three tests prior to Spring break. I can spend hours just going into items to make my other items stronger. The artwork is cutesy, but oddly psychotic. The music is awesome too. Too bad it's Murrells's game!

That be all for now!

~Western Oracle

2/28/04

Well, only a few weeks late, oh well..

So, let's see... I recently created and self published a free book. The book itself sucks, but at least I can now call myself a published author, at least in a remote sense of the concept. I also completed a paper on propaganda during WW2, as either an evolving or a static presence. Didn't take too long to write, which means I did it very poorly. I didn't even get to play any videogames this week. SERIOUSLY! I read a ZERO on the game meter, there was so much work.

Something else happened recently. During this week, the computer lab I work at got infected by the Mydoom.f virus, or at least one of them did. Anyone who doesn't know about the mydoom.f virus, should really look into it if they use a PC. It's pretty nasty.

Well, Luckily, the school managed to clean up the problem with a few minor incidents. I would like to say this: If somebody you don't know sends you a mysterious file, DON'T FUCKING OPEN IT!! I know it's like a mysterious attention grabbing object, and if you absolutely must open it, DO IT ON YOUR OWN FUCKING COMPUTER. I don't get paid enough to clean up your god damn messes. Hell, I'm hardly paid enough to sit there and help you morons figure out how to print, and thus wasting more of MY precious recourses on YOUR frivolous crap.

The story doesn't end there.

So, Friday, I worked an 11-3 shift. That's the usual, but most of the time, there is nothing for me to do. Not the case for that day. The tech in charge of our lab, who I see probably once a week, was there. Normally, I don't have a problem with techs. Yeah, they're snobby, but they have a right to think that they are awesome, because they probably are. However, she treats me like an idiot who is more likely to choke himself with a mouse than use it to surf the net. This bothers me for several reasons. The biggest reason is that she is in the same program I am in, but she has not finished it. I have finished, and as a matter of fact, have a FUCKING DEGREE. She, as far as I can tell, doesn't have one.

Continuing on, we discovered that over half of these computers in the lab were unprotected by Norton Anti-Virus. Oh boy! To make matters worse, she told me that it is my job to make sure everything is on the computers that we need. I'm thinking it's not, because we don't have a list of what need on those computers. We don't have the rights to put them on the computers. Even IF we knew what was needed and told them, they'd just ignore it like they usually do. So, I went though and marked all the ones that didn't have NAV on it. She went though and installed it all but three of them. Yes, she left three of them uninstalled. Then she left. YAY!

But wait! There's more! I decide that it would be a good idea to run a scan on some of the computers. One one of them I found two more viruses: Trojan. Bookmarker and Mydoom.A. FUN! So, I want to get rid of them, because they can cause damage, but I can't because I don't have the rights. I go and get my boss, and see If he can run the removal stuff, but no. So, he calls back the tech to get rid of it and put NAV on the machines she missed. What does she do? She quarantines them. She doesn't log in and run the damn program designed to remove it, because "I have lots of labs and If I had to do this on every computer that had this problem, I couldn't get anything done." You know what? TOO FUCKING BAD, IT'S YOUR GOD DAMN FUCKING JOB!!! To quote Penny-Arcade "If you had a job eating bees, and you complain about being stung in the mouth because you eat bees, too bad, because it's your Fucking job to eat bees."

That sort of shit really pisses me off. I might not be the most active person, but when it comes to my job, I do it. I don't complain at work, or just leave it for someone else. It's my problem and my responsibility. If you are being paid $30/hr to fix computers and ensure networkability, fix the god damn computers and make sure they can hit the network. Don't leave your shit for me to clean up, cause if you do it too often and piss me off, I will use every ounce of my contacts to try to make you lose your job. I would expect the same from anyone else about me.

Perhaps America just lost it's work ethics? Maybe they just lost their ethics in their entirety? Maybe they don't know what ethics are? Either way, some people are lazy slobs when it comes to work, and I'm sick and tired of this shit. Do your god damn job fuckers.

Later.

~Western Oracle

So, one month later...

In actuality, I meant to have this and the next one up before I left for Texas, that way, there'd be comics for the holidays of Birthmas. Remembering who we are dealing with, is it much of a surprise it didn't go up? Not really.

The Birthmas season was rather interesting. Many cool gifts were received, as well as attempted to be given. My favorite gifts were the two O'Reilly Factor books I didn't have. I spent about 60ish hours in a van with my family coming to and from Texas, which wasn't as bad as initially planned. I forgot my Dir en Grey and Guitar Wolf CDs, which were instrumental in my plot to never have to do a road trip like that again. However, I believe my JSRF soundtrack worked fairly nice. Really it wasn't as bad as I thought, but I doubt that we are going back there anytime soon.

In the gaming front not having to work over winter break was encouraging. We finally got an adapter for the gamecube,
so now I can play PSO online! If you want to join me, look for W.Oracle in the Antares 6 vicinity, or occasionally in Altair 9 , and usually in the evenings (8-11PM MST). I'm always looking to play with other people. I also got FFX, which was surprisingly fun, but not quite what I'd hoped it would be. Better than say, FF VII or VIII, but doesn't touch the classics. The biggest problem was the EASE in which I as able to rape the system. Seriously, Square-Enix, henceforth Squeenix, please don't make it so easy to thrash the system. By the time Yu Yevon rolled around, the game was a snap. The ultimate weapons were far to cheap. However, it was cool to finally see the damage barrier get over 9999, even if it was easy to do it. Still, I recommend a play, at least a little bit.

That be all for now. Hopefully, my school schedule has solidified, and comics can continue, but with THREE upper-division classes, me thinks it might be iffy.

~Western Oracle

By the way, if you read this comic, please e-mail me and tell my your favorite Supreme Auranation comic! It's fairly important. Details will emerge later!

Post for 12/12/03, one month + late

Well, what a week this has been. It's almost as If fate itself doesn't want me to do this comic! The day after I finally got everything together to continue doing comics, my computer's power supply failed. Not just failed in the sense of stopped working, failed in the sense that my computer caught fire. The back of my case was blackened. To make matters worse, my CPU fan is not performing as well as it should, causing my Athalon chip to overheat and fail. Luckily, no serious damage was done and I fixed most of the problems. Also Next week is finals week. Luckily, one of my teachers was so overworked and swamped with papers, she made the final optional. That made me happy. I still have three finals though, and English was the 2nd easiest final I had, so I've still got a lot of studying to do. Something else you might notice, is the coloring job of this comic. Thanks to the great Nexus, I have acquired a tablet! I'm not good enough to draw freehand with it yet, but it allowed for a better coloring and editing job in this comic. My new picture was the first freehand attempt with it..

I had very little time to play videogames this week, due to the effect I've dubbed the dead-week crunch. This effect causes all teachers to assign the last remaining parts of the syllabus, however much that may be, within two class sessions. However, while there was little gaming, There have been a few exploits. I recently setup a 98 machine, for the specific purpose of play all my old games. Heroes of Might an Magic II, Duke Nukem 3D and Alone in the dark 1-3. Oldies but Goodies! Learned about a few exploits in PSO (duping and multi-equip), while they are fun to play with, It's kinda sad that everythings gotten out of hand online. If only they'd use their powers for good, rather than evil.

The link to the Purple Monkocracy Productions page is up and on the sidebar.

~Western Oracle

Okay, so there was a two month absence, and for that I apologize. What initially started off as just laziness, rapidly became a flurry of papers, lost Photoshop programs, and sequential computer crashes, with other problems as well (which may or may not include cybernetic implants and becoming the Oracle at Delphi).

Now, while I do apologize for not having a comic up for two months, I must point you again to the text below the banner. This comic is updated at random. Not randomly during the week, RANDOM as in there is no set schedule. I try to do one a week, but sometimes circumstances dictate otherwise. And to those who sent me threatening e-mails, two things: First, I'm glad to know there are more than five people who read the comic and second, go to hell (unless one the people who sent me threats was, in fact, Jeff, in which case, he should contact me).

In the videogame department, not a whole lot is new, but I did play through FFT: Advance, and while I can say it was pretty good, I still like the original one better. If you haven't finished or even played the first FF tactics, I recommend you do so. Unlike the happy-go-lucky story of FFT:A , FFT is far more serious. It's intriguing, and philosophers as well as anyone knowledgeable in religion will really get a good story out of it ( I happen to fall into both categories). I also completed GTA: Vice City. Normally, I hate these kind of games, but for reasons I can only describe as mystical, I REALLY enjoyed it. Something about driving a tank down a street, causing complete and utter chaos as police and army vehicles ram you to no avail and explode into bits was oodles of fun. The quests were fun and of varying difficulty, but no one was too hard or too easy. If you haven't played it, I recommend.

I've decided to drop the OCR pick of the week because I have a feeling that nobody actually gets the song, and that there haven't been many songs that really jump out at me. If one comes along, I'll probably post it, and there's nothing you can do about it, so nya-nya-nya!

I think it might be time for a site overhaul and additional artwork. I also think that I'm going to post links to all the web comics I read in the links section because I'm bored and an empty shell of a human being. I may also provide my papers on Philosophy and English reports, but I need clearance from the head office of P.M.S Inc. first. I'm only a subsidiary company.

I also think I've just done a years worth of comics (IE: 52), so I guess happy 1 year anniversary of Supreme Auranation! about one year to late. Meh.

Flipside!

 ~Western Oracle

9/10/03

Whoo! That was a doozy of a rant. I don't quite know what came over me. If you missed it, check out the past rants link. Let's see... Nothing much new with me. Dislike of 121 is still high, I really like my philosophy course, and while I like the topic in my English 257 class, the participants in the class, excluding a few, are either assholes or morons. Some are possibly both and they are mostly in the center row.

Gameage wise, still playing FF6. However, with the use of a game genie, this particular run-through is quite different and fun. After learning the way the us version was coded and how the Game geine edits codes, there is a lot that I can do now, up to and including:
Amounts of EXP and gold gotten.
Random Encounters
Stats and Equipment editing
Equipping unequipable items or equiped items in wrong places

That's all. Later.

 ~Western Oracle

9/03/03
-Warning, Long Rant Ahead!!- Avoid if you don't want to hear me bashing on my college, fan-boys and people who don't read books.




DAMN IT! 2nd comic out and already I'm behind! Not my fault though! My Mail account went down for two days, leaving me unable do update the comic. I can still, however, update the blog, assuming anyone reads the past rants other than myself. Sometimes I read them and wonder what the hell I was thinking. Meh.

Not liking two things at school so far. The first being the CIS121 class. It's painfully horrible. It's like being an AP student in a "special" classroom, except you aren't there to be "friends" with the guy who drools on himself. You're there as one of the students. I found myself wondering in the 2 hours I was there if napping is an appropriate course of action. The other being leaping through the window. The second is something I have hated always, but never this much in the past: Parking. The Admin and the parking people probably watch us try to park in the vastly overcrowded parking lots and laugh their asses off. I hope that when they go to hell, they are forced to try to find parking in a super crowded parking lot, having to be someplace in ten minutes or be impaled upon a stalagmite and beaten with a steel rod. Nope, I'm not bitter, I'm just creative and a believer in karma!

As for the Gaming sector, I played through DQ5 again, and have started again on Final Fantasy 6. Dragon Quest 5 is one off my most favorite games of all time. While the customizability of the game is low, the story MORE than picks up the slack. It is one of those stories that when life starts going god for the hero, he gets kicked in the Junk. This occurs a minimum of eight times in this game. "What? Finally start proving yourself to dad? BAM killed him before your eyes! Oh, didn't like that huh? Well, BAM you're a slave now!! How about them apples!!" It goes on and on. It sounds bad, but honestly, tragedy is one the best plot basis in existence. Don't agree with me? Ask Will Shakespeare! As for FF6, It is also one of my favorite games in existence. One of the things I hate most about the FF series are the fan boys. In all honesty, I don't give a flying fuck which game is best or better than the others. If they can take my mind off my miserable existence for a few hours and bring me the happy, It's well worth the time spent. If you fan boys got a problem, why don't you go pout on your crappy-ass blog and make out with your Aeris/Rinoa/Rikku Poster. Leave me the fuck alone.

That is also why most books rock. They can whisk you away to thousands of different lands each with different morals and Ideas. This is what reading is about! Not some boring book on theories about how you are the smartest person in existence, and without your "completely original" insight, the world would fall apart. I don't claim to be the above, this rant may seem contradict what I'm saying, but it's not. I know for a fact that what I am doing is not original and the world doesn't care a bit about me. So what? If I don't get this out of my system, I will change the world, and it won't be a good change.

So you don't like reading? Turn off your damn headphones and television and get a good look at the world around you, if you're not a complete imbecile. If you don't read, you are one of the massive amounts of morons clogging up my planet, taking my resources and stealing my air. And when I mean read, I don't mean cosmopolitan or Maxim. I'm talking about great works of literature like Faust and the Iliad. Hell, even a Newsweek or Time will do. You Non-readers are those people who just take everything at face value and don't even bother to CONSIDER the other options, or are completely against what anyone other than you is saying. The only people who are exempt from the non-reader status are people who cannot read at all (in which case, they should learn) and people who work their asses off to support themselves and their families.

DAMN, I love free speech!

Well, I'm out of steam....Whew. 

~Western Oracle