Home Insulation; Its More Fun Than You Think. (Updated)

Man, this week just flew by. I’m sure something happened that was noteworthy. But I can’t think of what that might be.

EDIT: I am happy to announce that 3/4 of Team Robo will be at the Big Apple National this weekend. You should come see us.

The utter lack of reviews for Atomic Robo #2 is driving me nuts. Every day Google Alert brings me a steaming pile of crap in the form of people’s weekly order lists. I mean, really folks? I know the interwebs are full of useless information and all, but do you really think ANYONE gives a crap what comics you are ordering this week? Really? Do you? Why don’t you put something on the internet that we actually want to look at? Like porn. Or LOLCats. Anything . . .

But thanks for ordering Atomic Robo #2. We appreciate it. For serious.

There’s a small Atomic Robo #2 Preview with four pages of fun-tastic art over at TheForce.net. And #2 did get a good review from one of Atomic Robo’s toughter-to-please critics on Geeks of Doom. I have to appreciate that Henchman 21 doesn’t pull his punches with us, but instead gives a solid, critical (yet positive) review of our work. Everything that I find lacking in our work this guy sees too. The only difference is that this jerk publishes those short-comings on the internet while I hide in my bathroom hoping that no one will notice. ;P I hope that some day he can get a sense for the liquid bowel syndrome which I must deal with every time I read something that might shatter my fragile ego.

Red5 also has the Robo #2 preview pages on their website. I’m told that Newsarama has a short review of #2 up –but I can’t get this link to work right now. Hope you guys have better luck with it than me.

EDIT: And SBC is at it again! This came in after I published the blog. Of course.

For some reason the old Atomic Robo blog has degenerated into Brian simply writing down the boring shit I do each week. Its true, I had never seen Buckaroo Banzai, and if I never see it again that will be okay. But the basic idea of BB and the world in which he lives was really cool, and I can see how this old cult classic helped give life to some of the ideas in Robo.

In other exciting news I spent Saturday insulating my house for the winter. We live in a small 2-family home that somehow seems to burn through more heating oil than my friends houses do. Those houses are all considerably larger than ours, yet they use a fraction of the fuel.

So I weather stripped and shrink-wrapped the ball off this ol’ house and holy crap, its actually comfortable in here. That NEVER happens after October 15^th! Its usually hat, scarf, and bathrobe weather in our house clear into April. I often feel like Bob Cratchett hunched over a glowing coal nugget, fingerless gloves doing nothing to warm my frozen fingers as the ink in my pens solidifies.

I used to laugh at that plastic wrap that people put over their windows in winter time, but no more. That shit is pure insulating gold! I also stopped the gale-force winds that normally blow under our kitchen door with a bit of weather stripping so intense that it takes two adults to pry the door open now. Its like a fucking airlock! And a few months ago my brother helped me build a box from inch-thick insulation to plug the un-insulated hole made by the attic ladder. I also installed a dohicky that allows us the vent the (electric) dryer into the house -this is the only part of the project I am having second thoughts about.

On the one hand it turns my office and kitchen into a sauna. I was literally sitting at my desk in a white towel schvitzing yesterday. On the other hand, it turns my office and kitchen into a sauna -which is not good at all for all the PAPER I have laying and hanging around. Might have to rethink that one. After another nice sweat.

I remember when the owner of this house (who lives in the other half of the house) asked me something about how our first winter went –I forget the details. But I do remember that he seemed personally insulted when I told him the house was an oil company’s wet dream. He went on about how the windows were all new and there’s no way I blew through all that oil without having the heat set at 80 all winter.

I’m sure the new super-windows he loved so much were great, but the wind sort of bypassed the hyper-efficient double-paned windows and flowed through the enormous gaps between the windows and their frames as well as the window frames and the house itself.

Were similar arguments made by the engineers who built the Titanic? If the portholes had been used properly perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten so damp for everyone. “Did’ya see those portholes?!? Those are the finest portholes that money can buy, son. Not a single drop of water it getting in past those beauties.”

“Yeah, but there’s this gaping tear down-“

“PORTHOLES!”

Until 48hrs ago, you could stand in my bedroom and feel a strong draft. Like, make your hair move sort of draft.

The fact was we froze our asses off AND spent over $2000 in heating oil our first winter here. Last winter we just spent a few hundred bucks on matching snowmobile suits and kept the house warm enough to prevent the pipes from freezing. This year however, we shall live in cost-efficient comfort! Damn it!

For the rest of the weekend, about every ten minutes, I’d have to ask my wife how she felt. Temperature-wise. Still good? Nice and warm? . . .No? But you’re not exactly cold though, are you? Aha . . good? Goooood.

Then I like to go and lay a reverent hand on the nearly invisible plastic sheet and comment on how freezing fucking cold it (and the air trapped between it and the window) is, and how toasty warm I am.

You’ve got to cut me some slack. I can fix basic automotive problems –in fact I’ve performed what amounts to minor surgery on one car and two motorcycles. And I can hang a picture or level a shelf like nobody’s business. But I’m not really what you’d call a “handy” guy. While I am capable of changing the brakes and rotors on my own car, I prefer to pay some other guy to do the mind-numbingly tedious work for me. I get no joy from the work -only the results.

So when I get a minor home improvement project like this done, its heap big brew-haw-haw for me. I actually cracked a beer and admired my work. . . work that you can’t see. Because the plastic is transparent. And the attic box is . . .in the attic. And the “breeze blocker” is under the door.

So far only one friend has been by the hut and been forced to hear about my insulating prowess. He was not suitably impressed by my reckoning. i think I need to rework my Power Point presentation.

Of course, he also mentioned that while he had considered the Shrinky Dink method of reduced home heating cost, he had abstained because then his cats couldn’t sit in the windows

Wha?

Probably the last thing on my mind was how Mrs. CupcakeCrotchlickCheezeburgaHead felt about the windows. She only entered the equation as I considered if it would be large hardcover books, or staplers and paper-weights, that I would throw at her if she so much as placed a tentative paw upon my plastic beauties.

Clearly no common ground can be found between us on this issue. But I hope that our friendship will remain intact despite this new awkwardness.

And so that was my excitement for the week. Bor-ing!

RANDOM SPLENDOR

How Babies Are Made. Do I really need to tell you this might not be work appropriate? I kind of want to do this with the Widget, but I fear the short-term laughs would be outshone by the long-term therapy.

He-Man! When I was a kid I LOVED He-Man. I’m not talking about that utterly crappy cartoon shit with hyper-gay “Adam”. I’m talking about the Conan rip-off action figures that came before the show. Each one came with a new a brutal mini-comic that just blew my little 6yr old mind.

Kung Fu Panda? I can’t tell if this looks really funny, or like its trying so hard to be funny that its stupid.

I feel so deeply wrong for laughing my ass off at this.

Not knowing how to cope with the awesomness that is ATOMIC ROBO and the looming threat it poses to his comic book empire, Superman is forced to seek therapy.

That’s either a guy with a really big paintbrush, or you’re entering Zulu country.

Um, gay? Or just simple old tyme American pedophylia?