They're not coming. They're already here!

The Fashion Club announces that Lovestruck Alien Teenage Invaders from Mars (parts 1 and 2) is now available on Lorenzo Sauchelli's Dariaverse.com website. Thank you!

Sorry for the text-heavy previous post, but there was a lot of technical stuff.

Moar suun.

Oh, and Dariaverse.com updated with lots of new stories, too. forgot to mention that. Too many to mention here. Okay, I'm lying. Here they are, all complete.

• A Little Vacation by Doggieboy (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)
• Let Vengeance Ring, by Richard Lobinske
• Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, by Kristen Bealer
• Over the River and Through the Mood Swings, by Kristen Bealer

Go, thou, and readeth.

The latest DariaWiki page: Planet Daria. Yes, that Planet Daria. Milo fills us in on the one great website of yore that I have never been able to retrieve by WayBack Machine. THANK YOU, MAN!


FF.net

• Snow Problem, by Smileyfax (COMPLETE!): A slice of horror for the winter season.

Party Time for Daria Fan-imators!

Here is a chance to try out your animation skills and perhaps produce some fun micro-cartoons (animated GIFs that tell a story or show a scene).

First, I downloaded every single SMK file from Daria's Inferno to a special index page:

http://www.theangstguy.com/inferno/

The DI game itself is not playable, taken apart like this and missing the critical non-SMK files (plus the CD). However, if you also download this item:

RAD Game Tools

and a good GIF animator, perhaps like this free one:

FastStone Image Viewer 3.6

(or whatever else you happen to like for tools), then you can try your hand at making Daria micro-cartoons. You'll have to puzzle out how to do it, but you have all the tools you need right here.

Anyone up to a real challenge? The individual SMK files are often quite amusing and offer marvelous screen captures, plus detailed scenes like rooms in the Morgendorffers' home.

Remember, this is only for your amusement and education. It's time to goof around!

P.S. You'll find all four Mystik Spiral band members playing instruments in the SMK files. Add a soundtrack for extra fun. Speaking of soundtracks.... more later.

P.P.S. Plus a big handful of Sick, Sad World clips. And Shaggy chained to a wall. And Artie walking. And Jane popping out of famous artworks. And flying eyeballs. And weirdness on the level of Alice in Wonderland crossed with The Wizard of Oz crossed with Invaders from Mars crossed with insanity. Awesome!

X talks about National Cocoa Day

"You're out of hot chocolate? You're out of freakin' hot chocolate? No way, dude! I don't want a pumpkin shake like 'Ween! I gotta have cocoa, right now, all right, or I'll freak!"

Sadly, not everyone has hot cocoa in their house today. Share the marshmallow topping with those less fortunate. Be excellent to each other on National Cocoa Day.

Great fan art of the day: LSauchelli's "Daria as Saturn Girl."

Moar 2 come, including a special announcement for amateur cartoonists and GIF animators. (HINT: It's party time.)

A big (alter) ego

The pic at left looks very small. It isn't. It is a reduced screen capture from Daria's Inferno. The alter egos are HUGE. (Click on Jane and see.)

I definitely need to learn to make GIFs. The potential for making weird stuff from the Daria CDs is great. A little animation, a little soundtrack, who knows.

Saw the movie Penelope last night. Made me think of Daria, wanting someone to see her for who she was and like her for that. Made me also think of a story about a family curse. Interesting.

Oh: newest DariaWiki page: Daylight: The Fugitives, by Disco316.

Who are the Katzenjammer Kids?

The oldest continuously published comic today is the Katzenjammer Kids, which appeared 107 years ago today in a New York newspaper. I used to read this when I was a kid. Not my favorite comic, but when you're a kid you'll read anything. I recognize Mr. DeMartino at right (as the Captain), but not the kids. Anyone?

Working with animation is very hard. I'm not likely to get far with it yet, until I get the hang of creating animated GIF files from some of the SMK files on the two Daria CDs. I would hazard a guess that someone other than me on PPMB has long been at work on this very same project. More power to you.

More later. This, by the way, is my 900th post on this blog.

What I've learned from my journey into the Inferno

At first I was kind of disappointed. The Daria's Inferno game was fine, except for having a few glitches (it was version 1.0.0, after all), but I wanted "portable" stuff to carry away from it, like WAV files, images, etc. Fun stuff I could use elsewhere. But, tragically, the CD was full of SMK files I couldn't use (like, for example, "Daria.smk"). NOTE: SMK files do not appear to be named after smk.

So there was nothing I could do with it.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that SMK files are "Smacker" files, compressed video/cartoon files (often with sound) that are used to power computer games. Smacker was developed by RAD Game Tools and is actually, as I understand it, kind of old and out of date, like me. I wanted to find out if I could modify the SMK files, and lo! You can. All you have to do is go to this webpage and download the RAD Video Tools EXE file, then run it. The tool file is free, but RAD would of course like a donation, which I leave entirely in your hands. You can get the toolkit elsewhere, but why not from the makers? My computer has misgivings about the file, but after checking it out I downloaded it without any problem. It attached itself to my copy of Daria's Inferno, but you can put it elsewhere.

And I have had a trying though fun time learning a whole new skill.

It turns out that the SMK files in Daria's Inferno are like dozens and dozens of little cartoon bits you can stick together in all sorts of ways. I'm not very good at this yet, but I will try to load a few test files here in a few days. Once you get the RAD Video Tools thinger, you can click on and watch any sort of SMK file.

However, I have learned now to convert SMK files into BIK files with the RAD Video Tools thinger, because BIK files work much better.

I can also click on "Print Screen" during any video segment and capture a very large and perfect image.

So this could turn out VERY well after all. If you happen to have downloaded the RAD Video Tools, click on Quinn (above left) and see what happens.

Stay tuned.

More playing around in cyberspace

Some more things unearthed (is that the right word?), courtesy of the WayBack Machine.

• Another page for the Daria web browser. I've tried to download it, and to my surprise I downloaded something. Not sure what. I'm nervous about trying it out, though. Maybe tomorrow.
• The Cyber-Challenge III. Doesn't seem to do anything now.
• An old version of one of Daria's political essays. Interesting look.
• Did you know that Nicholas (of Mystik Spiral) had a drug problem? Maybe I mentioned this last year. Can't remember.
• I rather like Reburb.com. This would be a nice page to post in a Trent-oriented site (with music, of course).
• A batch of Trivia Contest pages, hard to capture: The Rules, The Site, The End, Round 9, Round 16.

And a special prize: a QuickTime movie showing a very important moment in the first episode. To my astonishment, I was able it to download to RealPlayer. And it works. Kinda crude, but it works. Good Lord.


FF.net

• Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, by Kristen Bealer (COMPLETE!): A newly minted classic AU, all the parts in one place.

PPMB

• Daylight: Falling From Grace - The Road to Nowhere, by Disco316 (Part 13): Gunfight at the OK-To-Cry Corral.
  
• Welcome Back, Daria, by Napalm Kracken (COMPLETE!): If you haven't read this one yet, start now. Outstanding in-character dialogue, really funny situations, great stuff.

The Devil Made Me Do It

Bought myself a little present on e-Bay. More to come. A lot more. Get ready.

FF.net

• Daria: The College Years, by Farren O'Blivion ((Part 9): "Daria, what are you doing out?"
  

PPMB

• Daylight: Falling From Grace - The Road to Nowhere, by Disco316 (Part 12): Biff’s smile turned into a smirk. “Boy, I don’t think you have a firm grasp on this situation.”
• Welcome Back, Daria, by Napalm Kracken (Part 10): "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this year's Jail Bait Beauties of Lawndale High Pageant. I'm your host, Investigator Charles Ruttheimer the Thirrrrd of the Lawndale Police Department."

i winz teh internetz!!11!1!!

Fixed it. Much better. You are free to use this pic for fandom purposes as you like. I don't own the character, after all.

Bitchin' pic. She's right up there with Jonny Quest.








Anyone remember this story?

Hangin' Ten Off the Big Island

As luck would have it, a copy of the July 12-18, 1997 TV Guide came up on e-Bay, and here is the (doctored) image of Daria surfing away, in big screen. I'm not entirely happy with my efforts to wipe out everyone else around her, but it will do for now. Maybe someone else can do better. More soon.

Okay, back again. Here's a contest of sorts. This is a bitmap image of Daria surfing, scanned into my computer with all unnecessary objects around it, plus minor scratches, etc. Take it and do whatever you wish with it, but make it better. Post a link in the Comments to your results. Ready, set, GO!

Hope Is the Thing That Sorta Like Has Feathers, You Know?

This is Human Rights Day, saith the U.N., not that anyone else is paying attention. This is the kid at Holiday Island High who gets beaten up a lot.

It is also the 178th anniversary of Emily Dickinson's birthday. One of my favorite poems of hers stands up very well in present day arguments over science and religion, over which there should not be any argument at all, but you know how people are.

At right we have a marvelous image from MTV showing Daria as Emily Dickinson, with Emily's sister Hortense ("Is that Hortense?" "She does look a little nervous."), on a country walk in medieval Massachusetts or England or somewhere. Emily and Hortense used to go out into the country on picnics, and because this was before iPods were invented Emily would bring some poems to read aloud, which Hortense would then wad up and throw away. Hortense eventually disappeared on one of these walks, and Emily claimed her sister had been carried away by Indians, though none lived in their neighborhood, which was gated. Emily was left to finish writing her poetry undisturbed and become famous, or rather she would have except she was a woman and no one listened to her back then. We carry on that excellent tradition by not listening to her today.

This has been your History of Literature Minute.

Milton Turns 400 on National Brownie Day

Yes, it's National Brownie Day, and poet John Milton is 400 today. Congratulations, and have a brownie.

Speaking of brownies, Daria shows us the marvels of snow globe collecting at left, and a Dariacon is still being planned in Hong Kong. Please save the brownies and snow globes by going to the Hong Kong Dariacon and partying with John Milton at the Paradise Lost Casino.

Alert superfan UU, whose name if you haven't noticed forms a palindrome, which is a kind of snow globe, I forgot what I was saying..... oh!

Alert superfan UU has discovered something in the debris of old Daria websites on the WayBack Machine, something that is way cooler than the Daria MUD I found. It is a chat room thinger in which the Fashion Club discusses, need we say it, fashion. This is the best. UU is hereby promoted to Sergeant at Arms for all Daria fandom for his discovery.

IMs from the FC

It will be difficult to top that one. Thank you!

I am sort of tired and not completely with it from sleepiness so I will stop here and think of something else to do, like maybe sleep. Keep on keepin' on, King Kongs, and remember that the palindrome you save might be Milton's, and if there's a reward you could be in for some big-time brownie points.

LAWNDALE ONLINE LIVES! It's back up, folks! Whew! Go here!

BONUS: Wouter's 2008 Christmas comic has been released! And now for the fanfic. Need to update the big list soon.


PPMB

• Daylight: Falling From Grace—The Road to Nowhere, by Disco316 (Part 11): “See, there’s always a silver lining, even in necrophilia.”
• Hell on Wheels, by Roxanne M (Part 2): “Have you lost your senses? She is in there at death’s door. Do you have anything to say for your self?” Helen roared.
• Welcome Back, Daria, by Napalm Kracken (Part 9): "I’ll call Trent, we’ll get the Tank and haul the body off discretely once the sun is down."

SFMB

• Size Does Matter, by BlackHole (Part 33): On Ms. Li’s face formed a smile that everyone knowing her feared. (FF.net) (PPMB)

Up Too Early

I woke up too early, but here are a few notes before I go back to bed.

HELPER HINTS: HTML files often change over time as webpages are updated. Be sure to check an assortment of dates (if available) to see if anything interesting happened. Also, try to save any SWF files (right click, save link as). They do neat stuff.

• The 2000 "Space Daria" intro page
• Daria's "complete party planner"
• The Lawndale High webpage (with history!)
  
• Mack and Jodie tell all about the LHS website
• Ms. Li's welcome message
• An old Virtual Lawndale page
• A difficult-to-get reprint of an article in YM Magazine about Daria
• Quinn's school locker
• Space Quinn's web page (missing one image that has been saved elsewhere, that of Space Quinn)

I keep thinking there must be some way to use the coding to recreate certain pages, taking out whatever glitch there is that keeps cutting off the later pages with error messages. The pages have been revised by the WayBack Machine to preserve page integrity (as special inserts in the coding tell you), so they will draw material from the WayBack Machine, not from nonexistent sites. If properly revised, the coding pages could also draw images from your own sources, if you are able to recover them or find substitutes. I may give this a try to re-create certain pages that look especially nice. The "Broodbeat" section is pretty funny and deserves a look, for instance, and the Space Family Morgendorffer stuff is great.

Back to bed. Let me know how this all works out for you. Power to the fandom!

P.S. Why does Kevin have brown hair instead of black on his sports card?

This, That, Them, and Those

Random bits of cool stuff from the past:

• A small but nice picture of The Tank.
• See what you can recover from this Trent page.
• Helen's (misspelled) "breifcase"
• Helen and a pencil
• A "Virtual Marianne" to help Helen (what did this do?)
  
• A "lasagne" dinner for the Morgendorffers
• Helen's power-walking shoes
• Brittany's backpack
• Brittany's "World Cheer" globe that moves
• Brittany's "World Cheer" (really funny to astronomers!)
• One of Mr. Taylor's ceramic tigers
• Jane Lane's personal art gallery
• Jane's super glue-gun
• Jane rates every pizzeria in Lawndale
• Quinn's stuffed dinosaur
• Quinn's gumball machine
• I'll let you guess what this one is
• Quinn's poem: "The Dream"
• Quinn's poem: "Shop"
• Daria's "half-assed home page" (rarely seen, I bet)
• I wonder how this thing worked
• Upchuck's favorite magazine (if you had a stack of them, would you call it an.... no, I can't say it, it's too awful)
• See if you can download this link (a WAV file) and guess who it is
• Another view of a "Pigskin Channel" page that provides a missing illo from the previous "Pigskin Channel" link
• The paintball "colonel"
• What the Neoplanet Daria web browser was supposed to look like (but shown very small)
• Awww, aren't they cuuuuute?!
• Space Daria doing this weird kind of salute or something (animated)
• A weird block of art that was supposed to be used as wallpaper (multiplied all over)
• Inside of Daria's locker
• Don't Do Drugs!
• Huh, a voice actor. I wonder who this was.
• The Fashion Club as I doubt you've ever seen them before
• The kids from Grove Hill
• Our heroine
• That logo I use on this webpage
• WOW! A big one!
• Nice screen cap from "The Invitation"
• In their natural habitat
• The Landons in their car, from "Gifted"
• Leary 3
• A tiny head-bobbing Daria logo
• What the hell?

Okay, enough. Moire l8rr.

The people who started the whole "self-insert" thing in this fandom

"The Transformed Staff" section of the MTV site had a flipbook by the same name, shortened to "Transformed." The contents are interesting and this is probably one of those flipbooks that would have done well with pictures. Here we go anyway. (Glenn Eichler is at right.)

1. Brian Moyer, layout artist (First appeared as Doo Dad Shop employee in "Malled")
2. Mike Baez, Character Designer (First appeared in "A Tree Grows in Lawndale")
3. Amy Palmer, Producer (First appeared in "College Bored")
4. Chris Costan, Color Supervisor (First appeared in "Fair Enough")
5. Shane Guenego, Production Assistant (First appeared in "Quinn the Brain")
6. R.J. Murphy, Office Manager (First appeared in "Quinn the Brain")
7. Kirk-Albert Etienne, Character Designer (First appeared in "Quinn the Brain")
8. David Trexler, Production Manager (First appeared in "Quinn the Brain")
9. Chris Prynoski, Director, Creator of MTV Downtown (First appeared in "Esteemsters")"
10. George Brennan, Assistant Director, Celebrity Deathmatch (First appeared in "Fair Enough")
11. Cindy Brolsma, Producer (First appeared in "Quinn the Brain")
12. Maria Rodas, Associate Producer (First appeared in "The Lost Girls")
13. Lemon Krasny, Co-Producer (First appeared in "Fair Enough")
14. Karen Kunkel, Post Production Producer (First appeared in "Legends of the Mall")
15. Lisa Collins, Production Coordinator (First appeared in "Daria Dance Party")
16. Corey Block, Production Coordinator (First appeared in "Fire!")
17. John Lynn, Studio Supervising Producer (First appeared in "Fair Enough")
18. Glenn Eichler, Executive Producer/Creator (First appeared in "Fair Enough")
19. Jody Schaeffer, Background Designer (First appeared in "The Daria Hunter")
20. Tom Marsan, Art Director (First appeared in "I Loathe a Parade")
21. Sophie Kitteredge, Colorist (First appeared in "Fair Enough")
22. Karen Disher, Daria's supervising director designed this character and based it upon her very own self. “Burnout Girl” appeared in the original Daria pilot and is often seen roaming the halls of Lawndale High, lost in thought, much like Karen. (First appeared in the pilot)

Yeah, could have done with a lot more pictorial info here. So it goes.

And here's a picture of Kevin Thompson's Jeep. And The Pigskin Channel. And some nice Trent wallpaper on the back of this page. I notice that the Official Mystik Spiral Fan Club membership card was lost (not saved), but someone else saved it for us in another thread on PPMB, bless you!

Burnout Girl's real name was . . . Burnout Girl

Yes, true, she's called Jennifer on Mr. O'Neill's seating chart in that first-season episode we all remember but whose name I have forgotten in one of my senior moments. She's also called Burnout Chick and a bunch of other stuff, too. However, the MTV staff just called her Burnout Girl.

The following is from the missing flipbook "Oh, the Obscurity!" (It was supposed to go here.) Some of these characters were detailed on a webpage in Sick, Sad World (the website), which Wraith lovingly saved for us all. The images he used are probably the ones used in the missing flipbook. (See here and here.)

I did minor editing on the text, which misspells "shoulder" and does a few other irksome things.

1. COREY—Quinn found him somewhat amusing in "Esteemsters." But after showing up at her door in "Quinn the Brain" and fetching punch in "Daria Dance Party," he lost favor and was demoted to background character. (First appeared in "Esteemsters")
2. BOY TEEN 8—The Daria artists like this mellow dude so much that he acquired the nickname "Shaggy." At Brittany's party in "The Invitation," he pops up in two places at once, defying physics. (First appeared in "Esteemsters")
3. BURNOUT GIRL—Daria supervising director Karen Disher designed this character and based it upon her very own self. "Burnout Girl" appeared in the original Daria pilot and is often seen roaming the halls of Lawndale High, lost in thought, much like Karen. (First appeared in the pilot)
4. DAWN—Officially known as "Girl Teen 6," this self-contained cutie is said to resemble a former office production assistant who quit to join the police force. Dawn was her name and so... (First appeared in "Esteemsters")
5. BRIAN TAYLOR—You know how children of divorce often erroneously blame themselves for the breakup? In the case of Brittany's little brother, it's the rest of the family pointing the finger at him. (First appeared in "The Lab Brat")
6. POPULAR GIRL—She can be seen standing with Tiffany and Stacy at Brittany's party in "The Invitation," holding forth on the nuances of popularity. She dropped out of sight shortly thereafter. (Sandi probably had something to do with it.) Note: She also plays volleyball in the show open. (First appeared in "The Invitation")
7. BLIND MAN—He originally appeared as a blind man, but a miracle occurred and he later re-appeared as a sighted person in "I Don't." (First appeared in "Esteemsters")
8. ADULT MALE 48—The rare Daria male brave enough to expose his chest hair, this disreputable character stole Trent's records in "That Was Then, This Is Dumb." (First appeared in "Monster")
9. TED DEWITT-CLINTON—Daria's photo-happy "like interest" from "The New Kid" had corn in his yard…and rocks in his head, since he let our darling Daria get away. (First appeared in "The New Kid")
10. GIRL TEEN 35—This frizzy-haired femme fatale was seen enthusiastically rubbing Kevin's chest (his shoulder pads, actually) in "This Year's Model." (First appeared in "This Year's Model")
11. SAM AND CHRIS GRIFFIN—Sandi's bratty brothers are named after Daria scribes Chris Marcil and Sam Johnson, who went on to Hollywood to write for "real" shows. (First appeared in "Gifted")

Now, this is interesting. We get the dope on Shaggy, Burnout Girl, Dawn, Girl Teen 35, and Adult Male 48, who I've never heard of before. But I still think that the blind guy from "Esteemsters" is not the same person as was later shown in "I Don't" and wandering the store aisles in "Mart of Darkness." Click on "blind man" in the Labels section below for more.

Hmmm, I notice that there are even more flipbooks I have to track down. So be it, then.

Guest stars (dim stars, at that)

The "lost" flipbook called "Guestward Ho!" turns out to have had characters that we pretty much all know about. (The flipbook went on this page in the MTV site.) However, it is helpful to note the CORRECT spelling of some minor characters' names (Alison with one L, Luhrman with one N, etc.). This page was also archived on April 28, 2001. (Italics mine.) Note that "balloonist" is misspelled. (I discovered a number of misspellings on the old websites, but too late to do anything about it now.)

1. ARNO THE BALLONIST—He is not a hoppy thing! He is not Swedish! He is not Norwegian! He's from Denmark and don't you forget it! Oh, yeah, he's the balloonist in "Of Human Bonding."
2. BRAD AND BRETT—These carriers of the dreaded Ruttheimer gene (they're Upchuck's cousins) make a valiant attempt to pick up Daria and Jane in the bleachers of the "Daria Dance Party." Thank the dating gods the girls found out in time.
3. JORDANA—In "The Daria Hunter," this deluded dame runs a tourist trap and is obsessed with the Great White Shark. Are her amazing adventures a Great White Lie?
4. LUHRMAN—This deadpan dreamboat was Daria's date for her cousin Erin's wedding. Did she miss the boat? Was Luhrman really the perfect man for her? We say "no" and forever hold our peace.
5. DAVID SORENSON—In Is It Fall Yet? Quinn whiles away her afternoons live with her tutor, David Sorenson. So how appropriate that TRL-meister Carson Daly provided his voice.
6. AXL—He's the tattoo parlor proprietor whose two-for-one special prompted Daria to violate her navel in "Pierce Me." Well, maybe Trent's eyes had something to do with it. Additional trivia: He charged eleven bucks.
7. TRICIA AND TAD GUPTY—Daria de-programs these well-behaved tykes in "Pinch Sitter." They're based on real kids writer Anne D. Bernstein used to baby-sit for. The only snack food in the house was unsalted sunflower seeds.
8. BING AND THE SPATULA MAN—Dan Vebber created these radio mock jocks for "Jake of Hearts." He says they're based on Buck and O'Connor, who had a morning show on Z-95, a rock station in Milwaukee, in the early 1980s.
9. THE CHEESE LADY—In "Mart of Darkness," this poor soul has to defend her calcium-rich wares from the likes of both Mr. DeMartino and Mrs. Johanssen. A sharpened toothpick proved useless.
10. ALISON—She was Jane's bisexual art colony pal in Is It Fall Yet? Jane was struck dumb, Allison struck out, and singer Bif Naked struck a chord when she provided the sultry voice.
11. BROOKE—She almost made it into the Fashion Club in "Too Cute" after having fat sucked out of her butt and injected into her lips. But then there was that unfortunate nasal relapse.
12. GENERAL BUCK CONROY—He was the ultra-mercenary big mouth who marched into "This Year's Model." Still not half as scary as Romanica.
13. VAL—The hip magazine editor from "The Lost Girls" doesn't look a day over how old she was 10 years ago. Reminiscent of a real-life editor who named a magazine and a talk show after herself. (But her name has four letters, so it's so totally not her!)
14. DANIEL DOTSON—While looking over his lines as the opportunistic artist in "Is It Fall Yet?," Foo Fighters' David Grohl exclaimed, "God, I'm such a sleaze!" We think he was talking about the character.
15. MINSTREL JOCK—Sure, he only has one line in "Fair Enough," but he's a minstrel jock! What more could you ask for?
16. DOCTOR SHAR—The surgically enhanced plastic surgeon from "Too Cute." Gee, it's hard to depict cosmetic surgery in a cartoon character. That must be why Courtney Love hasn't guested on "Cat Dog."
17. LINK—The disgruntled camper from Is It Fall Yet? Oh, grow up, you're on TV."

You can make up your own controversies about these guys. Interesting where Tad and Tricia came from, though. I used to listen to Z-95 when I lived in Milwaukee some years ago. Huh.

Trent's duck phone, and other wild beasts

The Mallard-shaped telephone that Trent uses in "Daria!" appears as a wallpaper image in one of the old MTV Daria sites. But let's go to the missing flipbooks and go through their contents.

We'll start with "Filed Kingdom" (a word-play on the old TV show Wild Kingdom, which was about animals). Here are the text lines to each of the missing but now unnecessary pix. This was actually part of the current website but was removed for unknown reasons. You may consider this "official," if you like. (You can confirm the contents by going to this URL and right-clicking on the page. The flipbook widget was archived on 20010428, meaning April 28, 2001, so it was online at that time.) Here we go! (Italics mine.)

1. CHIQUITO THE PARROT—Penny Lane returns from Costa Rica with this high-strung chatterbox in "Lane Miserables." He just might be more musical than Trent.
2. DOG WITH NINE LIVES—Daria almost runs over him with her car in "Through a Lens Darkly." His name is Pugsly and he's modeled after (Daria producer) Susie Lewis's pet bulldog.
3. POOR LITTLE MOUSE—This critter is greatly confused and greatly abused in "The Lab Brat." But he does get his revenge by biting Brittany. (She deserved it; she called him a rat!)
4. DOOMED SPIDER—A trespassing bug that causes Mr. O'Neill to refer to Daria as "Dorian" in "Café Disaffecto." It is then sentenced to be squished.
5. NASTY BEE—This annoying insect adds to Daria's humiliation in "Road Worrier." The voyeuristic squirrels weren't very nice either.
6. LEARY THE DOG—caption: Leary is the pet of holdover hippies Willow and Coyote in "That Was Then, This is Dumb." He's the second in a series of lookalike canines named after Timothy Leary, the famous guru of mind expansion.
7. SEXY POODLE—This pulchritudinous poodle appears in the first scene of "I Loathe a Parade" on an episode of Sick, Sad World. As Upchuck would say: "Rowwwrrrr!"
8. CERAMIC TIGER—He's not alive like the others, but he's greaaaaat! Quinn hides behind this oversized porcelain pussycat in "The Invitation."

This list is sure to inspire intense controversy. Why did they not talk about the squirrels, for the love of God? Why no mention of Mister Whiskers? Why no picture of Sandi's cat puking up foundation? Was the squashed spider really more important than Joanna the python? And why wasn't J.B. or Roger the Mouse given more space? ("Pugsly"? Eww.) And only EIGHT animals?

SPECIAL BONUS! An extra picture of Roger the Mouse!

More shocking revelations to come! Hold on to your joysticks!

HEY! Wasn't that Leary #3, not Leary #2?

The Keys to the Internet Kingdom

While driving around tonight it occurred to me that if, for example (and this is only an example, as I do not use buses), I were to be run over by a bus unexpectedly, no one would know how to access all that Daria stuff in the WayBack Machine. So here's a crash course in how to do it. You're getting the keys to the kingdom. Take them and party hard.

There are basically three major ways to dump it all out, and they are listed below. Each is based on a specific URL that MTV used over the years for the Daria site. Each URL is then formatted in such a way as to make the WayBack Machine empty its pockets of everything it has that MTV ever produced and the WayBack Machine was able to capture. Capture does not appear to have been perfect; I'd guess that about 90% of everything put online was saved somewhere. (Note: This method works with almost any website not blocked by robots or whatever.)

To my surprise, some things were saved you wouldn't have expected, such as audio (WAV) files, which you can right-click on and save to your hard drive right from the webpages where they were featured. Some are corrupted, but some work. I even saved screensavers, wallpaper, and more with varying degrees of success. That "MUD" game came through perfectly. Try to save everything, that's the key. You can sort it all out later.

• http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_10/http://www.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/animation/daria/* (this was the original URL for the first Daria sites, but later stuff was put here, too: 4,660 pages worth)
  
• http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_10/http://daria.mtv.com/* (produces only two links, but each link connects to about 136 capture dates, so try them all)
• http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_10/http://www.mtv.com/onair/daria/* (produces 2,034 more pages of stuff, so good luck)

MAKE SURE THE ASTERISK IS AT THE END OF EVERY URL, FOLLOWING A SLASH. For some reason, the asterisk gets clipped off at times, I don't know why, but you need the asterisk following a slash. It's like a wild-card search.

Now, here's how to troubleshoot. Some of the pages that come up, particularly from late 2000 and 2001 onward, somehow connect to the actual MTV site operating now (probably through ads), which causes an error and results in the desired webpage appearing for .25 seconds before an MTV "oops" screen appears and replaces it. To defeat this, you have to keep a finger hovering over the ESCAPE key to smack it once the desired screen appears, BEFORE the error screen appears. You can do this over and over again (it gets to be a game of its own), testing your reflexes against the Internetz. Once you get the screen, it might not have loaded everything but you can run your cursor over the links and find out what they are (or were). Copy the link location, then put that into the WayBack Machine to see if the specific image or object was saved. It gets taxing but if you are really into it, you can blow hours and hours digging through stuff. I sure can.

You might be tempted, as was I, to reconstruct some webpages using Paint, Irfanview, etc. Go for it. It can be a pain, particularly if the colors go wrong (not sure why), but the results are often quite interesting. I learned a lot about Jane and her weirdo family by going through her Lane-Bay (e-Bay) website, which ran over many pages. I can't believe Jane ever slept, she did just about everything.

Also, you have to be tricky with the WayBack Machine itself. Don't be afraid to mess with the URL. For instance, I could not get anything out of a URL that read:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010611070810/www.mtv.com/sendme.cgi

However, once I cut off the "sendme.cgi" at the end, the WayBack Machine gave me the MTV front page from 06/11/2001 (you learn to read the capture dates quickly), and I could click through to the Daria site in moments. You might try this and just get the MTV site first, looking for the links to the Daria section along the way. You might even recover more stuff this way.

From about 2001 onward, the MTV Daria site took on the appearance it has now, with assorted changes, so there's not much new but you can see how it evolved over time as stuff was added to it. The Daria sites before 2001 are far more interesting and colorful. My favorite was the 2000 "space" site.

Oh, and don't forget to right-click on a webpage you get and click "View Page Source." You can quickly discover by looking at the actual code for the page what else was supposed to be on there. You can take a completely featureless page and discover all sorts of hidden stuff. I managed to get everything off the missing flipbooks except the pictures, and it turned out I didn't need the pictures at all. The valuable stuff was in the text. I got every single flipbook that way. Do you know that the bulldog Daria almost ran over in "Through a Lens Darkly" actually has a name, and it is NOT J.B.? (I prefer J.B., but it's an AU story anyway so screw it.) I also got a picture of Brittany's car, which I don't recall ever seeing before. It's red, of course. And Quinn's poetry is hysterical; I laughed and laughed. A lot of old rumors about Lawndale High and Mystic Spiral were proven true. And some of the wallpaper is actually pretty cool.

I will start dumping some of this stuff here. You want to get there first, be my guest. This one's for everyone. Dig in.

P.S. Just found out some other URLs that might work. Try these. Some have asterisks, some don't.

• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/www.daria.mtv.com/
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/daria.mtv.com/
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/http://daria.mtv.com/*
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/daria.mtv.com/robots.txt
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/http://www.mtv.com/
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/http://www.mtv.com/*

The last one produced over 64,000 pages of stuff, simply anything that ever appeared on MTV's website. Probably has some Beavis and Butt-head stuff, too.

Enjoy!

Virtual Odds & Ends

So it occurred to me that one thing that could be done with this blog to perk it up would be to bring the Lawndale experience to you. No, the blog will not suddenly fill your life with idiots. You probably have enough problems with that as is.

With the flood of Daria Internet stuff off the WayBack Machine, which is so great that it would take a week to properly sort through, enough unusual items were recovered to make a sort of mini-Virtual Lawndale possible. This would not be that marvelous interactive map from the MTV website. This is something else. The idea came to me when I figured out how to recreate "Radio by Daria" from the old websites, which was really just streaming music (alternate rock) you could play which surfing.

It might not be anything big. It might be sort of fun. Rather than say more, we will let time decide if the experiment works. Party on!


SIDE NOTE: Anyone else delving into the Vortex of Mysteries of Daria stuff through the WayBack Machine? Cool, isn't it? You could build a dozen mega-websites out of it all.

Oh, and I recovered the text contents of all the missing flipbooks, if not the pictures. It turns out the text was the important part after all. Some surprises to come. (They surprised me, anyway.)

DariaWiki's latest addition: Arrivals and Returns (thank you, Richard).

Lawndale Online is still offline. Is it pining for the fjords?

Brittany Scissorhands, and a GAME!

Brittany dons a remarkable outfit in honor of today, the 18th anniversary of the USA release of the fantasy movie, Edward Scissorhands. This is probably one of the more recognizable alter egos, especially if you remember the '90s well.

I've been overwhelmed by in-rushing data after discovering a way to get the WayBack Machine to spew out most of the Daria stuff that was archived on the 'net over the last decade. I stopped on page 32 of 466 pages of stuff. One item is especially good. Here it is.

Play in the Daria MUD

(you will need Flash installed)

It's frickin' hysterical. I've already posted some of the other discoveries on PPMB (here and here). Enjoy.


PPMB

• Falling into College 65: Arrivals and Returns, by Richard Lobinske (COMPLETE!): The wedding looms on the horizon, and all flee in fear of the terror that will be BRIDEZILLA! Ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha-[cough cough cough]
  
• Heartless (Iron Chef: Evil Jane), by NightGoblyn (continued): In the immortal words of the guy on the Titanic who first saw the iceberg: "Uh-oh."
• Hell on Wheels, by Roxanne M (Part 1): “If I get killed I am never going to speak to you again.” Interesting choice of words, Daria.
  
• Turnabout Confusion Part II: All The King's Horses, by Dennis (continued): This section with Upchuck convinces me that this story is one of the most twisted political thrillers in this fandom. You go!

"I've been workin' on the website, all the live-long day...."

Did some updating of the blog, think it's getting closer to being cool again. Still needs more cowbell. Monster trucks and naked models....

Fanfic update for PPMB on the way tonight. [later] And here it is. Some great stories are going on this week.

PPMB

• Dancing with the Devil by the Pale Moonlight, by Lorenzo Sauchelli (Parts 2 and 3): “What are you talking about? What happened to Janey?”
• Daylight: Falling from Grace - The Road to Nowhere, by Disco316 (Parts 8 thru 10): Just as Sandi was about to reach for Quinn, the man swung a sword at her, and it came down on her shoulder, ready to slice her in half.
• Daylight/Legion of Lawndale Heroes: Erebus, by Roentgen (Part 5): "The tenth battle against some lunatic calling himself 'Mindbender' resulted, sadly, in casualties...."
• Falling into College 65: Arrivals and Returns, Richard Lobinske (Part 5): "You got here fast. How many stop lights did you run?" "Stop lights?"
• LATIFA: In the King's Navy, by SoCalledGoodeGuy (Part 1): "I already have your suggestions on which current students should be inducted into Starseed and Starsword, so if you’ll just send the pertinent DNA samples down to Sub-Level 9, we can get started.”
• Rah, Rah, Daria, by CAP (COMPLETE!): “The first one who laughs dies,” Daria snarled.
• Turnabout Confusion Part II: All The King's Horses, by Dennis (continued): "I can only think that there's some administrative inefficiency at Lawndale High that doesn't exist anywhere else."
• Welcome Back, Daria, by Napalm Kracken (Parts 5 thru 8): "Hey, at least the current husband I presented to you unused."

Not As "Lost" As You'd Think

It is supposed to be an axiom of the Internet that (almost) nothing is every truly lost. The vanished supersite Lawndale Commons was mentioned in an earlier post. Let's see what we can dig up about that site and what was on it.

The site, operated by the justly famous Michelle Klein-Häss (who appeared as a camper on "Camp Fear"), was a real supersite. It had its own IRC chat and message boards and everything. Tonight I discovered that it is possible to get a complete list of everything that the WayBack Machine stored about the site (not everything, but a lot anyway). Among other things, I discovered:

• ...something borrowed from the legendary, long-gone website Planet Daria.
• ...the origin of that idea that two seasons of Daria equal one year of "real time" in Lawndale.
• ...a map of Daria's Bomb Shelter.
• ...and Daria and Jane spinning around in 3-D CGI, rendered by John Markus. (LINKS ARE FIXED!) Now, is that totally cool or what?

Anybody remember all this? Wish I'd known about it when I got into the fandom in 2002. Missed it. Dang!

Oh, and you can get all of the fanfics ever stored in Lawndale Commons in the WayBack Machine, too, using the above method. Click through about 46 pages of stored images, web pages, fanfics, etc. No more missing fanfics. Nice.

Anything missing that I wish I could get now? The large image of the Lawndale crest, shown small-size in the logo above. Rats. Anyone remember this? Anyone remember to SAVE this?

Richard Lobinske has again updated the list of 2008 Visual Fanworks for PPMB and SFMB. I, on the other hand, have not updated the fanfic list yet. Sue me.

(Just kidding.)

The End of an Era

Thirty-nine years ago today, the disastrous Altamont free concert took place, and the age of peace and love came to an end. Jake Morgendorffer was there to see it. Terrible tragedy, but he did get his money back. [cough]

Another era (almost) ended on this day nine years ago, when the webmistress of Lawndale Commons, one of the famed fansites of the late 1990s, threw in the towel and decided to turn off the site. (It apparently went down a few years later in 2003, the webmistress having decided not to throw in the towel until much later, thank heavens.) An essay written about this incident notes that flame wars drove several of the webmasters of the time away. Interesting. More on Lawndale Commons later.

One hundred twenty-two years ago, a poet named Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born. We were treated to seeing a library named for him in Lawndale, in the Daria episode "See Jane Run." (There's a little in-joke about that library's name. The DariaWiki link explains it.)

The guy that everyone thinks of when they hear Luhrman speak was born fifty-three years ago today: Steven Wright. I love his stuff. Awesomely funny.

Still working on spiffing up the blog. Needs more cowbell. Need to think. Hmmm. Suggestions for perking it up?

Now 2,064 pages on DariaWiki. Now 1,052 members at the Daria Fan Club. Now 54,200+ hits on this blog.

Lorenzo Sauchelli's brand-new logo for the Daylight shared multiverse is online at PPMB. Thank you!


FF.net

• Call of Quinnthulhu, by Janarky (a.k.a. Dervish): A now-classic tale of horror and ugly pores.

SFMB

• Apocalyptic Daria: Brave New World, by Doggieboy (Part 5): “Where’s Diana?” (FF.net)

More fanfic listings on the way, later today.

It's a Small World After All

Were it not for Walt Disney, born 107 years ago today, we would not have "The Disney World Story" by Invisigoth Gypsy, or the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney from "Road Worrier," or that damn mouse, whatever his name was. Thanks, man. Good job with the cartoon movies, too.

Daria doesn't look all that happy with the presentation. Tough noogies, she needs the work.

I have almost completed a revamp of the Daria Directory, with more and shorter categories for easier finding of things, plus more noises, brighter images, etc. And more buttons, too. Because Lawndale Online is currently off-line, I used an archived version of the webpage for the Daria Chat IRC stuff, but it will be replaced when the website is back up.

Nose in the News

Eleven years ago today, there was a favorable article in a Hartford, Connecticut, newspaper about Daria. Believe it or not, someone liked it eleven years ago.

Okay, yeah, there wasn't much else to write about today.

More shortly.

LATER: Hmmm, it seems that the search engine for the article might time out on you. If you want to read a nice gushing view on Daria, go to this webpage to the search engine, put in "Daria" (no quotes), and click on "Archives." The article is the third or fourth one down the list.

More nooz: Lorenzo Sauchelli has posted a group picture showing the Legion of Lawndale Heroes in their new uniforms. Coolness. Is Sandi really that short, though? Still coolness.

Newest DariaWiki page: Sidney Simon. Never heard of her? Read on.

Will update the fanfic list this weekend. Sort of preoccupied with stuff, but will do more soon.

More Mulling, This Time on Words

Tiffany will continue the circus meme while other things are discussed.

Being a former editor, I love words. One came up as I was revamping the Daria Directory at left: supersite. The given definition seems too narrow, but others seem too broad. We expect a lot from our supersites (Outpost Daria, Glitter Berries, Lawndale Online, etc.). How would you define an Internet "supersite" in the context of our own little fandom?

Another word that could be applied to supersites in our fandom is vortal, or vertical portal. In our fandom we don't make any profit from our websites, since we don't own the core content (I sure don't make any money, but if I did it would ruin my hobby), but webmasters still "target a niche market of consumers" in exchange for a little fame and, dare I say it, popularity. This is also called niche blogging.

Alas, those who get too much into creating these websites risk being seen as having issues, but that does not stop anyone from trying.

Any thoughts on this of your own?

Life Is a Circus!

Today I was in a quandary whether to celebrate the birth of that guy Ringling, who started the Ringling Brothers Circus, or Britney Spears, whose birthday it also is, and it took me .021 seconds to decide that even with an official MTV alter ego of Ms. Barch as Britney, I would still rather show Mrs. Bennett as a clown on stilts. Yo, Ringling!

Still working on spicing up this drab, dreary blog page. More in a day or so.

LATE ADD: It is interesting that a number of cast alter egos were done as circus performers. (Click on "circus" below for a few examples.) This and a few similar memes in the alter ego field make me wonder if the artists for Daria were sometimes given a theme they each had to explore. ("Okay, today everyone has to draw a cast character as an animal!" or "Let's do alter egos of cast members as famous singers and musicians!")

Having a little out-of-season nog, perhaps?

I don't know how these things get started, but today marks the start of National Eggnog Month. Here are some recipes. Do it to it.

Eggnog gets mentioned in the TV series, too. Where did this quote come from? (That's your pop quiz of the day.)

Still weeding out the Daria Directory.

Is anyone reading this blog thinking of starting their own Daria blog or website to add to the craze? Or maybe expanding a website you already have? If so, I have a lot of images and WAV files you can use. Let me know what you are looking for, and I will see what I've got.

Still looking for places to post your stories?

While updating the Daria Directory at left, I discovered a new place to post your fanworks: the newly revised Fanfics.org site. No Daria works have been posted there yet! I haven't checked the procedure, but I figured you hardcore writers might want to know about this ASAP. (The old site is here.)

Perhaps someone can report back about the site. Do it to it.

LATE NOTE: Two other fanfic sites that might be open are the famous (infamous? in a good way, sure) Lawndale Leftovers and Lady Cosmos's Fanfic Library. Interested parties should e-mail the webmasters involved and find out what's up.

Daria Fan Club now up to 1,049 members. Man, that really jumped in the last few months.

I've cleaned up a lot of the links at left. Hope it works for you all. If you are looking for interesting images, definitely click on some of the lesser-known and smaller sites, which have all sorts of stuff on them from the Olden Days. Just found more of it tonight.


FF.net

• John Lane 37: Crysalis, by Richard Lobinske (COMPLETE!): And the great saga continues.

PPMB

• Daylight: Hunter Gatherer, by Legendeld (COMPLETE!): Jennifer Ash felt like she had a target painted on her back as she stood in the open field.
• Falling into College 65: Arrivals and Returns, by Richard Lobinske (Part 4): "Morgendorffer's Mobile Meat Market. We bring the butchery to you."
• Tales of the Ringbearers: New Dead, by Legendeld (COMPLETE!): Four hundred people were all he had managed to find so far.

We Shall Never Surrender

Sir Winston Churchill, famed as a writer, artist, orator, and historian as well as a politician, was born this day 134 years ago. Jake does a fine impersonation of him. Churchill appeared briefly in a dream sequence in one Daria fanfic, but apparently in no other.

I'll reserve the space below for listing stories, if any are added today.

LATE NOTE: After discovering that some of the links at left are "extinct," I am going through and revising the link lists. Per a good suggestion made some time ago by several people, I am breaking down the bigger lists into smaller ones for easier reading.

P.S. Some interesting things have come to light (interesting to me, anyway), as a result of checking old links at left. All AOL Hometown websites were turned off on Halloween of this year, which killed a few fan sites. I guess my old spacecraft site is dead, too. Oh, well.

I discovered a fanfiction archive in which every link is broken... except for those leading to stories by Ronin. A horror, but what can you do. More soon.