Web comics

I was hunting around on Scott McCloud’s website to see if I could find the name of that comics magazine I subscribed to that was supposed to ship its first issue this spring. No luck so far, but I found some great web comics:

E-Merl

Weird photographic Flash comics by Daniel Merlin Goodbray. If you’ve got Flash installed, check out Fever, his 24-hour comic, and Icarus Creeps, a hypercomic.

Keanerdotnet

Kean Soo keeps a journal in comics form, and has done an odd experimental musical comic — it doesn’t quite work, the music and the panels don’t really mesh, but it’s a neat effort. He also maintains a journal comics jam page, linking to journal comics.

Butternut Squash

Gag comic, updated Wednesdays, very well drawn. Artist Ramon Perez is doing that cool glazed-background thing Ian McConville does on MacHall, but his foreground rendering is much more controlled.

Feverdream.org

Shannon Galvin’s comics work is a rare case of 3-D art that works as 2-D compositions.

Spiders

I read parts one and two of Patrick Farley’s brilliant comic about an alternate-universe Afghan War last year, but I just checked, and part three should be released this Friday!

Ah, found it — Prophecy Magazine! Fuck, they’re moving their launch to the fall:

Due to the relatively unexpected decision to go to war, the U.S. economy has been highly unstable and consumer spending has reflected a volatile market environment. As such, this is a very risky time to launch an unproven, expensive, national magazine; we cannot risk coming into the market at the wrong time.

Yet another reason to be pissed off at the Bush administration!

Upper-body workout

Fell off the wagon yesterday — fried chicken, spice drops, ice cream, a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. Gotta behave the rest of the week.

(  Upper-body workout numbers  )

My form was off on the biceps curls with my left arm in the last two sets; it was last time too. I’m shifting my elbow, relying on momentum to get the weight up. Next time: 15 with 15, then 10 with 18, then see how many I can do with the 21-lb weights.

nihilistic_kid can skip this one

I found this essay about weight loss through a post in a journal I found through a reply to nihilistic_kid’s rant about what people can stop writing about.

The bit that struck me hardest:

Don't eat crap. There are many short phrases to which my diet plan could be reduced, and this is probably one of the most succinctly comprehensive. I attribute my weight gain mostly to the idle consumption of food that I didn't even particularly enjoy, most of it under the heading of "snacks". Do not eat cookies extruded by factory spigots. Do not eat anything made by applying lard and artificial flavors to reconstituted potatoes. Think at least three times before eating anything that is advertised on television, or that comes in a package that has had more design energy put into it than you would put into leaving a note for the UPS person. If you are doing something so unengrossing that you have to eat while doing it to stave off boredom, go do something else instead.

...especially that last sentence. I get tremendous urges to snack while I’m reading or watching TV or browsing the net. I’ve managed to channel this into relatively healthy snacking recently, but I should still work on controlling this impulse.

Anyway, to help me get a grip on what I’m eating nowadays, here’s a list of what I’ve eaten (and planning to eat) today (with calorie counts):

(Update: I took a closer look at the containers of cottage cheese and yogurt, and it turns out I’d misfigured the amounts, so I’ve edited this.)

( It comes out to about 1900 calories. )

OK, 2200 calories isn’t too bad for a man my size. I was worried about the pistachio nuts, but I think I’m OK. I think I’m supposed to try to keep my daily caloric intake to around 2400. According to this page, I’d burn over 3000 calories a day literally just sitting in a chair, and more likely burn over 4000. Hm, no, there’s gotta be something wrong there.

Sometime this week I’ll try cutting lunch down to 2 ounces of pasta and a 4 oz salmon fillet.