Monthly Archives: February 2017

Happy Valentine’s Day 2017

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Like I always say, you never really know what goes on inside other people’s relationships.

You know how I sometimes let my husband write my comic and then I just illustrate it? This comic was not my idea. It was not my idea. It was his idea. The Man’s. The Man thought of this. Not me. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, Happy Valentine’s Day. I guess we’re not exchanging gifts this year for financial reasons, so this comic is our gift to each other.

I wanted him to pose for the reference photo with me but he refused.

You have no idea what goes on in other people’s relationships.

This would have have been an insomnia comic if he hadn’t come up with this idea. I had a couple scripts in varying degrees of completion but none of them were going to get finished before I passed out from exhaustion. Good thing he’s sometimes timely. And funny. And I love him. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Blurry Lemon/Finding Gratitude

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You know what this means, right?

Winter broke the day before yesterday in Tucson. We had 2 80°+ days, and now we have rolling thunderstorms. I saw a rainbow this afternoon. Both the citrus trees are budding and Miss Kitty and I ate Sno-Cones in the park. Even though the rain brings the temperature down, spring returns to the desert; it always does in time for Valentine’s Day. Meanwhile, in national news, the judiciary and the intelligence communities seem to support the resistance.

Sorry for the low quality lemon photo. I should have taken pictures of the tiny purple lemon blossom buds but I never got the lighting right. But I’ve had this lemon tree for 6 years. Last year it made 4 lemons. This year, 1 lemon. Next year, who knows! At least I have a lemon tree. I have several trees. That’s something else to be grateful for.

As always I’m extra grateful to anyone buying my book, wearing my merch, or supporting my Patreon.

Persuasion or Debate

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I’ve also tried rationale, common sense, deduction, induction, inference, judgment, and ratiocination, but nothing works!

This comic is based on the millions of people asking the internet why they can’t make other people understand what they perceive to be simple fact, and this informative piece from the Atlantic: The Simple Psychological Trick to Political Persuasion. Granted, it’s hard to assimilate, or even believe, and I can’t figure out how I would personally use this information to persuade people of anything, but it’s pretty clear at this point that reasoning with people who seem unreasonable isn’t going to make the world over according to my utopian vision.

I had another, much longer comic riffing off the riffs off “Nevertheless, she persisted,” but somebody asked and this felt a bit more urgent. Maybe tomorrow. It’s hard to plan out 24 hours ahead in this climate.

 

Dragon Comics 153

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I don’t need anything but my precious, precious gold. 

Last night was a mini-insomnia night: I got enough sleep to access basic functions for part of the day. In the afternoon I worked on my Linda Addison project but by the time I started thinking about a comic there wasn’t much charge left in the battery. What little I actually drew of this comic seemed very difficult. Even typing it took a ridiculous amount of time. Tonight will be better.

The funny thing about taco trucks is that you can barely throw a rock around here without hitting one. So you wouldn’t really need directions. You would just need to pick one direction and walk 1d6 blocks, scanning the desert for a truck with a taco sign on it.

Seriously, how great must it be to achieve the level of greed and selfishness needed to be happy about American politics. I almost wish I had a billion dollars and no conscience, because it’s kind of a massive to burden to have feelings all the time and actually care about the world around me.

The Wolf Is Not at the Door

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Seriously, though. The call…it’s coming from inside the house.

Yesterday, immediately after the confirmation of the frighteningly unqualified Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Congressman Thomas Massie introduced a bill that reads, in its entirety, “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.” Around the same time, Senator Elizabeth Warren  was told and then forced to sit down and shut up for impugning the character of the nominee for Attorney General, Senator Jeff Sessions, a man who was rejected for federal judgement over 30 years ago because his character was widely known to be impugnable.

From where I sit, the wolf is not at the door. The wolf is in the kitchen. And the oven is already lit.

It’s Not the End of the World. Yet.

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The end of the world won’t hurt at all. The end of the world won’t feel like anything.

At the Women’s March last month, packed, unmoving in the park because 15,000 people showed up when they expected 2,000, I overheard an old leftie explaining to her companion, “Every time we won a battle, there was always another battle. There will always be another battle.” I don’t know if the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice or not, but I do know everything always changes all the time. Wheel of Fortune. Tides of history. No kingdom lasts forever, nor any joy, nor any suffering. And if the end of the world ever does come, it won’t worry anyone. If it’s really and truly over, there will be nothing to worry about, and no one left to worry.

Or, as Edgar says in King Lear,  “The worst is not/So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.'” So rejoice! You’ve lived to fight for your life another day. Rise up and give thanks for the opportunity.

It’s a testament to the power of the human ability to heal from trauma and go on going on that I drew that little corner of the Twin Towers in panel 1. The last time I referenced 9/11 in QvD, it required a screen grab cut and paste because there was no way I could bring myself to draw it.

Panel 2 is the second time I’ve referenced King Lear. King Lear never gets stale.

Life is trauma. Over and over. You just keep getting up and going on because if you don’t, you’re not alive.

Seriously, though, I’m feeling burned out already.

The Last Rainbow Mandala

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As good a place as any to pause and reflect.

About 6 or 7 years ago, long before QWERTYvsDvorak, I started this 100 mandala project and when I got to 100, I wasn’t ready to stop. Why not 1000 mandalas, I wondered? Because, as it turns out, 1000 is a LOT of mandalas. Ultimately, I drew about 130 of them, not counting a few drawn after the blog started, and this is the very last last one of the original set. It felt like I had come full circle from the first (also rainbow) mandala and perhaps going on would mean just repeating myself.

I’m not saying I’ll never draw another mandala again, but they won’t be my regular Monday feature/safety net when I forget the weekend is ending.

Ms. Kitty suggested that I replace it with some sort of Monday gratitude, which seems like a really good idea right about now. Must think of how best to execute within the framework of QvD re: art.

But speaking of gratitude and art: that Lady Gaga concert sure was something, wasn’t it? So many people were watching it that the roads were completely empty, as were all the best hiking trails. But I caught it later on the NFL Twitter page. Those NFL people really put on a good show. I seem to recall they hosted one last year for Beyoncé that just slayed.

Know Your Federally-Sanctioned Deities

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As television taught me as a child, the more you know…

I can’t take credit for “School (TM),” which is, of course, from M. T. Anderson’s dark future YA novel, Feed. At “School (TM),” the protagonist and his friends learn valuable lessons in consumerism, primarily concerning how to get the best deals online and buy more things. The phrase “make a little birdhouse in your soul” is from They Might Be Giants album, Flood.

There can be no doubt now that, with the exception of a few holdouts, the federal government’s agenda is to pillage and plunder the country, extracting non-renewable resources for personal gain while also appropriating public funds into their own coffers and charging the American people to spread their own narrow worldview. And unless you have a couple million to spare, you are going to find yourself crushed under the gouty foot of their insatiable greed. If you don’t understand, I recommend a Dr. Seuss’s seminal treatise on the results of unchecked growth in business without some sort of agency for the protection of the environment.

And speaking of money, let me do my civic duty by reminding readers that they can participate in the national past time of capitalism AND support a struggling artist by buying my book, shopping in my online store, or donating directly to my Patreon. If you enjoy my content, believe in freedom of speech, and have a job, please vote with your wallet and kick a few dollars my way. I’m not too greedy, but I could use new socks and underwear, and would like a pair of jeans with no holes.

Notes from the Age of Enlightenment

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If your official position is that your neighbor’s made a deal with the devil in order to cause your sheep to have a weird looking baby, you probably aren’t interested in reason or enlightenment.

Clearly, there’s no point in quoting John Adams: “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Or James Madison: “The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State.” Or Noah Webster: “[E]very preference given to any religious denomination, is so far slavery and bigotry.” Or any one of the men who dreamed of democracy in America during the American Revolution. The people who believe that their religious prejudices should influence federal policy don’t care that imposing your religious beliefs on others is wholly unAmerican.

Yesterday, the Owl asked me to try to contact the junior senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, because she had heard that he was persuadable in the matter of Betsy DeVos’s confirmation. I had not heard that, and I could not get through to any of his offices, or even his voice mailbox, presumably because everyone else in the state was trying to beg him not to confirm her. But he did tweet “Lest there be any doubt about how I’m voting on Betsy DeVos she had me at ‘school choice’ years ago… ” The last I looked, the vote was tied 50-50, and, as you know, in the event of a tie in the Senate, the Vice President gets to cast the deciding vote. Something tells me Mike Pence will be happy to install a Secretary of Education who believes that the purpose of schools is to “advance God’s kingdom.”

Please, instead, let’s make the function of school to advance the ability of our population to think critically. Or, if you insist on a regressive government, let’s go back all the way to the best intentions of the Enlightenment, when faith was a private mystery and reason a guiding light.

All Apologies, My Bad

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This is a true story, which happened in the mid-’90s when people still wrote letters.

Nothing is funny and nothing ever will be funny again. With the announcement of Neil Gorsuch, a man who seems to believe that human beings only have value if they own large corporations, as Supreme Court nominee, a man who, as a Supreme Court judge, would likely continue his pattern giving businesses free reign to stomp on human rights in the name of profit, I just don’t see how anyone can pretend that this administration’s sole aim isn’t to screw the American people hard from behind, take the money, and run away laughing while we’re still wondering where they came from.

I don’t have compassion fatigue, or activism fatigue, or outrage fatigue. I have stupidity fatigue. I think Ani DiFranco put it best when she sang, “If you’re not angry, you’re just stupid; you don’t care.” Unless you are a large corporation, you are the one who is going to get stomped on while these thieves line their pockets with the natural resources that are your children’s inheritance. You’re the one who’s going to be paying $5 for a gallon of water that Nestlé’s pumped out of your back yard without even reimbursing you. If you don’t die of your totally treatable pre-existing condition first.

At the rate they’re dismantling democracy, I won’t be alive to see any of that, because they’re probably going to start rounding up dissenters in a year or so. Maybe I’ll care then, but it’s hard to care now. I don’t want to live anywhere but America, and I don’t want to live in this America. I love that so many people are so passionately opposing each egregious abuse, but I hate that so many people are just rolling over and taking it. Remember checks and balances? Where are the people whose jobs are to prevent the federal government from executing a coup? Everyone’s talking about the 2018 election. How do we know there’s even going to be a 2018 election? Our new corporate overlords don’t seem to respect any other aspect of American government. Why would they bother letting us vote?

Sorry. I’m just pessimistic. And I keep wondering what we could have done differently. And I really did used to make that joke about offering Trump free therapy all the time in the mid-’90s. And, in hindsight, it’s not funny at all.

Hail Hydra.