Nate Beaty's Brainfag Journal

brainfag is retired

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:33:38 PST

(you can read all this on the new homepage, but if you're like me, you rely on RSS for updates, so here it is again!)

almost 8 years to the day, i ended my 5-year luddite hiatus from technology after dropping out of virginia tech, bought a generic 600mhz pc and registered brainfag.com.

i was then a landscaper living in a solar/hydro-powered, woodstove-heated, for-reals greenhouse on the idyllic, cold & clean orcas island hidden in the puget sound. as i retire brainfag, i’m a corporate webnerd living in an overpriced 1-bedroom apartment just outside hollywood in hot, stinky, foul-breathed los angeles.

why retire bf? i have grown tired of explaining my most fav word ever, brainfag. yes, that’s a lame eulogy. maybe this is better:

Brainfag.com lived a long and prosperous 8 years, which is like 250 years old in web-years. When she began telling the same old jokes three or four times, crapping her pants, and craving wheatabix, we decided to put her down.

i have also retired the comic title, "brainfag," but i will of course continue to draw.

you can explore my digital entrails of the last decade by entering the archives.

MoCCA bound

Thu, 5 Jun 2008 17:57:12 PST

I realized I'm on the list of exhibitors with a link here.. and I haven't really mentioned that I'm going to be at MoCCA with my own (what looks to be bare) half table this year. Work has been so crazy busy that I haven't really been able to whip up much in the way of merch to display on the table -- but when I think about it, this is one point in my life where I don't really worry about MONEY. So, I'll just bring my new book, what I could finish up of my Korea comic as a preview teaser mini, and just have fun!

See you there, fellow comic dorks.

I love old Star Trek

Thu, 29 May 2008 02:58:12 PST

"All station personnel are dead." - Spock
"What caused it?" - Captain Kirk
"Unkown captain. It's like nothing we've dealt with before!" - Spock

Joost has a ton of the old '60s episodes you can watch for free (with some mildly offensive Cadillac ads atm), and I'm very much enjoying the juicy colors of late '60s film; the hilariously ridiculous costumes (check out the spacesuits on the top image!); the saucy female uniforms (who needs to cover them polyester underpants?);

the greasy, pointy hairdos; the plethora of chirping, whining plastic devices that can scan and interpret just about anything; the high-cut shirts and pants and saucy lil' boots; the multiuseful electrohypodermic needles that go "woosh";

ye olde spock two-finger shoulder stun with Kirk's ubiquitous "you've got to teach me that"; the undeniably sexy Uhuru; Kirk's flat delivery yet somehow engaging presence;

angry Bones and his perpetual battles with Mr. Logic; Sulu and Scotty and their goofy breakdowns -- it just doesn't get any better, does it?

My Highschool Paper Ruled

Mon, 19 May 2008 05:11:21 PST

Wow. I have no recollection of this, but.. wow. Apparently we were the glue-on local flavor for visiting christian rock bands. I assume the band was christian. I do know Tim Olsen went on to do sound for travelling christian bands -- and I went on to Virginia Tech to wear a self-painted shirt that said "Fuck Christianity." Oh how hilarious we are at age 18. Full of verve and venom.

As if getting in front of the entire school in MC Hammer pants and doing aerial epileptic yoga feats for the talent show wasn't enough embarrassment, here I jumped onstage as a prelude to "being preached to by a bunch of long haired scruffs" whose songs "were drownd [sic] out either by the loud speakers, or by their screeching voices."

Let the embarrassment continue! What's next Overdrive??

BFF: Brainfag Forever

Sat, 3 May 2008 23:06:19 PST

Yes, yes, yes! This is the really real, final, for reals goodbye to the moniker BRAINFAG.

A 224 page collection of 8 years of my comic self-tutelage, with the entirety of issues 5, 6, 8, 9 and the very best of all other issues, including Brainfag 1, BFX, and Mixtape. Also included is anecdotal comics explaining each issue, as well as the first 25 years of my human existence shoved into FIVE PAGES -- from crash birth-landing on the hospital floor (damn butterfingers) to my whiskey, coffee, and pot-addled puffy-jacketed tenure as HOT TUB COP at Doe Bay Resort -- where I first set pen to crappy paper and birthed BRAINFAG.

I've long been threatening to retire brainfag.com .. and I'm again reconsidering, moving everything to (the now boring) natebeaty.com.

When I get 2 minutes of free time I'll reconsider. But for now, waiting for the sad demise, please go throw eight clams at the kind folks who offered to put the brainfag comic collection onto dead trees for your enjoyment.

Only $8 from Microcosm Publishing! Support your favorite nomadic maverick's comics with a mere eight clams today!

ASCII Art Master Paul Smith

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:09:19 PST

I remember seeing Paul Smith's typewriter art pieces up on the wall at the old folks' home where my great grandmother resided in Roseburg, OR. They were poorly framed and stained, and the placed reeked of urine and entropy. This aged yellow YouTube clip from 1976 captures that pretty well:

ROBONATE

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:22:07 PST

What I've turned into in the last 7 years as a coding machine.

The Ultimate Online Art Thievery

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:29:47 PST

I've had quite a bit of bad luck with people using my art without even contacting me, some even using it to advertise their business in the local weekly (without any credit of course). When asked about this, they've either claimed ignorance and said "oh, I didn't know where we got that art! I totally would have asked you" or just don't respond. The best I've got out of one of these confrontations is $50 of free coffee.

For some reason my hackles always rise when I hear about people "heavily borrowing" other people's ideas, whether it's a blatant ripoff of a website or an obvious copy of a short video. (One recent example being Human Giant's Piñata skit being eerily reminiscent of the mun2 Piñata's Revenge. Or, while we're on the subject of MTV ganking my employer's work, their usage of a mun2 Daddy Yankee photo on their Blogamole raised a ruckus in the office, especially considering it's not credited. I have a feeling it won't be up for long.)

ANYWAY, I just heard of some nefarious thieves who scraped the contents of [Darren Di Lieto's] website and published it [in] a 350-page book being sold online for $100. OUCH.

I mean, borrowing ideas, or printing a few pieces of art is one thing -- but publishing a whole coffee table book without one scrap of permission from the artists and selling it for $100 is a new low. There's a common sentiment I gather from people along the lines of "everything is online and therefore free to use, right?? I can see it right there, and drag it over to Microsoft Word and print it out, what's wrong with that?"

Well, nothing, unless you plan on making money on it. But even if you don't, it's always generous to contact the artist and ask them if it's ok, in the very least.

Sadly, there's little retaliation one can do on the typical popcorn (and I'm not talking Theater Popcorn) budget most visual artists exist on. About the only thing you can do is a massive smear campaign to spread the word about the thieving, which is what I hope to help with here. Good luck fellas.

Pretty Monsters!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:21:10 PST

Soon Bok just started making amazing skin care from scratch at home. She's come up with some innovative products and a tantalizing '50s horror-esque identity to boot. I helped her out with the logo, but that's about it -- it's all her genius.

She opened up shop at Pretty Monsters on Etsy. Who can resist Zombie Kisses or Dead Swamp Soak or Medusa Mint Balm??

Also, as a sidenote: her products work MAGIC -- seriously. I had a weird dry-skin aberration on my thumb which had been getting worse for weeks -- it disappeared in a day with the use of one of her skin balms.

TAX TIME!!

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:44:48 PST

Joost is playing old GI Joe cartoons. I haven't seen it since I was .. 11? It's much goofier than I remember. Still as dumb, tho.

I'm gonna kick the mustard out of that crazy hot dog. - Duke

I still haven't filed my taxes. Fuck.

The brainfag anthology book, BFF: Brainfag Forever, is at the printer. I'm waiting for a proof any day, and hoping to have it in the flesh by Stumptown.