Mojo's Media

So lately Mojo has been reading and enjoying rage comics. They tend to be somewhat polarizing; some people like them, and some just can't STAND them. I was inspired for a couple of reasons: first, while you can draw your own, there is a growing library of faces and props that make the whole process fairly quick and painless. These things are so POORLY drawn--kinda on purpose--that they are a main source of irritation for the people who do not like such comics.

On the other hand, getting real emotion out of stick figures is quite an accomplishment, and the faces that have survived the process have really evolved to the point where you don't really have to say anything, you just put the face in the panel and everyone knows what you mean.

So one of Mojo's historically favorite birds has been the glamorous and colorful wood duck. I can't say why, except as an impressionable wee lass I was taken in by the oily iridescence of the males, and never quite got over it. Plus they nest in holes in the trees, way high up, and of COURSE baby ducks are the CUTEST THINGS IMAGINABLE, and these baby ducks climb their way out the opening of their nest and just JUMP.

It's pretty common in nature shows to show these poor tiny things leap into the abyss. They are usually all right, we are told: they are just these tiny balls of fluff, see, and they float like fluff down to the ground. Still, I don't much care for it, but nobody consulted me.

Yes, even a pathetic old fuddy-duddy like Mojo can express herself the way the kids on the internet do, thereby pretending she is hip when in reality she's a couple of years behind the pack. But thanks to Dan Awesome's RageMaker, even someone as clueless as Mojo can make a rage comic! Before long I expect my Favorite Mother to join the trend!

So once again a bored Mojo attempts to create meaning for her life by taking pictures of penguins and dressing them up in other bird's plumage. For the record, we don't ask why, anymore. We just smile and nod, grateful that she has decided to focus her genius on something relatively harmless, like this, instead of idly whipping up the passions of an unthinking mob for her amusement, or some other equally destructive hobby.

Even if you don't know your birds--Mojo does not understand why people don't know or care about birds, but like I said, just keep smiling and nodding--even the extreme dullards among you should get this one (well, really, ALL of them thus far. I mean, it's not like I'm quizzing you on sparrows or warblers or anything like that). Hint: it's a member of the thrush family. Hint: it has almost NOTHING AT ALL to do with its European namesake, except they both have red breasteses and they're both birds. Hint: its Latin name will make the immature among you giggle like an idiot. Hint: it makes a silly cameo in one of Mojo's favoritest movies of all time--silly because this is an AMERICAN bird and not its European namesake.

Give up? Boy, are you dense and/or completely oblivious to your surroundings and/or not American, you commie bastard you.

We have long established that poor Mojo, in addition to her many other social faults, is also a bird nerd of lllloooooonnnnnng standing. One needs only to search the site for the word "birds" and you will instantly be transported into a magical realm of, umm, birds. Even Mojo's occasional brushes with greatness tend to dwell not so much on said greatness's many contributions to society, but on freakin' BIRDS.

Mojo also subscribes to Boing Boing's Twitter feed. Boing Boing, of course, is a directory of wonderful things, and whenever Mojo wants to look pathetically hip or cool she might share a link she finds on Boing Boing. And if she is feeling particularly generous, she will give Boing Boing full credit instead of taking the link from the original source and pretending like she is cool enough to read said original source on a regular basis. Because we all know by now, in addition to her bird nerdliness, Mojo is in reality an old clueless fuddy-duddy who relies greatly on Google and a hipper Younger Sister to Explain Things to Her. (And finds, as she gets older and even more of a stick-in-the-mud, that many of these things, once explained to her, she wishes she never once ever heard about. But I digress.)

So perhaps the more imaginative among you can guess at Mojo's glee when she saw the BB headline in her Twitter feed: "Penguins: Now with more color". (A great many people who are NOT bird nerds nonetheless like penguins, probably because they march around like serious little people in tuxedos, which makes non-bird people giggle and say stupid things like "Oh, look! They think they're people!") I was a hair disappointed to learn that the added color to the penguins was not some exotically-plumaged new variety, but merely the result of thermal imaging. Which is important and interesting in its own light, but not what I expected when I clicked on the link. (Some of this convoluted thought process was no doubt because I was trapped with the dog in a hotel room at the time, and since I don't really watch cable all that much I was bored out of my skull. But again, I digress.)

Okay, okay, all right already! Enough people have asked--thanks to Mojo's AWESOME POWERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY--so Mojo feels obligated to offer her wee little red eft friend up for ritual sacrifice. Meaning, she's gonna exploit the HELL out of the wee innocent beastie. Meaning, she's throwing it up on a t-shirt for you people to buy, so you'll leave me alone.

You're welcome.