RSSMix.com Mix ID 35769

November 19, 2008 - F Chords

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

360 time

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:20:00 -0600

Just like Ash, I lamented not being able to use my XBox 360, and having it just relinquish its functionality as game-playing device, for it to evolve into a purely symbolic gesture of gamerhood. Like the 40-something executive who's still a little edgy, so he mounts skateboard decks on his office wall. Yeah, they're up there, pal, but the last time you used one was fifteen years ago. You're not fooling anyone, James Thursby of NSFT Creative Holdings!

Anyway, look. I want to play games on XBox Live with you guys. Maybe we can convince Erica to join in too. Let's figure something out. Here's my gamertag and the games I have:

Gamertag: Vanderbeam

Halo 3
Gears of War 2
Da Orange Box
Dead Space (no multiplayer though)
Bioshock (also no multiplayer)

Is that really it? I thought I had more stuff, but I just sold back a couple games. Comment here, let's make a group or something. Also if you have a recommendation for good multiplayer games, let's do it.

November 17, 2008 - F Chords

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

November 14, 2008 - F Chords

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

November 12, 2008 - F Chords

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

November 10, 2008 - F Chords

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

November 7, 2008 - F Chords

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

November 6, 2008 - F Chords

Wed, 5 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

No strip today

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 01:30:00 -0600

Unless you count that as a strip. I'm going to bed after all the electoral excitement. Congrats to Obama and looking forward to the next four years. See you here tomorrow and Friday for new F Chords!

November 5, 2008 - F Chords

Tue, 4 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

November 3, 2008 - F Chords

Sun, 2 Nov 2008 18:00:01 -0600

Look at this

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:01:00 -0500

Some of you may remember Ichor Falls, from my old Halfpixel. It was the heartwarming story of a real estate agent who worked in America's most horrifically haunted and evil town. It was tongue-in-cheek, but I had more serious plans for the idea, and as my plans go, it had a couple iterations.

My first idea: do a graphic novel. I still want to do this.
My second idea: turn it into a community microfiction horror site.

A little while back I rounded up some fellow horror fans on Twitter to submit stories and just let them run wild. It's an ongoing project -- usually I like to link stuff only when it's done. If I'm lucky, this never will be.

Welcome to Ichor Falls.

October 31, 2008 - F Chords

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:00:01 -0500

October 29, 2008 - F Chords

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:00:01 -0500

Real-world crossover!

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:03:00 -0500

I ran across Skinny Factory, an Austin band, on MySpace, the site for bands. I'll start peppering in other real bands too, provided that they don't get all mad that they won't get a cut of book sales.

Unforgivable delay

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:47:00 -0500

Sorry about having to delay the strip -- look for it later tonight. I feel terrible about it, but we're in the middle of moving out of a house into an apartment, we stopped for the night at like midnight, it's 2 AM now and I have work in about five or so hours. Two or three hours of drawing just ain't gonna happen after lifting that many boxes.

Oh, I can type, sure, but that only requires that my arms lay flat on this desk. It's almost soothing.

New here? Read from the beginning! Then come on back after dinner tonight for the next installment.

If you absolutely can't wait, here's the premise of today's strip a la TV Guide: F Chords (www.fchords.com). Ash and Wade discuss how to best join a conversation between Ash's crush Cybil and a large group. Guest starring: Dollar Price.

Memin' it

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:30:00 -0500

The last two panels featured appearances by (in order): Dave Kellett, David Malki, Chris Hastings and Magnolia Porter.

New storyline

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 6 Oct 2008 10:41:00 -0500

I've been away from the internet for a few days -- we just moved and there's nothing at the new place until Tuesday. Here's hoping; I feel like I'm suffocating.

Anyway, new storyline and I'll set up a dropdown to reach the old ones. This site needs some lovin'.

Baltimore Comic-Con Wrap-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:47:00 -0500

Baltimore Comic-Con

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:34:00 -0500

I'm going to be at Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend, guys. It's gonna be real colorful. I'm going to have Starslip and Chainsawsuit books on hand, and maybe if you come, you and I can spitball F Chords merchandise. I've been thinking about making sets of guitar picks.

Come on out this weekend and see me, Baltimore!

Girlyman

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:04:00 -0500

This was so serendipitous. I first heard about Girlyman from friends in college, and I've been a fan since. They call themselves "leading edge three-part-harmony folk-pop," which is almost as many hyphens as Soft Operation uses.

They are seriously, seriously great, innovative, awesome. As far as I knew, they never came to Dallas at any point -- I'm on their mailing list and I don't remember seeing a date added.

Erica and I were at lunch on Friday, and by sheer chance she was flipping through the Dallas Observer, and her eye fell on an upcoming show: Girlyman, Friday night. That same night! Not fifteen minutes from us!

Erica never heard them live before, and now she's a fan. Great show, great group. Their stuff is on iTunes too, and they just put out a live album. Look them up.

Wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:09:00 -0500

I've had a long love/hate relationship with Wikipedia. About a year ago I did almost the same thing as Ash and Wade are trying to do, in reverse -- they were moving to delete Starslip Crisis' entry for being non-notable using faulty logic, so I upheld their faulty logic to stuff the vote.

It worked -- if I had made fake voters to keep the entry, they would have been ferreted out in a second (the IPs were all the same). But since I was voting in favor of what the editors wanted, no one bothered to check their strawman logic. It's almost like an election scandal where one side claims the other one is cheating, and gets all up in arms about it -- but of course they're not offended by their own cheating if it helps them get their way in the end.

Wikipedia editors who witnessed my rouse still claimed the system worked, because I was found out, the entry was restored and immediately put up for "legitimate" voting afterwards. But they only ever found out after I exposed my own hoax. If I hadn't, it would have gone unchallenged and unreviewed.

"Kris Straub" has a Wikipedia entry, which is baffling, since I'm less notable than my own work. Ah well, whatever, guys.

The Fist Pound

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:01:00 -0500

At San Diego Comic-Con this year, this thing was in full effect, and I hadn't really experienced it before. I'm with Ash on this one -- the fist bump feels kinda frat-boy to me, almost like guys are afraid to accidentally caress palms.

I think it took such hold at Comic-Con because when you shake a lot of hands, you cross paths with a lot of germs, potentially. I get that, man. But when we're at a private thing and it's not strangers, I don't want a fist pound. I want a hearty handclasp, dude. I want to connect with you on a human level.

Fight the fist pound, brothers. *raises fist high*

Wait, I mean *raises open palm high*

crap that's nazism

In case you haven't seen it

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Creative types have to stay flexible as far as their income streams. Here's how you can get ahead.

I LIKE IT

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 8 Sep 2008 00:04:00 -0500

Here's some dedication. TemporalParadox, a reader, threw up around 40 Soft Operation flyers around his area and made a video about it. Is it real, or trick photography? It's neither, chief. It's AWESOME.

Thanks man!

Song thieves

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 1 Sep 2008 00:23:00 -0500

One time I wrote this whole song and later found it it was just the bridge to the Bee Gees' I Started a Joke. I thought I had done something pretty new and awesome, but nope -- beaten by the Gibbs by like thirty years. Dammit!

Starting a storyline

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:09:00 -0500

Oh God. The first storyline for F Chords. Am I ready to commit to this? Yes. Yes, let's do it.

There are two awesome things about doing a contemporary premise. (1) I can finally tell jokes that happen during my actual day without having to set them IN SPACE or anything, and (2) I can go on tangents like Scott with LOLbat, or Paul Southworth and his SasqWatch series. Man, I'm looking forward to that. Just having some dumb fun with it for a change.

i can has crime

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:01:00 -0500

Scott's been bringing back the LOLbat this week and I think it's the funniest thing he's put together in a while. It's one of those strikes-you-at-3-AM ideas. Sometimes those aren't funny in the morning, and other times you can build an empire around them. I think LOLbat sits squarely in the latter camp.

Here's an entry into LOLbat canon:

He patrols Orly City.

Boo.

Flyers

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Three people have risked life and limb to post the F Chords flyer where no bills may be posted. (I like to think.) They sent in pics, and I put them up on the Extras page.

These first courageous three -- Jake, Jason and Paul -- showed such devotion to the cause that they took the pictures like craftsmen. Notice how there's no one in the pictures. They're just flyers pushpinned to a surface. That's dedication.

Knowing the rest of you, you're probably not professional artists like these guys, and will wind up putting yourself in the pictures next to the flyer, high fiving each other and giving extreme thumbs-ups. But that's okay. I'd post those images too.

So send your picture in, and you could win something more valuable than any prize: my respect.

Wow, that made me sound like a jerk.

Musicians

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:42:00 -0500

Mark your calendars. F Chords is now three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Two days a week was wrecking the pacing of the strip. You can't tell a story twice a week. (Or at least, it's really hard.)

All right. I know it's early in the existence of F Chords, but I want to get a feel for my audience. Do you guys play any instruments? Let's see some stats.

I've played guitar since... man, I don't remember. Not that it was that long ago, but it's escaping me now. Maybe 2001? The first guitar I bought was an Epiphone Les Paul, which is sort of my baby. I got it because I believed it to be the guitar Jeff Lynne used most. (If you look at the cast page and go by their musical tastes, I'm Wade.)

This year I bought an acoustic Epiphone a lot like this one but much cheaper. I'm no good at lead guitar and I always ended up playing my electrics like they were acoustic. I had a little Squier Strat a couple years ago which I think is in my parents' garage. I also had a little parlor acoustic that's at my brother's apartment now. Wherever I go I leave guitars in my wake.

How To Songwrite

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:39:00 -0500

F Chords on the road!

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:37:00 -0500

Already a couple serious fans of Soft Operation have shown their support for the band up at the University of North Texas. Jason sent the following photo.

Keep spreading the word with this downloadable flyer. Who knows? The next Soft Operation open mic show might be in the single digits!

Ads and SomethingAwful

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:13:00 -0500

I really liked how the site looked without ads, but I gots to pay the bills somehow. But let's not look at it that way. Let's look at it as an opportunity for advertisers to reach fresh new audiences hungry for innovative content. Content like F Chords, a comic that directly targets the post-adolescent urban youth market. Contact us for ad solutions. Or don't, since I don't have any.

Let's move on. Whenever I see the Something Awful forums in my referrer list, I panic a little. I see those guys as purveyors of internet culture. I read SA about every other week. I used to be heavily involved with another forum until it went to hell and self-destructed. So... would I like the SA forums, or would I just get bounced out of there? Can I hang with their stuff, or will it be fourth grade all over again?

This is 100% not sarcasm: I think they are doing important things for the internet.

Also, check it: The F Chords official flyer for Soft Operation, Ash and Wade's band. If you post it at your campus or workplace and send me a pic, Soft Operation will play at your house.

Go back to the start and read!

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:01:00 -0500

You don't have to start here! There's two other strips to check out. Start at the beginning, then talk in our forum.

You can also add F Chords on your Last.fm, Facebook, and read my Twitter. Plus there's Ash and Wade's band Soft Operation on MySpace.

Added Digg and Stumbleupon Widgets

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:56:00 -0500

Both have been good to me. If you like the strip, share it!

Hi guys

noreply@blogger.com (Kris Straub) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:52:00 -0500

F Chords is a strip I swore I would never do. It's not on a spaceship. There are no robots among the main characters. I'm super-excited about it!

Here's the quick setup: Morningbell Studios is a small recording facility in Austin, TX. Ash and Wade, our heroes, are forced to get by on recording thirty-second jingles for radio commercials. Will they give up on their dreams of rock stardom? (Probably.)

F Chords updates Tuesday and Thursday.