Food tates better when it's cooked

Marche and Montblanc walked slowly and quietly along the path. Neither of them had spoken a word to each other since the incident a few days ago and those weren't the friendliest of words. Their last encounter hadn't gone well. They were ambushed coming around the pass near Cloudtop Mountain and had all their supplies stolen.
"Oh! Flatberries!" exclaimed Montblanc as they past a bush covered with brightly colored fruit. "Finally, some good food for a change."
Marche abruptly stopped in his tracks.
"For a change?" he asked. "What does that mean?"
"It means I am getting sick of the food we have been eating recently, kupo." Montblanc replied.
"Food? Recently? Listen you mutant, we haven't eaten food in days. Nothing at all!"
"What do you mean, kupo? There's lots of food."
Marche could feel his temperature rising. His vision blured.
"Lots of food?" growled Marche. His voice sounding as if he was the host for a thousand demons. "Food from where? Talk. Now. If you ever want to see tomorrow you had better spill your guts."
Turning his head to the side like a puppy hearing a sound for the first time, Montblanc gave Marche a puzzled look.
"From right here, kupo!" he said, reaching into his pack.
Pulling out loaf after loaf of rolls and bread, Montblanc began to dance and sing.
"Tweedy dee! Berries and bread! Tweedy dee! Berries and bread!"
The air around Marche became electric. The clouds grew black and wind started to whip around the two of them.
"All of our food was stolen!" Marche yelled. "Six bandits jumped us and stole everything we own! How could you have food? Much less a pack still?"
Montblanc quickly averted his eyes away from Marche's ever worsening glare.
"Well... um... you see... I saw the bandits a few seconds before they attacked you... um.. us. I mean, us. Yeah, attacked us." replied Montblanc.
"Attacked me? What the hell? What do you mean? Where were you?"
"Hiding. Yeah.. um... I hid."
The wind was blowing very hard now and the clouds had becomes as dark as coal. The heat coming off of Marche was hot enough to make the grass around them turn brown. Things were quickly becoming dangerous.
"They tied me to a tree! I was only able to escape because the damn hydrabear missed mauling me and slashed the rope instead! Where were you that whole time?"
"Um.. I was sitting in that near by cave. Watching you and eating the pasteries."
"For two days?"
"Heehhehe." laughed Montblanc.
Suddenly everything around them burst into flame. Even the air around them seemed to be on fire. Marche's body rose high into the sky above as flames swirled around him.
"YOU FUCKING RAT FUCK!" bellowed the now burning form of Marche. "If it's the last thing I ever do, I will kill you! FOREVER!!!"
Montblanc looked at the burning form of Marche with the same puppy dog look as before.
"Hey. You want a sweetbun?" he asked.
"Yeah, sure. Thanks."

Soup from a stone?

Marche and Montblanc were tired from their long journey.
"Kupo, my feet hurt. Can we rest a bit?" asked Montblanc.
"Sure." replied Marche. "I could use a drink as well."
Sitting down on a near by rock, Marche reached over and grabbed the canteen out of Montblancs pack. He unscrewed the cap and raised it to his mouth.
Nothing happened.
"Um." mumbled Marche.
He glanced over at Montblanc who was playing in the dirt with a stick.
"UMM!" he said, in a tone much louder than before.
Montblanc stopped playing with the stick and slowly raised his glance up to meet Marche's eyes.
"Oh, yeah." replied Montblanc. "There's no more water. I poured it out after you wouldn't give me that last piece of gum back there on Strata Hill."
"You did what?" Marche yelled back. "That was over ten miles ago and we still have more then ten more to go!"
Marche hurled the canteen at Montblanc, grazing his puffy face.
"You ass! It's over one hundred degrees out here!"
"You should have given me the gum, kupo." Montblanc replied.
Quickly Marche reached into his pack and grabbed the sharpest thing he could find. It was a bent fork but it would still do the trick...

A pack of matches would do the trick

Marche sat under a tree near the main square in Ivalice quietly reading a pamphlet he had picked up.
"How to cast a better Firaga." Marche said aloud, reading the pamphlet title. "This ought to be worth a read."
A few minutes later, Montblance strolled up.
"Kupo! What are you reading?"
"Um... nothing." Marche mumbled quickly hiding the pamphlet behind his back.
"Kupo! I just saw you reading something and now you hid it from me. What the hell?" yelled Montblanc quickly darting to the side of Marche to see what he was holding.
"Back off you dirty cotton ball! Get away from me!" Marched shouted, pushing Montblanc away.
Montblanc rolled two or three feet before coming to a dusty stop.
"KUPO!"
"Haha!" laughed Marche in the cruelest laugh he could muster. "Serves you right."

Better pack your wellies

The sky darkened as the clouds rolled in. Small drops of rain began to hit the ground. Marche and Montblanc quietly sat under an awning, watching the people and creatures walk by.
"Keep your damn foot on your side." Marche said, pushing Montblanc aside.
"KUPO!"
"Whatever."
"Now my feet are getting wet, kupo!" exclaimed Montblanc, pushing Marche.
Tumbling into the street, Marche comes to a stop in the middle of a large puddle of water.
"I am going to kick your furry ass so freakin hard!" yelled Marche.
"KUPO! Bring it!"

Surprise and sunscreen

Times were getting odd for Marche. One day, after battling some bullies in a snowball fight, he and his new friends were wisked away to a strange but strangely familiar town. A town filled with all sorts of wonderous creatures. He lost all of his companions from his other world, and now his only friend is this bizarre cotton ball of a nuisance called Montblanc.
"I mean, really." He thought to himself. "Who names their child Montblanc?"
Suddenly, a blinding flash of light broke the silence throwing Marche and Montblanc to the ground. Gathering themselves together and brushing off the dirt, they noticed a smallish but much too big for a normal rabbit standing in front of them.
"Oh man... first this puffy rat, now a three foot rabbit in a damn wizard hat?" mumbled Marche under his breath. "Crap."
"Kupo!"
"Yes. Kupo."
"Kupo?"
"Dude, you gotta stop that! What the hell does kupo mean anyway?" Marche exclamed, glaring at Montblanc.
"And for the last damn time. Stop your damn bouncing!" Yelled Marche as he pushed Montblanc into the dirt.

Ivalice in the spring

Marche quietly read his book while Montblanc skipped and frolicked in the distance.
"Would you shut the hell up and stop your damn dancing? I am trying to read here!"
Startled, Montblanc suddenly stopped and stood there giving Marche his best 'piss off' gaze. After a few minutes of trying to burn a hole into Marche's head with his eyes, Montblanc picked up a rock and hurled it at Marche.
"Ouch! What the hell? You freak that hurt!" yelled Marche, rubbing his back.

Storytime + Challenge = Fun For ALL!

Let me start by saying that I write little stories about as well as I draw cityscapes with a marker. (refer to image below) :)
But, that doesn't stop me from doing either! After reading one of my stories, Jerad said, "Hey, you should post this story at the PencilHaus and we can all do an illustration based on it!" So... here we go.

Backstory -
There is this game I play on my GameBoy Advance called Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It's about three friends who find this magic book and get transported to this parallel universe. In the game, Marche and Montblanc are good friends who fight bad guys together. Marche's real life friends get mixed up in the alternate universe and don't want to leave, while he is desperately searching for a way to get back home. Adventures ensue...
In my version, Marche and Montblanc hate each other and constantly fight. Why they stick together, no one knows. They just do. Adventures ensue...

I will post the first few stories (the backlog). Then, periodically, I will post a new one. My challenge to you is to pick one (or all) and do an illustration for it. So, without further adeiu, he we go!

The Results of Eating Pancakes for Dinner

"Enamored Reward"

I might as wll admit it. I am ten years old. So, I should draw like a ten year old.

Monday Monday Monday

"One is pretty, one is ugly; One is purple, one is orange"


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"The Littlest Priest"


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"Even Robots have to Pay Taxes"


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"Wonderful Candy Kids"

Both ends of the Spectrum

"The Place where Peeps are Harvested"


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"A Boy, his Dog, and a Strange Bird that Neither Knew"

I can't tell if he's dancing or if he has gone insane. Maybe something is getting ready to fall on him. Either way, it's about time there was a robot on this page.

... I've been here for ten years

"I have a big mustache. I look like Don Smith"


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"Love on a molecular level"


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"No, you're not color-blind... I only have one marker"

Tomatoe Joe

"He's great on a salad and pain in the bars"

Science Geeks

You know how it goes... Jerad draws one. I just can't sit by idle and just do nothing!

Morbid Tom

Even in death, Morbid Tom had an impeccable fasion sense.

Henry at the park

Henry looked on at the people with their dogs playing frisbee. He wasn't so much worried about the dogs as he was about a stray plastic disk knocking him in the head while he wasn't looking. Things like that always seemed to happen to him. Like this one time, at the bus stop, he got splashed by three cars while he was tying his shoe.

Garret

Sure they won the soccer game, but it didn't make Garett feel any better. After all, those punks deserved more than just a beating on the field. They deserved so much more.

Cereal never liked being called names.

"One day, they'll get theirs." he thought to himself.

Wednesday's Encouragement

"TRUTH!"



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"Temptress of the Col-Erase"

Tuesday's Disappointments

"The love child of William Dafoe and Skeletor"

Monday's Temptations

"I'm a blacksmith, but I wanted to be podiatrist"



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"You make all the little robot gears in my little robot heart spin fast"



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"PUDDING!"

Ode to Enrico

"That guy... from Haiku 5-7-5"

computers and me (us) - part 2

So.
Everyone knows that at the first sign of confrontation, I throw up. I also have a magnificent ability to put things off until they become much much MUCH more of a problem than ever thought possible. When was my car last inspected? One year and four months ago. More on this later...
Last night, I was on the phone with the tech support guys for ... oh ... an hour. They couldn't help me. We all know this because we all read about it two panels ago. This morning I AIM'ed a good friend of mine, William, who I thought could help me. William is awesome. He knows lots of stuff. If their was one guy who could help me it would be him, and he did. He told me exactly what I wanted to hear.
"Oh yeah. This happened to me about a year ago. It fixed itself." he typed.
"You mean, you waited a day or so and it just started working?" I replied with hopeful hope.
"Yeah, I think. It was over a year ago... but I'm pretty sure it worked itself out."
"ROCK ON!" I banged out on the keyboard.
And you know what? He was right. Tonight, I fire up my computer. Launch my email and BAM! A test message I had sent myself from the night before.
"That's a good sign." I say outloud to myself. "I should check the site."
So, I launch a browser. BAM! Up comes to website.
"WOO HOO!!!" I say much louder.
So, what's the moral of this story? If you wait around and don't do much somethings fix themselves! YEAH!

innocence

Jeremy always got a bit nervous when his scene came up in the school play.
"Character? What costume?"

computers and me (us)

You know...
You think you know something. Something more than the average person does about something. Let's say... oh, I don't know... computers. Now we all know that most of us probably know more about computers than our grandmother does, right? Sure we do. Well, maybe not those weird ones at the senior center who have somehow become one with the microchip and can whip up a Flash animation, do their taxes, find the capital of (come on... pick a hard one) Oregon (what? is that the best you can do? damn....), and email all of their other web friends in the blink of an eye. I'm not talking about those grandma's. I'm talking about the ones who think the TV remote will burn a hole in your head if you point and click it in the wrong direction.
What was I talking about?
...
Oh yeah. I bought a website. A brand new place to store all of my info. Except, I can't see my new website! Oh sure, Jerad can... and even Don can! And he's one of "those" types! Hell, I can even see it on my work computer. But not my home computer! NO! "Server Not Found." WhatTheFarm? And, I totally stumped the Road Runner guys too. They can see it down there. Just not me.
"Hrm... seems like you got a DNS cache." the tech guy says.
"Oh. um... ok." I reply. "What do I do to fix that?"
"Well, reset your DHCP setup."
"Oh cool. I can do that." I think to myself.
See? I do know some stuff about computers. So, I reset it. I even clear my browser cache and restart it just to be sure. Nothing. "Server not found."
"Damn." we both say.
So, I sense the tech guy can't help me and I don't want to be on the phone anymore. So I give him an out.
"I know a Mac guy who knows tons about this. I can ask him." I say.
"Yeah.. um... we've done everything and I can see the site on my end. Sounds like a DNS issue... um..." he replies.
"Cool. So, thanks for trying." I say, throwing him a bone.
"Sure..." he replies a bit sadly.
I kinda felt bad for him. Because he really sounded like he knew what he was doing. I think my powerbook just doesn't want me doing anything tonight. I bet, if I turn it all off and check tomorrow night it'll all be better. What do ya say? Let's all think positive thoughts...
Now, I am going to go "downstairs" and work on that new song I started yesterday night.

Haiku of the Ages

"Youthful in body
My mane is magnificent
I am beautiful"



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"Arrogant young punk
I was once like you are now
You will get yours soon"

People can be cruel...

"You're ugly."



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"I'm just a sloth. I don't have all the answers."



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Happy 4th.
:)

Is it me?

"Sometimes people point and laugh at me... I don't know why, I don't tell good jokes"