Monthly Archives: February 2016

Crystal Rainbow Mandala

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I know the title sounds like what a 12-year-old girl wants to be called when she decides that her given name is too prosaic, but it’s an accurate description.

Another weekend breezes by. I’m finally feeling slightly better, but I didn’t get anything meaningful accomplished. I did make this Valentine for The Man. I can’t tell how he felt about it. We spent most of Valentine’s Day cleaning, because that was the most loving thing we could really do for our family at this particular moment in time.

Here’s hoping that this coming week will be super productive, because last week was unbearable. At least the script for tomorrow’s comic is written already, thanks to the Rabbit, who is adorable. And available, if you’re a skinny nerd-boy who lives in the Bay Area. Contact Dragon, via this blog, for further details.

Perfectly Wonderful

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I’m a tasteful nude.

This week has been pretty rough. Chronic pain is kicking my backside and I’m half the dragon I used to be. If that. It seemed like it would be fun to just color tonight but this took me 3 hours and the only part I like is the socks.

So, you know, art is about constantly exposing yourself. At least what I do is. Every night I sit here and ask myself, “Are you really going to share this with the world?” Yes. Yes, I am. That’s why I wear socks: so as not to get cold feet.

Here is the thing I drew tonight. People need to know that they’re OK the way they are. Exactly who they are. Dragons too. Even when they don’t feel OK.

Dr. Morimoto, for the Future of Mankind

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You can ride a quantum sledge through space-time because space time is low friction. 

Even from a bipartisan standpoint, I think most people would agree that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was nothing but an embarrassment for America, a colossal waste of money, and wholly counterproductive to the effort of running the country. Yeah, he shouldn’t have cheated on his wife with an intern, but the fact that he did so actually had zero bearing on his ability to do the job for which he was elected. Personally, I feel more comfortable knowing the commander-in-chief has adequate release. Uptight, unsatisfied men tend to make angry decisions.

More importantly, I think the ripples from the impeachment and the Starr report were far-reaching. Would Al Gore have won the election if Clinton hadn’t lost so much face? Would Gore have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? Would Trump be running for election in 2016? It really seems to me that a lot of world issues were negatively affected by Monica Lewinsky’s decision to confide in Linda Tripp.

For Monica personally, it would have been better to stay silent as well. Some people accuse her of wanting the attention, but based on the course of her life and things she’s said recently, I bet she wishes she hadn’t said anything either. She could barely leave her house for a decade, and she was still the butt of 1000 jokes even after it all blew over. In 1999, I visited Jordan by walking across the border from Israel, and while waiting for border control to deal with my visa while simultaneously being subject to the type of low-level sexual assault that large-breasted young women experience frequently when certain dudes figure they can get away with it, I also failed to enjoy a tiresome litany of broken English jokes about the woman who shares my first name. Border guards half a world away were making jokes about her a year after the impeachment trial. That kind of infamy doesn’t lend itself to a successful adulthood.

It’s especially sad, because even though she made a string of bad decisions, she really liked the guy. I can’t fault her. The universe knows I made some terrible choices about men. I’m just lucky mine weren’t so high profile.

So, after my last Dr. Morimoto comic I worked out that there are rules to her time traveling. She can only stay for the space of 4 panels, and she can only visit the person for whom her message is intended, and maybe she can only travel within the span of her lifetime, say, 41 years. So, if I could only tell 1 person 1 thing in the past, for the sake of making the world a better place, I think this would be a good one.

Mildly Unsettling Macros

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There will be no trigger warnings. This post encapsulates my mood right now with a fair degree of accuracy.

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Here’s a momento mori for you. We all die. Tomatoes sooner than humans, usually.

Feeling positively nasty today, a fine combination of chronic pain, sleep deprivation caused by chronic pain, and that weird, crusty, dirtiness of a day-old tattoo that begs to be washed but at the same time prevents you from taking a good shower or hot tub soak, because you spent a lot of money on that tattoo and you need to baby it if you want to keep it.

So, even though I had a comic idea, there’s no way I can use the tablet tonight. I can barely type. So, here are some macros. The first one is a dead leaf from last year’s tomato plant. Not my plant even; I’ve never successfully grown a tomato bigger than a marble out here.

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Yech. Blech. Meh.

This is an aphid infestation on a bean plant. They are fava beans, to be specific, but I hesitate to mention that fact, because the second you say “fava beans,” people’s brains fall out of their ears and all they can do it babble on about a nice chianti. This picture isn’t even that great, but it makes me kind of itchy.

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No, thank you. Feel free to leave at any time.

Finally, this is a mouse that The Man found inside his gym shoe. Apparently my cat was losing her freaking mind over it. Most likely, she brought this little vermin in the house to play with and then got annoyed when it didn’t want to play. I didn’t want to play with it either. I wanted The Man to remove it from the house. He wanted me to photograph it, which is why it’s in a mason jar here instead of a shoe. He thought that he should put a mouse inside a vessel I use to store food.

Hopefully I sleep tonight, because 3 days without sleep renders me pretty useless. And allow me to point out that yesterday I was so tired that I literally forgot my car. I mean, I left it downtown and came home without it and then realized well into the night that my car was very far away, which would have a large impact on my day today. So, if yesterday I lost my car and today I was unable to go to my volunteer job or draw a comic, just imagine how hilariously I’ll screw my life up tomorrow if I don’t sleep again.

The History of Rock and Roll

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Everyone wants to feign short term memory loss about all that weed they smoked in college, but no one smokes that much weed.

When I see Facebook pictures of some of the people I went to high school and college with holding their children, looking quite responsible and PTA-friendly, it makes me snicker. I remember what you did! You were crazy in the ’90s! And now you have to look your kids in the eye and tell them not to do the exact same things you had so much fun doing? How?

So this is a long-running joke I have with The Man, and it’s what we actually do, every time the subject comes up, whether we’re listening to old music, watching old movies, or reading current events. History of a brilliant career, et cetera, et cetera, “but then they took too much heroin and died.” I’m absolutely sure these kids will never, ever take heroin. Hooray!

For this comic, I attempted to draw 13 celebrities, most of whom came out looking more or less like themselves. In panel 3, on the left, is Nancy Reagan, the First Lady who famously implored the nation’s youth to “Just say no” to drugs while simultaneously working to ensure that the President of the United States never made any important decisions without first consulting a psychic.

To her right is Bristol Palin, the world’s most fertile argument against abstinence only education.

The dead music and theatrical personalities in panel 4 are Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, Charlie Parker, and Billie Holliday. They didn’t all actually die of heroin overdoses, but they arguably all took too much heroin and they all died. If I had more space, I would have also drawn Dee Dee Ramone, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cory Monteith, at least.

Finally, in panel 8, Keith Richards, who has taken all the psychoactive substances known to science and lived a long, productive, successful life.

Buzzy Bee Mandala

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Bees: not shy about anything at all. 

I very much like bees. That is all there is to say about that. The colors are nice too.

Been working on a longer comic all week. Took quite a while to nail the script down and hours to do the lettering, even though the original idea was about two sentences long. It needed fleshing out. I typically do the lettering first, but not always; the tighter the artwork needs to be, the more important it is to get the words in beforehand, or you might end up without enough space for the text. The artwork is going to be pretty complicated, because I need to draw a lot of famous people, and obviously, it’s harder to draw famous people because they have to be recognizable as specific humans rather than just being circles with dots for eyes and a parenthesis for a mouth.

It’s a funny, one, too. I hope. I’ve never done a funny one this complicated.

So I should probably go work on it instead of on this, since hardly anyone ever reads this blog on Mondays anyway.

A Career in the Arts!

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The Unicorn of Creativity supports this message. So does the Moth of Poverty. Your parents are just disappointed.

I say “get older” because I’m not sure “growing up” is something that is compatible with the creative life. At least, it’s been a couple decades now and I don’t seem to be doing it, at least not in the sense that my parents used the term. Maybe other creative types have had better luck, but I’m pretty sure that we’re all just big kids going through the motions of putting on pants in the morning and driving cars.

This comic isn’t 100% representative of my life, because I did try to have a career in my 30s, and after the novelty of having a lot of money wore off, I hated every second of it, and it wasn’t like I needed so much money anyway. It just felt like squandering my creativity. Even now when I get desperate and take the little freelance jobs that still come to me sometimes, I feel guilty.

Anyway….

I’m really digging this very web aesthetic of drawing black and white designs with small but meaningful hints of color. A lot of web artists seem to employ this style, and it’s pretty effective. Berk Breathed has been using it in the new Bloom County strips, for example. I hope it’s apparent that panels 1-3 feature colorful butterflies while in panel 4 you see a gray moth. The comic still works if that’s not apparent, but it has a nicer balance if you see that.

The really important part is that you know that mystic unicorn is always right behind you, whispering in your ear: You have made all the right choices. If you can hear her, just keep skipping through that flowery meadow. Tra la la.

Pleading Insanity: An Artist’s Defense

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And that’s just what comes out of my head. Don’t even ask about what I’m keeping inside.

This comes out of two things. One is that, knowing my tendency to second guess myself, I try to force myself go with the first thing and then worry about it until given reason to stop. So, when I drew yesterday’s comic, the thought crossed my mind that something that came to me in a dream might not be a good idea in the waking world, but I went with it anyway and then spent all night worrying that it was too dark, too grotesque, too confusing. And then people related to it anyway. (That’s supposed to be panel 2 from yesterday’s comic in panel 3 of today’s comic but it’s probably too small to see.)

The other thing on my mind was a dark comedy essay I wrote about 8 years ago for a pretty successful blog the Rabbit, the Bear, and I, and some other people used to have, until everyone drifted away and stopped posting. And we were getting pretty good traffic, too. Eventually, we stopped paying for the domain. For some reason, I thought the posts would revert back to Blogger, but that is apparently impossible. Someone is sitting on our URL and the same name on Blogger and I can’t figure out how to repost the articles even though I can see them and edit them when I’m logged in.

So, at the risk of exposing myself to utter ridicule, I’ll reproduce it here, but keep in mind that it’s super dark, and super sophomoric, and super sarcastic, and that I do not condone drowning children or making light of mental illness, and that I know this will not work (especially not now). I’m actually kind of embarrassed just thinking about it. But maybe I’m second guessing myself. Seriously, I wrote this in 2008. I’ve grown since then. Please don’t judge me too harshly if you don’t see the humor. I would not do well in prison.

The Devil Made Me Do It: Pleading the Insanity Defense or How to Get Away with Murder

****Disclaimer: if you are a complete moron, this is a comedy article. Please do not commit murder, and if you do, don’t tell the cops that Dragon told you how. And clear your browser cache.****

You can’t simply kill your enemies and claim to be cleansing the world of demons. Park Dietz, or an even funnier-looking forensic psychologist, will explain that you are a liar. The McNaughton defense is based on whether you comprehend the wrongness of your actions. Consider Jeffrey Dahmer, who was obviously batshit crazy, but still knew it was wrong to drill holes in his lovers’ heads. Dietz saw that Dahmer got drunk to overcome his guilt. Also, Dahmer lied to the cops prior to his arrest. Lying to the cops is a sure sign you know you’re breaking the law. If you want to plead insanity, you’ve got to tell the truth about your actions. In this scenario, the only thing you can lie about is your insanity.

But it’s not even so simple as that. If you make 200k a year, own a big house, lead a glamorous life, and off your annoying mother-in-law, it’s going to be pretty hard to argue that you really believed she was an alien. You’ve got to set up your insanity defense in advance. The first thing to do, if you want to get away with it, is worry friends, family, and coworkers.

Early stage schizophrenia is simple to emulate. Laugh at inappropriate times, like funerals and board meetings, or cry at inappropriate times. Deny your actions when accosted. Get paranoid for no reason and make groundless accusations of those around you. Allude to vague suspicions that you are being watched or have enemies. Don’t overdo it. Act generally normal and just bust out with these little personality tics a few times a week. You don’t want to end up committed before you commit your big crime. You want people to have nagging worries in the back of their heads, stuff they can tearfully recall at your trial, adding, “If only we had recognized the signs.”

Step two is a little crime. A really little crime. Something likely to make News of the Weird and set people to nervous laughter, something even the judge will agree to cover up. For instance, obtain a small dead animal. Remove your clothes. Walk naked through a public place clutching your small, dead animal. You will be arrested. Provided you are not rushing a fraternity or a member of Greenpeace or PETA, you will be declared mentally ill. Take it further by insisting your dead animal is a living child, or an accordion, or a letter of commendation from the president, and refuse to relinquish it until you are granted protection from the Pope, or Steven Spielberg, or your trash collector.

You will be rewarded with court-ordered psychiatric treatment. It’s free, and it’s likely to be a short stint! The downside is those psychotropic drugs really slow you down, and your state mental health facility is not the Bellagio. The food is crap and you have to share a room. But no one said it would be easy. You’re on the right track. The moment you start taking anti-psychotic medication, drop the schizophrenia act. Admit you were out of your head. Claim you’ve been under a lot of stress and you just want your life back. Agree with everything the doctors say. Soon, you will be free, at which time you can flush your meds down the toilet.

Now you are ready to commit a real crime. Don’t overthink. Premeditated murder does not result in a verdict of insanity. Careful planning indicates sanity. It’s got to appear spur-of-the-moment. Consider common household implements as weapons. Fit murder into the routine of your life.

Do not, at any time, act surreptitiously. If you are found to be hiding anything, you’re disqualified. If the jury knows you bought a new hammer and hid it on your boss’s bookcase, you can’t pretend something came over you just before you bash his head in after hours. You’re better off bludgeoning him with his own Blackberry during your weekly sit-down in a glass-walled conference room. Smile at your coworkers as you do so. If you have to drown your kids, do it in the bathtub with your cousin downstairs. Don’t lock them in a station wagon and push it into the lake in the middle of the night and claim, “A black guy did it.” Not only will you look like a cold-blooded killer, you’ll look like a racist. The jury will not sympathize.

Finally, let’s say you’ve committed the act. Don’t cover it up! This is the most important part. If you cover it up, this is evidence that you knew it was wrong. The best thing you can do is stay with the body of your victim until the police arrive. Confess immediately, with a big smile. Bonus points if you do the deed in front of a cop. That makes you look really insane

The Things You Carry (a comic from my subconscious)

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It also teaches you a lot about balance.

This comic appeared to me, more or less fully formed, as an idea in a dream. No kidding. This scenario wasn’t the dream; it was an idea I had for the comic *in* the dream, which was a pretty normal dream about being back in college (at which time I wasn’t into cartooning). In the dream I wasn’t totally sure it was funny, but it seemed imperative to remember it and bring it back from the dream world. (I’m still not sure it was funny, but the few people I bounced it off of seemed to think it was worthy.) Originally, as I dreamed it, the punchline in panel 3 has the artist saying, “It’s OK, I guess,” but this feels better. Upon waking, I recalled that I had dreamed an idea for a comic, but I couldn’t remember what the comic was. A couple hours later, it came back to me while I was pinging Misses Kitty. So random.

It’s just about mortality, and the way the idea hangs more heavily on you the older you get. You watch your parents getting old, you have friends die of terrible diseases, your heroes start to die, and you can’t deny that you’re further from 15 than you are from 50, and that you too will, inevitably die. You can begin to carry around the weight of your own fragility wherever you go, if you’re not careful. It helps you make more careful choices about how to live, if you can focus on what you have left. But there comes a point where you start to understand the true meaning of being over the hill. You have an expiration date. You started some decades ago, and most surely, some decades hence, you will stop.

So you better draw a lot of comics while you still can.

2 Ways of Looking at Socialism

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Little known fact: Uncle Sam is a champion fencer, and can take down an unarmed banker with an epee blade in under 2 minutes. Well known fact: babies contribute nothing. 

I almost didn’t draw this comic today. I almost didn’t draw any comic today. For one thing, this is an illustration where my lack of advanced cartooning skills kills me, because this would be 10 times as powerful with better drawings. For another, it has been made clear to me that my views on democratic socialism, while widely shared among those with whom I went to school and my current friends, are pretty far from the mainstream, and downright offensive to some.

It’s confusing to me how people can own 3 mansions and 12 cars and not think about the less fortunate at any point in their lives. I personally earned about $300 last year, and I gave pretty much all of it to charity (I am a special case, obviously, living on The Man’s largesse, some of which I also gave to charity) in addition to having a regular volunteer job, which I’ve been doing for over 11 years. But apparently, there are some people who think it’s totally fine to stockpile vast resources they could never hope to use in 50 lifetimes and give nothing to the community while there are homeless, hungry kids on the other side of the tracks whose lives would be immeasurably improved with 1% of what the rich people don’t use.

If the American presidential election were held today from among the current candidates, but only the people I know on Facebook were voting, the tally would stand at something like 80% Sanders, 15% Clinton, 1% Trump, and 4% whoever else remained in the Republican clown car. But America is diverse, and apparently some people somewhere do not think Donald Trump is the most selfish, least responsible, sorriest excuse for a leader ever to take to the campaign trail. We’re talking about a guy who hates women, hates minorities, hates the poor (so already, this guy hates probably 85% of America), has bankrupted 4 of his own companies, spit on the media, and clearly has no understanding of what a person might be expected to do should that person be elected president. (Hint: the president has to answer questions about what he’s going to do with meaningful and honest statements; the president doesn’t get to skip important meetings because he doesn’t like the person moderating them.) We’re talking about a guy who claims he built an empire from nothing, a guy who considers a million dollar loan from his dad “nothing.” (I also read that, if he had just put that million in some kind of standard money market account, he would be 10 times as rich as he is now. This really isn’t a person you want making budget decisions. This isn’t a leader. It’s a taker.)

So, that’s my story. I just drew something that’s going to make me unpopular, but I’m standing behind it. Sharing is caring. Unchecked selfishness is sick. Regardless of who is elected president of America, I still believe in socialized medicine, fully funded public schools, the post office, the highway system, and having firefighters available to people of every income level, including no income at all. Anyway, as an artist, I’m compelled to tell the truth. Anyway, this is my blog, and if you don’t like it, you can go start your own blog and post original art and writing 5 days a week and send it out into the world for strangers to judge and see how that feels. (Hint: something like this.)

In panel 1, I made the worthless lowlife receiving the handout an artist, obviously. The arts are always the first thing to go. But when I was telling the Girl about FDR and the WPA the other day, the first thing that came to my mind was that there was funding for artists in the WPA. There are still great works of art, which you can see today, that were commissioned by the government. There was a time when the government paid lots of artists to create art, and that art elevated the country. That art inspired people who were beaten down and wanted to give up. And that was democratic socialism. If you visit national parks, many of the roads and improvements you use will have been forged by young workers hired by the WPA. You might think we don’t need art and parks, but I promise you, we do. Without art and parks, there isn’t much point to anything else.

In panel 2, I chose the communal table because this type of dining is very powerful. My mother was a big believer in large dinner parties, and I take it ever further. If you know how to cook, you can make a lot of food for a lot of people without having a lot of money. If there are people, I cook. It is always joyful to share food, no matter how little I have. This guy I know from Benin, who owns a local restaurant, once told me, “In my country, we say that if you share with your friends, you always have more food.” Maybe that sounds paradoxical, but in my experience, it’s 100% true. I feed people, and it inspires them to feed people, and everyone gets to eat. We don’t begrudge those who can’t contribute today. We know that if we give them something now, it will boost them up enough that they’ll contribute tomorrow.

And if they don’t, you know what? It’s still the right thing to do.