April 22nd

One should never underestimate the healing power of music. From lunch on I was feeling kinda crummy. Just general apathy and "Blah"ness. After completing my precal homework that was only contributing to said apathy, I decided to take a brief break before moving onto typing up a body paragraph for English, so I checked some comics and downloaded some songs I've been meaning to get for awhile. It was while listening to "Do you Feel Like I Do?" by Peter Frampton, you know, that song with the talking guitar, when I realized "Hey, I feel good". The human mind and its perception of reality is a strange topic. Nothing significant changed, and yet some quality of hearing the pressure waves created by vibrating strings, amplified electronically, and at time synthesized into a voice, then recorded on magnetic tape and later transferred into electrical information that I saved onto my computer as a series of ones and zeroes that were then retranslated into pressure vibrations via a wire to my headphones (or, if you prefer, via my pants) and into my ears, to be translated by my brain into pleasing sounds. Pretty nuts, huh? Well, I'm not complaining, cos now I feel great, and I'm really getting into my music, just enjoying the sounds of it. So, if you're feeling crummy, get some music you really like, pop it on, and just take some time to listen to it, very closely. If you're not that big into music, try something more up your alley, like art or exercise or whatever. Just lose yourself in something you find beautiful, and you'll feel better, I gar-aun-tee

-Crazy Texan Jeff

April 22nd

Well, just thought I'd let you guys know that I'm still alive and actually post something. Unfortunately the hoped lull in the work has not come and it looks like it's gonna be solid school work for the next couple of weeks, but the end is in sight. I'm currently taking a break from said work, at this point of the precal variety, but I have a lovely research paper to write for English. All together it makes me want to cry like an unwanted stepchild on his birthday. The above image is my first ever serious self portrait (I'm not including any elementary school attempts) which I did as one of my "before" pictures for "Learning to Draw on the Right Side of the Brain" which so far I have found very intersting and helpful. I don't have much time to devote to reading it and following its lessons, but what I can use for it I have found useful. I just hope it can help me out to improve my skills, something I'm constantly striving for. I especially want to improve my realistic drawing, like the above portrait, because at the moment just about the only things that I can draw from imagination are cartoons and anime-style drawings, which I love, but it would be nice to be able to render realistic drawings every once in a while. Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what I look like than the comic version of me. I'd do one of Matt if he was willing to sit still for an hour or two, and was, you know, in the same state ; ) Well, back to the drudgery, hopefully I'll have some comics for you by Wednesday

-Jeff

April 14th

A little addendum to the update from earlier. I added a new picture to the artwork page, that can be found here. Hopefully that'll tide you over until I can get the comics scanned in (it's too late right now). So, remember, vote vote vote (on turbocool) and spread the word ("wrap")

-Jeff

April 14th

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of newspostage, when I was able to get the comics posted it was in a pinch with no time for news writing craziness. Anyway, sorry for the lateness of Friday's comic, it'll be up shortly, to be completely honest I've just been revelling in a play free weekend where I actually participate in social activities. I'm sorry the comic had to suffer from that. I haven't been totally idle however, as i have a piece that I'm gonna try and add to the artwork page, so check that action out. It's the first piece I've colored with my brand new prismacolor colored pencils, and I must say, they are fine implements of pigment application. They blend with Prismacolor markers remarkably well, and look great on their own as well. If you're into the whole art scene and like to color, I reccomend em, but wait until they're on sale if you're gonna get a pack of them, that's what I did. They're cheaper than the markers, but still fairly expensive. On a totally different note, I've coined a new word. Well, it's spelled exactly the same as a previous word, but it's a totally new meaning. I came up with this word whilst checking out the fine funky musical offerings of MC Chris, purveyor of nerdy white-boy rap. The new word is to refer to that peculiar genre of music, and the word is "Wrap" or "White-boy RAP". You just wait, in a year everyone will be using it ; ) probably not, but hey, it's worth a shot. Before you scoff, I'm not a fan of rap in general, but MC chris is a genius. His music is humorous, and yet still enjoyable to listen to in its own right. I particularly reccomend "Fett's Vette". You've probably seen him mentioned on Penny Arcade if you're into that. For a final note, you may have noticed that crazy new link up at the top of the newsbox. That allows you, the reader, to vote for The Underground on the Keenspace Top 99 list. This is simply a link page that ranks pages, and displays the top 99 of them, as the name would imply. If everyone who reads votes, we could easily move up to the top half at least! Some of the top ten sites only get something like 30 votes a day, so please show your support and vote away. Also, vote every time you visit if you feel so inclined, as it takes votes on a daily basis. Tell your friends to vote! Participate in the great democratic institution. Or something like that. The very astute readers will ask "but didn't you already have a Top99 link?" The answer is that yes I did, but that link is for Turbocool, the fabulous group of comics I belong to, with the dropdown that is found to the right of the comic. Check out some of the other comics! So, vote for Turbocool, and vote for the Underground, and soon we will rule the world! Gwuhahahahaha!

-Jeff, the nut bar

"My Backpack's got jets
I'm Boba the Fett
I bounty hunt for Jaba Hutt
To finance my vette"

April 9th

Ok folks, sorry for the late comic and no update to tell you as much. I went to mention the comic wouldn't be up until today, and I couldn't upload an update because the FTP wasn't working. It's up now, and the comic is as well. Since I made you guys wait extra long, I tried to make it a little special by adding some color action. Tell me about what you think in the forum! Am I pimping the forums a lot lately? Hells yes, go post now! Anyway, dinner time, later

-Jeff

April 8th Again

Sorry folks, I was gonna do the strip this afternoon, then I had to work on precal, and by the time I got to it it was 10 or 10:30, so now the strip is inked, needing to be scanned and finished on the computer, but once that happens, it'll be up tomorrow. I'm about to pass out cos I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night. Sorry. Look at it this way, two days in a row of comic action! As long as Wednesday gets done on schedule. Thanks for stickin with us

-Jeff

April 8th

Well, no UIL advance-age on Friday, which has it's ups and downs. On the upside it means no more rehearsals and such eating up time after school, but on the downside it means we don't get to compete any more, and we didn't advance any further than we did last year, which I kind of wanted to. Ah well, hopefully I'll have more time for comic-drawing and what have you. At any rate, today's comic isn't gonna be up until this afternoon/tonight because I have it drawn, but need to scan it and do the computer business, and didn't get the strip done until my parents were already asleep making the scanner unaccessible (right next to their room). Once I get a job, one of the first things I'm gonna save up to buy is a scanner of my own, that would make matters a lot easier. Anyhow, I'll try to update again tonight when I add the strip. Sorry folks,

-Jeff

April 5th

What's with the strange desert ninja on the big wierd animal? Well, he's the result of a random fantasy drawing in the car on my way to Dallas last month. Why him and no Arthur, Spence and Hiroko? Well, I've been super busy as usual, I haven't even talked to Matt since Tuesday, and I had to read a good half of a book today for history (sure it was assigned 12 weeks (2 grading periods) ago, but I waited until today, meh). Then, tonight, after the onsite rehearsal for Area level Play competition, I'm going to "Guys' Night" where all of the male cast and crew sleep over somewhere the night before the show. A bonding type thing. Anyhow, I'll try to draw some rich, delicious comicage this weekend. In the meanwhile, you should first visit our forums, and then bust on over to Terminal City, which is a site run by my friend Joe, and has a very active forum that discusses all manner of topics. Current board frequenters seem to include 2 or 3 die-hard conservatives, Joe, who is very very liberal, and to an extent me, mostly liberal. The fact that I just gave you a run down on conservative/liberal view points should give you an idea of what to expect, a lot of discussion about social and political type stuff, but also silliness can be had. Also, besides the forums, Joe puts up his thoughts on various matters almost daily, and has posted some of his poetry. Check it out. This weekend it's gonna find a place on the permanent links page, cos Joe's just an interesting guy. Interesting enough to make a site of mostly personal opinion worth visiting, which can be rare.

-Jeff

April 4th

Alrighty, well, I'm considerably more awake for this post than the last one, and I just thought that I'd let you know what's going on. Sorry there hasn't been any postage here for this week, but I've remained quite busy. Anyhow, here's the scoop on last week. Since both Matt and I were incredibly busy, incredibly tired, and at times not in the best of moods, we're just going to take a hint from FDR and declare it a holiday from the Underground. Now that the banks are once again financially sound....I mean, the comics are once again reliably appearing (well, sort of, as you may notice yesterday's comic was put up last night around 10 eastern) the holiday is over. I apologize to those of you who faithfully checked in on us, we were just too swamped. Please Continue your support, and keep coming back! Post in the Forums!

-Jeff

P.S. I've archived March's News, which can now be found on the archive page.

Brain...hurts...

short post tonight. I put up two comics for last week, expect last friday's soon, and I"m sorry not to make good on the promise of being on schedule by today (Wednesday) but I've been even more busy than I expected. The next level of our theatre competition is on thursday, and all wednesday afternoon I have to help out at the on-site rehearsals of the other schools (we're hosting this level of competition this year). So, check out the two comics, and thanks for hangin on. This post has been brought to you by the concepts sleep deprivation, apathy, and lethargy.

-Jeff