Fortress CINCGREEN has once again loosed upon the world an examination of the storytelling engine of Daria, and this time it covers...
Today is the Eiffel Tower's 119th birthday, as Casual French Sailor Mack reminds us. The very definition of machismo. I think that's a piece of straw in his mouth. Maybe a bent cigarette. Something like that.
Richard Lobinske's advice thread on PPMB, Preparing Simple HTML Files for Fan Fiction, groweth ever longer with the season. Lots of suggestions and help for writers wishing to spruce up the look of their fanfics.
More sharing of Daria fan art found on the Internet takes place at It came from the internet 2: The return of the revenge. Contributions and links welcome!
Update time!
PPMB
The lead guitarist of AC/DC, Angus Young, celebrates his birthday today. He's about the same age as me, only a trillion dollars richer. But I'm not bitter, oh no, not me, no, uh-uh.
Vincent van Gogh is 155 years old today, as Jake reminds us. The picture appears wrong at first because: 1) he's holding paintbrushes in his left hand; 2) his left ear is bandaged, not his right, per VvG's self-portraits; and, 3) his coat is buttoned the wrong way, again per his self-portraits. However, he did his self-portraits while looking in a mirror, and he was (so far as I can tell) left-handed. Thus, the picture is generally correct if you were to look at him in real life. Which of course you can't, as he is dead.
Secretariat, the greatest racehorse that ever lived, was born on this date in 1970. I just knew I was going to find a use for that picture! I knew it!
Our Three Mile Island poster children, Beavis and Butt-head, are here to offer more timely news from the 'net...
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
It's questionable whether this trend was sparked by the appearance and popularity of Daria, but a number of fantasy game elements have surfaced online that make use of the same name. Daria is the name of a goddess in two different role-playing campaigns, Theeurth and Valusia. Daria is also the name of several fantasy campaign worlds and regions, including one faerie realm. The Daria is even a group of witches fighting other witches to save the world.
Today marks the twenty-ninth anniversary of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which resulted in a release of radiation that affected only one person: a young English teacher named Timothy O'Neill, who was driving by the Three Mile Island nuclear plant on his way to take a job in the Lawndale school system. As a result of his exposure, Tim mutated into a fearsome half-ton creature of unlimited rage and might. Self-esteem issues caused him to go on a rampage and destroy the cities of Altoona and Scranton before heading toward Lawndale, where he taught Language Arts and headed the Drama Horizons club until April 2002, when he was laid off due to budget cuts and destroyed Wilmington, Delaware.
As proof that real life is a trillion zillion bajillion times stranger than fiction, this article is offered. Notice that it happened at Jane Magazine. Kind of makes further commentary unnecessary, doesn't it?
Only 383 years ago today, Charles I became King of England. What if, thanks to a time machine . . . no, let's not go there. Sorry. Today is also the 214th birthday of the U.S. Navy and the 45th birthday of Quentin Tarantino. One of Tarantino's movies had a significant impact on a recent Daria fanfic.
Was there anything to what Jane said in "Through a Lens Darkly" about Daria's glasses having symbolic meaning? Perhaps there was. An interesting online essay looks at what a simple pair of spectacles can stand for, both in the Daria series and in real life.
Today is Lady Day, which was until 356 years ago New Year's Day in England, Ireland, Wales, and "the colonies." The year 1751 actually began on March 25th. The Gregorian calendar was adopted by England in 1752, so that year began on January 1st. The year 1751 was thus very short. The switch from Julian and Gregorian calendars actually has some importance in an unfinished Daria fanfic ("The Other").
Nineteen years ago today, the drunken captain of the gigantic oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran his ship aground, spilled his cargo, and destroyed Alaska (or a large part of it, anyway). This event was probably the inspiration for the Daria episode, "Just Add Water." Was Captain Hazelwood the model for Captain Nelson (at right)? You decide.
It's snowing outside. I thought we were done with that crap. Rats. Let's see, what's new online. . . . billions and billions of webpages and nothing's—oh, here we go:
Looking for more Daria weirdness on the 'net? You've come to the right post.
Upchuck and his feisty Baby Blue Bunny Brigade remind us that Easter is a time for love and togetherness and remembering the Easter Bunny. They're not alone, either. Jake Morgendorffer's family celebrated Easter when he was growing up, per "Of Human Bonding," and he would have celebrated it, too, if his father had let him come home from Buxton Ridge Military Academy.
The object at left is the spacecraft Daria, twenty miles long and five miles wide, which appeared on the old TV show Space: 1999. The episode was entitled "Mission of the Darians," and was about a lost colony ship built by a humanlike race who lost their homeworld, also named Daria. Though the use of the name bears no relationship to the show Daria, it is interesting to see this peculiar use. This topic came up long ago on PPMB and is reprinted here for no real reason except nostalgia.
Today is World Water Day, so have a drink. I believe that's how it's celebrated. At right, Jodie Landon dives in, pinkly dressed as mermaid-movie star Esther Williams.
Glance at the image at right for a second. Notice anything unusual about it?
Want to hear the real Sick Sad World? It's a music show on WRUV, 90.1 FM, based at the University of Vermont, Burlington VT. The DJ's name is Erin, and the show (according to one source) was named for the TV show on Daria. It plays Wednesdays at 2 p.m. You can get it through the Internet*, of course. I haven't heard it; it showed up on a search engine and looked interesting, so . . .
There's a nonfunctional but not-yet-extinct website, Mr. Tones, for a company in Italy that is now out of business as far as I can tell. Mr. Tones offered little images and logos and such for cell phones. However, with the advent of easy and free downloadable phone wallpapers and other stuff that you can do completely by yourself, the need for the kind of cell-phone wallpaper Mr. Tones sold seems to have fallen off. What was interesting was that the company offered (among other personalized user names) two versions of the name "Daria" to stick on your phone's image space.
The title sounds like a pun on something from Zoolander, but it's not quite that bad. One segment of Daria's dream in "Murder, She Snored" spoofed the 1980s TV series Magnum, P.I., which starred Tom Selleck as a Hawaiian private eye. (Tom is on the right.) Tom Selleck was famed for wearing brilliantly colored shirts on the show, and in the MPI segment Daria wears one, too.
One of the early cast shots released for Daria had an unusual costume arrangement for Jane Lane. The pic at left is a slightly modified view taken from a much larger image. I look at it now and then . . . and make a face. That blue jacket, red shirt, brown boots, none of that really goes together. Jane wasn't a fashion plate, but she was an artist and had some sensibilities about color and other things. She had a look. What were they thinking here? The black-and-red final product was much more striking.
1,400+ views, whee!
As long as the topic's been brought up, we may as well go at it in depth.
I think I wrote something about basketball a few days ago, but I can't be bothered to go back and look. I mean, who cares, it's just a game. We have Daria to talk about.
