I ordered this in the blink of an eye for my birthday because 1) it's a 1989 Batman and 2) it's related to my favorite Batman video game. Everything about the NES version of Tim Burton's Batman film is astonishing, the slightest things just made me stand in awe back then. Things like the barely-noticeable cape movement when resuming from crouching position, to the concept of wall jumps were second place when on top if it all was the catchiest piece of 8-bit music I've had the pleasure to let my ears sweat to.

Here's a video of the Level 1, which showcases everything I've just mentioned:

The color palette used in the few cut scenes as well as the game itself are tastefully carried over to the NECA Batman figure, which is a direct mold from the real life counterpart, including Michael Keaton's likeness. I took the liberty to play with the saturation, so the end result is almost nothing like the figure's original color (shown at the end of this post). It's safe to say that even as a die-hard fan, I prefer this to the original action figures released alongside the movie in 1989, whose entire run consisted of 3 characters, Batman, The Joker and Bob the Goon (Penguin, Riddler, Robin as well as others were re-released from earlier non-movie related runs).

So the other day I did some cleaning and found my good ol' plastic container of "Things I Should Throw Away But I Don't Want To, Yet". In it, some notebooks from my high school years (these can be anywhere from 2000-2003), and I suddenly remembered I would draw inane crap during classes so I figured "hey, I might throw these out next time I clean, so might as well keep whatever's worth scavenging".

I tried to clean them up a bit before saving them, but some are so old and faint (pencil, nonetheless) that the result is sketchy at best. No, that wasn't a pun, fuckwit. So, like the title implies, here are "Some old sketches". Keep in mind they're not remotely good, this post has more of an "archive" purpose.

Just finished Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, it's a very well-made game. It was launched back in 2013 via Xbox Live Arcade, subsequently on Windows and Playstation 3.

The simple mechanics take almost no time to learn, keyboard use is supported but a gamepad is strongly recommended since you're in control each brother individually at the same time. They both have one button to interact with the environment or each other and an analog stick assigned, that's it. The approach of substituting a real language for small undecipherable phrases with body gestures tell a more compelling story than anything I've seen in video games in a long time.


The world has an odd mix between what we perceive as the real world, accompanied with fantasy characters mostly inspired by Greek mythology such as Arachne, Giants and Griffins. Accompanying the amazing narrative are gorgeous visuals (aided by the Unreal Engine 3) as you can see both in the trailer and pictures, the game is supposedly 3 hours long but it felt more than that because there is a lot to look at along the way, it also helped that I didn't play it all the way through in one sitting. That being said, there were many times I wished the adventure was longer, the world was bigger, the backstory for this reality explored much more, but it is what it is, and it is beautiful.

It has its slow moments, but it builds up to an amazing adventure on a scale that I never expected from an "indie" game.

8/10

It seems I'm my own best subject to work on. All humour aside, this actually speaks volumes of how I've basically been living day in day out since my "episode" in January 2014. Interpret it how you will. And yeah, I never could get the hand on the shoulder to look convincing enough, but it ain't easy when you're rushing something before the muse runs out as well as shooting everything by yourself.

This is my first "serious" photo-manip since, oh, perhaps 2011 2010 apparently. The only way I could find out was through the site itself since the original files in my computer have corrupted dates (all the way up to 2021).

The pictures, however, were taken in 2011. This was still when I lived with my mother (sad? you bet), 2 relationships and 3 places ago. A simple enough concept, a composite of two pictures, one with the pressure points on my face and another with a hand far from the face. The quality of the final product is not what I was hoping to achieve, my only excuses are that the pictures' quality was lesser than what I had expected after all these years and, that once I had achieved the main effect, I was in a hurry to finish it and most of the original concept was thrown out the door.

Originally, it was meant to have my face being stretched and ripped, much like this scene from Poltergeist:

An early concept also included my other hand grabbing the one you see, ripping it as well.  In the end, I solved it with a big "fuck it" and finished it.

Well folks, this year has been a bit rough. Some ups (getting a new full-time job) some downs (being broke for the year's first quarter), some ups and downs (getting kicked out by a nagging bitch forcing me to grow cojones and do things my way) but the time where it affected me the most was Halloween.

I couldn't invest a lot in this year's costume, so I had to find a smart, cheap way to make myself a recognizable character that I could have fun with. As the previous "hinting" posts laid out, I decided to go as Jim Carrey's Ace Ventura. The character was something I could do as a kid even with my eyes closed, in terms of quoting him, walking like him and even being out of place in certain public events was right up my alley. So I decided to invest $8 on a pre-owned Hawaiian shirt (or Aloha shirt, as it is supposed to be called), $2.50 on a faux-leather belt (I hate leather belts so I had none that could look the part), dirty black tall boots I already had (I used the same boots for the V for Vendetta and Ghostbusters costumes) and the two most difficult things were the hair and pants.

I looked up and down endlessly for pants that resembled anything close to these:

Chef pants came to mind, but the stripes weren't thick enough and the damn things were $30 or more. Even worse, the ones I found locally were always black and white, not black and red (or burgundy) so that's a double insult. Next, I tried 90's exercise baggy muscle pants, but again the colors were a problem.

The title pretty much says it all.

More to come, hopefully.

After almost a year without posting, I figured I'd do an extended post of one of my favorite activities.

Besides laughing at the suffering of toddlers.

I mean Halloween. It's that one thing that surpasses any other date in my entire calendar and any other life event, like when I got my job, or when I bought my car, or when I found out Mr Rogers died, or when I lost my virginity, my birthday (or anyone else's), the only exception is any day that is a payday.

This is a 1989 "BluePrinter Batmobile Cocoon Armored Shield", it's a model kit, which means you have to assemble and paint it. Got it off eBay a few months ago as my own birthday present since the original Batmobile of the same year for the action figures weren't as cheap as I thought they'd be (it was Christmas season after all).

Looking at the uploaded versions of Blogger, the upload process somehow, apparently, compressed and fucked the blacks on the photos, so I've replaced them with Flickr's version.

It has been almost a year since I moved out of my house, this implied using the laptop a lot more than my desktop PC at first, but with the advent of a fried motherboard (two, actually) I relied solely on the laptop. I have almost the same stuff on both computers, but my desktop had more recent photos of my Canon Rebel XTi, so I always felt it inadequate to update my Canon Rebel XTi folder on the laptop, since there would always be some photos missing.

The last couple of days I've installed Lightroom and imported the photos and catalog from my desktop's hard drive to my laptop's, have been retouching some old pictures that were on hold as well as transferring all the new pictures that had been accumulating in the camera's memory for almost a year (as mentioned previously). So this small batch is of those new pictures that had been gathering digital dust up until now. Enjoy.

Leatherface

Leatherface figurine against candle and LED flashlight.

 Les Paul

Gibson Les Paul Guitar.

Banana Tree

The innards of a banana tree.