The Great Hunt (Book 2) – Chapter 12: “Woven in the Pattern”

The Wheel of Time - Book 2 - The Great Hunt

It’s time for the Aes Sedai and their little novices Egwene and Nynaeve to set sail, as it were. And by that I mean they’re going to stay on land with horses. They spend a few days travelling toward Tar Valon at a brisk pace. Lan pulls Nynaeve out of her and Egwene’s tent to talk, but it is unknown what is discussed. Probably how much Lan has been totally neglecting their relationship! And how Nynaeve doesn’t cook for him anymore.

One night, Verin the Brown Ajah visits their tent to give them a little lesson on how not to fuck too hard with the One Power or else it’ll fuck them back. Hard. So, with time and effort, they’ll be able to control it better. Nynaeve isn’t too thrilled about this lesson and tries to leave, and Verin’s like “ok go ahead but the novices without any training at all will need to mop floors and scrub grout with toothbrushes at Tar Valon, so sit the fuck back down.” Verin refers to the post-novice level as “Accepted”, which was a shit movie. During their lesson, Nynaeve keeps getting angrier and more frustrated and accidentally sets a bundle of blankets on fire. Total badass.

Other Aes Sedai stop by over the course of the next several nights for their own lessons, but they aren’t as good because the other Ajah colors have preoccupations (Red hates men, Green wants to bone men, etc.)

Egwene has dreams about Rand and they’re pretty vivid. She decides to speak to Moiraine about it, but another Aes Sedai informs her that Moiraine has gone somewhere. Verin (Brown) and Liandrin (Red) are gone too. This is quite suspicious and Siuan is not at all happy about it.

After Egwene describes her very vivid dream to an Aes Sedai named Anaiya, Anaiya entertains the idea that Egwene might be a Dreamer. There haven’t been any Dreamers among the Aes Sedai in centuries! The last one Dreamed herself into a Dream Coma (I’m making that up), but Egwene is gifted in the ways of the True One Source Power Channeling so it’s a possibility.

Egwene is going to ascend to Goddess by Book 11 and fight Ba’alzamon one-on-one in paintball.

Sucky Funnies for July 23, 2023

I’m getting half-sleeve in a month and it’s one of the only things I can think about these days. I’m excited like a virgin in a seedy, seedy brothel.

Speaking of which, here are three new comic strips to make fun of! It’ll help ease my preoccupied mind, and I’m basing that on absolutely nothing.


Mallard Fillmore

Mallard Fillmore - July 23, 2023

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Oh snap, do I find a Mallard Fillmore strip funny this morning?! I must be delirious from all the commie acid I dropped last night at 3am during one of my many left-wing orgy banquets.

In my line of work I come across a lot of Ph.D.’s, and more often than not they are conceited, useless bastards. They pretend to know a lot more than they do, and they’ll argue with you if you call them out on being wrong about something. Mallard Fillmore almost hit the nail on the head here, except that I don’t approve of the color of the umbrella! It should be green!

The Mallard Fillmore comments section, of course, rants about Joe Biden and his conspiracy to use moon rocks to drill silicon chips into our fleshy buttocks. Also, someone made a joke about Mountain Dew and Crab Juice which no one understood because the average age of the Mallard Fillmore comments section clientele is 138.


Willy Black

Willy Black - July 23, 2023

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I don’t know who Willy Black is or what he’s trying to pull here, but there’s something incredibly fetishy about this bullshit and I am not having it whatsoever.

In fact, I apologize to everyone for even posting this on my family-friendly blog. I’ll be sure to give myself 90 lashes forthwith.


Zippy the Pinhead

Zippy the Pinhead - July 23, 2023

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Speaking of apologizing, this is somewhat worse and I am chagrined to even attempt to entertain it with commentary. Am I to understand this joke works on exactly one level? Am I to take this horrible atrocity at face value? Do I have to make another suicide “joke” to get me out of this one?

Someone should launch Bill Griffith into the sun for even creating this comic strip. I wish a fiery death upon him and his twenty cats.

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5 – “Book I: Skywalker Strikes (Part 5)”

* Part 5 of 6 of the Book I: Skywalker Strikes storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5 – “Book I: Skywalker Strikes (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, Jabba the Hutt and Darth Vader bond over their respective obvious hatred of one another. Luke Skywalker cries and moans about never being a real man, let alone a real Jedi, and opts to leave the Rebellion. Boba Fett has been hired to look for Obi-Wan Kenobi for reasons that aren’t clear at the moment. That guy is dead, son! Why bounty hunt a dead guy?

Will we find out why? Will anyone care?


Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5 [July, 2015]
Written by: Jason Aaron
“Book I: Skywalker Strikes (Part 5)”

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5

I can’t imagine how hard it is to draw all these real people. The three of them on the cover look amazingly accurate. Kudos to John Cassaday who probably prints out screenshots from the Star Wars movies and traces over Harrison Ford’s handsome, chiseled face.

Luke Skywalker is sauntering around Tatooine under the blazing hot Tatooine sun looking for a new purpose in life. Boba Fett is sauntering around Tatooine under the blazing hot Tatooine sun looking for the guy who destroyed the Death Star. Ol’ Whatshisname. Jeff Something.

Fett is in a bar trying to maintain his intimidating presence while he asks about the whereabouts of the guy who made Death Star go Boom. “Does anyone here have something they’d like to say?”

A burly manly man of a man with six arms approaches Fett to kick his tender ass, but Fett is ready for a fun challenge! He successfully tears off one arm and breaks two others, then “kindly” asks the bar patrons once more about the whereabouts of the guy who made Death Star go Blooie. He keeps breaking arms while the dudes in the bar insist they don’t know anything. “Kenobi came in here not too long ago with some kid nobody’d ever seen before. Looked like a farmer’s brat. We don’t know the boy.”

One little human kid in the bar looks terrified before trying to run off. Fett quickly shoots out his hogtyin’ ropes and subdues the kid. “AAAAHHH!” he says! Time for some interrogation techniques! Torture! Tickling!

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Fett’s going to shove so many bamboo shoots up so many fingernails.

Han and Leia are discussing what it would take to fix the Millennium Falcon. Han suggests a hyperdrive regulator, two laser-powered cells, and three degaussers. Leia suggests flying the fucker right into the sun. Also, she is not the spare parts department, so stop bugging her with your whining about op-amps and defibrillators.

“All of a sudden, the deck crew tells me I can’t have the parts I need, not without proper approval,” Han whines. “Mind telling me why that is, your worshipfulness?” And then she reminds him that there’s a war going on, and all resources need to be diverted to establishing a new base. Not to Han Solo’s smelly landfill ship.

Han gets sly and says outright that the only thing actually keeping him here is that Leia doesn’t want him to leave, and if that’s not true then she should give him his parts. Post haste.

Nope! Here’s the deal, slacker: do some work around here to earn your parts. Luke went back to Tatooine to fill his underwear with sand, so Leia needs another copilot for a mission. And Han Solo is just the rugged go-getter for the job!

“I just helped you blow up the biggest weapons factory in the galaxy. I put my name on the Empire’s most wanted list for you,” Han whines.

“That was days ago,” Leia smiles WRYLY. “You need to stop living in the past, Captain Solo.”

Aw snap! Now you’ve gone and done it! Han is surly, and puts his foot down. One last time, Your Worshipful-Highniness. He’ll help one last time and then he’s going to get his fly-away-forever parts.

Meanwhile, Bobb Fett’s really beating this kid up. He’s tied to a table all hella missing teeth and surrounded by pointy knives. He fesses up, getting a stitch for being a snitch. Luke Skywalker’s the name, Mr. Boba Fett, sir. He lives with his aunt and uncle over by the ol’ moisture farms. You can find his underpants full of dirt about seven miles away.

Last thing he knows, Luke and old Ben “Kobe Beef” Kenobi were in Mos Eisley trying to get off this stupid rock.

Now please let him go and don’t kill him.

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Sorry. I couldn’t hear you over all the killing.

Satisfied, Boba “Tea” Fett heads out.

Luke is hanging out in the desert with R2-D2. They intend to find Obi-Wan’s old stomping grounds and see if there’s anything in his hovel that will be of use to Luke, such as a Jedi training video. Or some hella nunchucks. “I hear him sometimes. I know that sounds crazy, but somehow it’s really Ben’s voice inside my head,” Luke muses, wondering why Kenobi doesn’t just tell him what he needs to know or what he needs to do next. Like a GameFAQs walkthrough for his life.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of those Tusken Raider Sand People that plague the Tatooine lands pops up and does a big “EEERRGGHH” at Luke. He whips out his lightsaber, and then realizes a group of them are milling around Kenobi’s house. “No!” Luke yells. “Get away from there!”

Leia is scouting the galaxy for possible new base locations. Like Hoth for instance, but she doesn’t know that yet. Han is being snarky. Leia is being grumpy. “Since you went through all this trouble just to get me alone,” Han smiles with that Harrison Ford charm, “the least you could is take me someplace with a nice beach.”

Han’s “copiloting” job is easy. Just let Leia take the controls and shut it the hell up. She’s doing a pretty good job flying this stolen Imperial starcraft on her own, so I’m beginning to think she did want Han Solo there for a little bit of possible kissy kissy.

It’s too bad a couple of TIE fighters start following closely behind. “Attention, unknown shuttle. You do not have clearance for this sector. Identifiy yourself.”

Eep! No time to panic! Tell them we’re Bert and Ernie! Gaahh, that won’t help, those guys can barely tie their shoes! Wait, hold on…

“This is the Shuttle Invictus, out of the Blackfel System, on a classified scouting mission. Transmitting clearance codes now.”

That outta hold ‘em off for a hot nanosecond! What are TIE fighters doing this far into the Outer Rim, anyway? The Empire is trying to stick their fingers in too many pies, and not in a sexy way.

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

These Imperial assholes interrupted the kissy kissy!

The funny thing is, the clearance codes were going to work and the TIE fighters were going to allow Han and Leia to pass, but Han decided to take the reigns and try to fly away fast! I’m a poet and I do noet! Anyway, this is suspicious! Leia is pissed! Han, you suave drink of water. You really know how to rile a woman up, and not in a sexy way.

“Okay, okay, I’ll think of something,” Han says, losing his swagger. The TIE fighters are shooting green lasers at them like it’s a Pink Floyd lightshow. Oh wait, Han knows a planet they can fly to and evade the BOWTIE fighters.

“The nav computer doesn’t even recognize this as a planet,” Leia gripes as the advance toward the ugly, red rock in space. “Scanners say there’s nothing here but an atmospheric sea of cyclones and electrical superstorms.”

Han Solo thinks this is the most perfect, jim-dandiest place to be! The electrical storms will be so electrifying that the TIE fighters will explode into 365 smithereens! That’s one smithereen for every day on Earth. Whatever the hell “Earth” is. And indeed, the TIE fighters stop giving chase once they realize that flying directly into lightning isn’t very alluring. Han Solo, on the other hand, welcomes the idea and smiles through it.

Leia thinks they’re going to get real dead.

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

OK, kids. That’s enough kissy kissy.

While these two lovebirds are descending upon this planet, the mysterious bounty hunter is tracking them. “The Monsua Nebula. I knew it,” he says, looking at his radar and knowing it. “A dog always returns to its favorite den, doesn’t it? I’ve got you now, you sorry son of a bantha.”

While this sorry son of a — what is it now, a bantha? That’s quite hilarious! — is getting chased down, Luke Skywalker is on Tatooine also getting chased down by those Tusken Raiders that want to bite him in the neck and chew on his ankles. But the lightsaber scared them away! The big scary lightbulb that burns hands off! Nobody wants that!

“All I feel is anger and frustration. Something tells me that’s not the path to becoming a Jedi,” Luke muses quite observantly. He hopes he can ransack Kenobi’s house for clues on how to become a Jedi the easy way.

He enters Kenobi’s shitsack of a dwelling and finds garbage everywhere. “BIP BOO WHEEP,” says R2-D2. “BEEDO BEEDO WWHMPP.”

Snip snoop bippity boop. Spism spazzle frazzle frism.

“Why do you think Ben spent all those years out here in the middle of nowhere?” Luke asks. “After everything he must have seen and done, all the places he’d been… why Tatooine? Why…”

BIPPITY BOOP. BOOP-A-DOOP-A.

R2-D2 finds a weird casket with “For Luke” written in Tatooinese.

Then someone throws a smoke bomb into Kenobi’s old hut. It explodes! Luke can’t see! R2-D2 is fizzling!

It’s Boba Fett. It’s always Boba Fett

Final Thoughts

Issue #6 is going to show Han Solo’s dick entering and exiting Princess Leia’s vagina over the course of 44 panels, occasionally buffered by panels of Luke Skywalker’s frowning face.

Bucketheadland Pike #5 – Look Up There

Bucketheadland Pike #5 - Look Up There

Released: August 17, 2011
Length: 32:29


We’re double the track number since Pike #4. Now we have two whole big tracks to chew on, which means I’ll have to look within myself yet again for writing inspiration. That blows chunks, man.

Track 1 is “Golden Eyes”, just shy of 11 minutes, and the intro is that trademark soft, electronic beat-backdropped downtempo guitar melody that sounds like the Metroid Prime soundtrack. I love that game. I’m glad they remastered it for the Nintendo Switch, which I own now because my 6-year-old owns it and only plays Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. I didn’t not pay $350 for that! I’d load the thing up with my own games if they didn’t cost $59.99 apiece with no room for discounts ever. You don’t even have a monopoly on the video game market, Nintendo! 32gb SDHC card? Go eat a pile of turd sandwiches.

Merzbow

Merzbow makes a living out of being unapologetically annoying!

The 3-minute mark is still largely the same, and I expect all of Pike #5 to be a noodly chillwave trip-hop affair. Maybe a little bit of Portishead but not so much Massive Attack. I like the idea of both of these bands, but I’m never in the mood for something moody, slow, and vaguely psychedelic while there are also vocals. Not lively enough for foreground music, not ambient enough for background music. Not a very good category. It’s in the same box as drone albums with vocals or breakbeat electronic albums à la Venetian Snares. Even Merzbow seems to require some active listening, and that guy just sticks a microphone in front of an amplifier for 78 minutes.

By the 8-minute mark, the guitar has dominated. It’s quite nice, actually. Virtuosic while maintaining some mainstream appeal. Your Moody Blues-loving father might get a kick out of this. It starts getting a little weird around the 9-minute mark, but it’s nothing that’s going to make your grandmother try to exorcise the demons out of your shitty, black, goopy soul.

Next is the title track, “Look Up There”, clocking in at over 21 minutes. Even more ambient and chill than “Golden Eyes”, Buckethead strums his unplugged guitar in a call-and-response folk instrumental. It sounds sullen and atmospheric like the moodier bits of a Porcupine Tree record. The production values are certainly similar; Buckethead must pay top dollar for, I’m assuming, his own personal recording studio. Or he has a really good recorder on his iPhone! Solo electric guitar starts about 3:30 minutes in, laconically dancing around the acoustic rhythm guitar work. This continues to build and build slowly, with no noticeable changes in small chunks. If you want to hear Buckethead extendedly jam it out with fluidity and effortlessness, this is the track to do so. The emotions start pouring out with soaring guitar lines at about eight minutes in.

Guitar Playing

Pictured: me being a complete jerk to a lady.

What else can I talk about here? I’ve only picked up an electric guitar once in my life at a friend’s house and it sounded like rats running across a violin. I didn’t want to touch it after that because it was probably $2,000. I’ve barely even strummed an acoustic guitar, and every time I try it feels like I’m going to snap the strings. I think I’ve dropped the pick in the hole too many times to not die of complete embarrassment! I’m more of a piano guy, but I play that like my dad typing on a keyboard. I played trumpet for 14 years in middle school, high school, and college, and I peaked in 8th grade with that one. Fuck the trumpet.

Nothing significant has changed in the fourteen-minute mark, so I’m guessing that there’s not much to really write about anymore! Power through though, seven minutes left! I took a day off today, so I’m listening and typing on a Friday afternoon on my kitchen counter. I probably wrote all this literally months before I posted it because I tend to spend another six weeks putting off adding the pictures and another fourteen months before I bother proofreading. That’s right, friends. I proofread all my posts! Only the best for my fans, whoare used to an imaculate presnteation of corectly spelled words and a done grammer good.

Two minutes left and I’m wrapping this sucker up! Stay tuned next time, kids! Don’t do drugs.

The Great Hunt (Book 2) – Chapter 11: “Glimmers of the Pattern”

The Wheel of Time - Book 2 - The Great Hunt

Prepare yourself, ladies and gentleman, because we have more Rand freaking out ahead of us. Ingtar hands him a bundle courtesy of Moiraine. Rand is very unwilling to accept such a bundle. He knows what’s inside and it ain’t good. Before he opens it, Rand is informed by Ingtar that, if Ingtar would to die, he would have to take over as leader of the group. Rand is like “fuck no, uh uh, no way Jose, go bone an exhaust pipe, son”. Lord Agelman gave the order, though, so it shall be. Then Ingtar stabs himself in the brain! Wouldn’t that be funny? Fuck you, Rand.

Rand opens the bundle and discovers the Flag of the Dragon Reborn or Whatever. Before he has a chance to hide it, Mat and Perrin approach all livid and incredulous about how LOOOORD RAND has fancy coats and banners and blowjob servants. Of course, Rand insists that he doesn’t want any of it and he just wants to go home and play Super Mario Odyssey, that isn’t the way the world is working right now. He admits to his friends that he is able to channel the One Power and it’s automatic and uncontrollable. And that a few of the Aes Sedai know this, including the Amyrlin Seat. Mat asks why the ungodly fuck he hasn’t been gentled yet, and it’s because the Amyrlin claims that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. Rand also keeps insisting that he’s being used and abused! Both Mat and Perrin agree that Rand should run off far, far away.

Rand packs up the banner and returns to camp where Loial is reading books and examining a mysterious stone… PAY ATTENTION TO THE STONE, IT IS THE CHEKHOV’S GUN! BANG BANG!

We end with Padan Fain, surrounded by Trollocs and Fades, deliriously babbling about killing the Myrddraal and stabbing him through the eyes and onto the door, and stealing Mat’s cursed dagger. He muses about what happened to him back in Shadar Logoth. He has the Horn on his person. He doesn’t know where Rand is, but oh ho ho, he’ll make his location known soon enough. Soon enough.

He orders the Trollocs and Fades to destroy the village. And then they’ll move on.