Nate Beaty's Brainfag Journal

BFF: Brainfag Forever

Sat, 3 May 2008 23:06:19 PST

Yes, yes, yes! This is the really real, final, for reals goodbye to the moniker BRAINFAG.

A 224 page collection of 8 years of my comic self-tutelage, with the entirety of issues 5, 6, 8, 9 and the very best of all other issues, including Brainfag 1, BFX, and Mixtape. Also included is anecdotal comics explaining each issue, as well as the first 25 years of my human existence shoved into FIVE PAGES -- from crash birth-landing on the hospital floor (damn butterfingers) to my whiskey, coffee, and pot-addled puffy-jacketed tenure as HOT TUB COP at Doe Bay Resort -- where I first set pen to crappy paper and birthed BRAINFAG.

I've long been threatening to retire brainfag.com .. and I'm again reconsidering, moving everything to (the now boring) natebeaty.com.

When I get 2 minutes of free time I'll reconsider. But for now, waiting for the sad demise, please go throw eight clams at the kind folks who offered to put the brainfag comic collection onto dead trees for your enjoyment.

Only $8 from Microcosm Publishing! Support your favorite nomadic maverick's comics with a mere eight clams today!

ASCII Art Master Paul Smith

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:09:19 PST

I remember seeing Paul Smith's typewriter art pieces up on the wall at the old folks' home where my great grandmother resided in Roseburg, OR. They were poorly framed and stained, and the placed reeked of urine and entropy. This aged yellow YouTube clip from 1976 captures that pretty well:

ROBONATE

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:22:07 PST

What I've turned into in the last 7 years as a coding machine.

The Ultimate Online Art Thievery

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:29:47 PST

I've had quite a bit of bad luck with people using my art without even contacting me, some even using it to advertise their business in the local weekly (without any credit of course). When asked about this, they've either claimed ignorance and said "oh, I didn't know where we got that art! I totally would have asked you" or just don't respond. The best I've got out of one of these confrontations is $50 of free coffee.

For some reason my hackles always rise when I hear about people "heavily borrowing" other people's ideas, whether it's a blatant ripoff of a website or an obvious copy of a short video. (One recent example being Human Giant's Piñata skit being eerily reminiscent of the mun2 Piñata's Revenge. Or, while we're on the subject of MTV ganking my employer's work, their usage of a mun2 Daddy Yankee photo on their Blogamole raised a ruckus in the office, especially considering it's not credited. I have a feeling it won't be up for long.)

ANYWAY, I just heard of some nefarious thieves who scraped the contents of [Darren Di Lieto's] website and published it [in] a 350-page book being sold online for $100. OUCH.

I mean, borrowing ideas, or printing a few pieces of art is one thing -- but publishing a whole coffee table book without one scrap of permission from the artists and selling it for $100 is a new low. There's a common sentiment I gather from people along the lines of "everything is online and therefore free to use, right?? I can see it right there, and drag it over to Microsoft Word and print it out, what's wrong with that?"

Well, nothing, unless you plan on making money on it. But even if you don't, it's always generous to contact the artist and ask them if it's ok, in the very least.

Sadly, there's little retaliation one can do on the typical popcorn (and I'm not talking Theater Popcorn) budget most visual artists exist on. About the only thing you can do is a massive smear campaign to spread the word about the thieving, which is what I hope to help with here. Good luck fellas.

Pretty Monsters!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:21:10 PST

Soon Bok just started making amazing skin care from scratch at home. She's come up with some innovative products and a tantalizing '50s horror-esque identity to boot. I helped her out with the logo, but that's about it -- it's all her genius.

She opened up shop at Pretty Monsters on Etsy. Who can resist Zombie Kisses or Dead Swamp Soak or Medusa Mint Balm??

Also, as a sidenote: her products work MAGIC -- seriously. I had a weird dry-skin aberration on my thumb which had been getting worse for weeks -- it disappeared in a day with the use of one of her skin balms.

TAX TIME!!

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:44:48 PST

Joost is playing old GI Joe cartoons. I haven't seen it since I was .. 11? It's much goofier than I remember. Still as dumb, tho.

I'm gonna kick the mustard out of that crazy hot dog. - Duke

I still haven't filed my taxes. Fuck.

The brainfag anthology book, BFF: Brainfag Forever, is at the printer. I'm waiting for a proof any day, and hoping to have it in the flesh by Stumptown.

Neckties on the move

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:11:26 PST

Neckties Make Me Nervous are on tour in CA, passing by my digs soon.

Mar 22 8pm - The Bike Kitchen w/ PTERADON, THE SINGULARITY (San Francisco)
Mar 23 8pm - TBA w/ FIRE FUCKING EVERYWHERE, MALADIE, FISCHER (San Luis Obispo)
Mar 24 7:30pm - Glass House Record Store (Pomona)
Mar 25 8pm - Billy O’s w/ CHARMAN, GET GONE (Ventura)
Mar 26 8pm - TBA (Bakersfield)
Mar 27 8pm - Nickel City w/ PTERADON, SHINOBU, SILENT FIDELITY (San Jose)
Mar 28 8pm - TBA w/ RIOT ON ROSEWOOD (Sacramento)

also, i just cant get enough of these
latin billboards.

Frank Black, can I do your album art, please?

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:51:21 PST

I'm a huge Frank Black fan. Unlike many aging Pixies fiends, I really like his solo work, even his latest country-ish rock albums. But, pray tell, what was going through his head when he approved these album covers?

Granted, the latest covers seem to be getting better. And maybe he just relishes in making even his COVERS inaccessible. He does seem like he might just get a kick out of having terrible album art just to irritate people.

That said, I'd love to help detour from any future terrible album art!

BFF final cover

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:19:55 PST

Thar she blow. The final design sent off for distros. I still have a few tiny changes on the book, but I'm going to send out some proofs for folks to look at for quotes on the back cover (such an odd feeling, I totally feel guilty asking for someone to take the time to look at a PDF and write something...)

I'm finally feeling really good about the book, though. After poring over it for nearly A YEAR (I just found the first email re: this and it was on early April), I'm starting to finally feel like it's real and it's going to not suck, haha.

It should be out April 1st (no, really) -- which is *really* weird as far as I can remember, I always finish comics right around this time. It's my cycle, which unfortunately is REAAAALLY slow!

Anyway, I'll keep y'all posted, my devoted 6 readers.

cords are the bane of the human urban experience

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:48:20 PST

I very much look forward to the day cords go the way of the dodo.

Someone needs to clean the floor. Gross.

After days of rebuilding my home server on a G4 Cube from a haggard, aging, Pentium, which ironically used to looks like THIS:

I got the Cube to behave nicely as an Ubuntu Debian server (serving lists.clixel.com mostly). I then tried to move the Cube from hiding under our kitchen table to a nice display area on the bookshelf (since it was considerably more attractive and bite-size than ol' Timmy Bitch-What, the ginormous and ugh-tastically beige box). Of course, as my fate in life prescribes, nothing worked after I physically moved it, and I then spent all day fucking with obscure settings to get it limping back to life.

"How come I can't type?" calls Soon Bok from across the room. "UGH! Not another broken computer! I can't take it!" I walk over to see what is wrong with our aging TiBook, which looks like THIS:

and force quite Firefox and open Safari. "There you go. Use Safari, I give up."

I go to make some toast and the cord MELTS, throwing sparks from the outlet "AHHH!!" I tear a cord off an expired lamp and tape it on the end:

I go to make some tea and one of the contacts has rusted back and won't connect unless you rock the teapot back and forth JUST SO. "UGH! I swear everything is designed to make me insane."

UPDATE: A coworker Seth, sent me a link to get my cables under control. Some good ideas in there.