When You Gotta Go

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Pretty sure some of these legislators spend more time thinking about people’s junk than the people whose junk it is spend thinking about it. 

Society has already given us a really simple rubric to determine whether or not you should be questioning strangers about what their genitals look like: have you and that stranger both expressed enthusiastic interest in you having sex with their genitals? No? Then why the hell do you care? Why is this even an issue? There is literally no other situation wherein civilized people openly discuss and pass judgment on other adults’ groins. Can we PLEASE grow up about this?

If you are very good friends with a person who has made it clear that they’re comfortable discussing their transition with you, there may be a circumstance where it’s not completely rude to ask them about it, but I seriously doubt that anyone who supports this kind of legislature has that kind of friendship.

My little comic is, of course, a riff off of all those “I’d rather pee next to a trans person” memes that have been going around. But they doesn’t go far enough. My version might seem draconian, but in my experience, trans people tend to be pretty committed to practicing safe sex. So their precious bodily fluids are probably a lot cleaner than those of your average abstinence-only hypocrite.

I promise, you’ve been peeing next to trans people without incident your entire life. With or without hate-filled laws that deny human beings of their basic civil rights, you will continue to pee next to trans people without incident. As the news tells us, day after day after day, the people who are most likely to molest you are cis-bodied heterosexual men. I have absolutely never heard of anyone being molested by a trans woman, in or out of a bathroom. But I bet that you have heard of someone being sexually assaulted by a cis-bodied heterosexual man. Maybe once or twice.

In less offensive news, it’s Tuesday night and I am updating Friday’s comic! I don’t think that’s ever happened.

The Luscious Saguaro Flower

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Any feedback from professional photographers on how I could have captured this image even more clearly would be greatly appreciated.

This macro showcases the 24-hour saguaro flower. The flower usually appear in June, but what with all this wacky weather here on planet Earth, they’ve blossomed 2 months early. Saguaros, for the initiated, are those iconic Sonoran cacti, tall and long-armed, like a green army marching over the hills. They are only native to this small region of the planet, although they can thrive in other deserts. The buds are about 6 inches long, and appear on the end of mature arms, and on the very top of the cactus, in clusters of up to a few dozen.

Bats with long tongues pollinate these flowers, which have a delicate but delicious aroma. You can see how deep the flower goes here. Each flower blooms for a single day, but only some of the cluster bloom on any given day. When the flower shrivels, a red fruit remains, but I’ve never tried one. They are generally difficult to obtain, often 20 feet overhead, and the birds usually get at them first.

I’m sort of pleased with this image, which was the best out of a dozen, but it could still be better. Maybe if I’d had the tripod with me. I can never figure out how to line up macro shots of thing that have various levels of depth, particularly is the center is the bit that’s farther away from the camera. I’d like to go back to this particular cactus (it has a very low-hanging arm with a huge cluster and it’s very close to the road) and try to get a sharper image, but I’m not sure that I’ll have the time.

It’s More Efficient This Way

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Admittedly, artists do this too, but people think we’ve done it on purpose. 

The Man is pretty fastidious about his sartorial choices and wouldn’t fail to notice that he was wearing his shirt inside out unless he was really sick, but this did happen with the guy I dated before I met the man, referred to elsewhere as Engineer #6 (The Man was lucky #7 I guess). Engineer #6 was already married to his work and left me for NASA, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be either way. Plus, he never reads this blog, so I can say whatever I want about him. But he did call me the other day, which he does once or twice a year, so that reminded me of this.

In real life, right after the moment in panel 4, while he was still hanging his head in shame, I coined the term “adorkable.” This was 2005, so I like to think I can lay claim to the word.

When I realize my clothes are on inside out, I just go with it. But I do that when I realize that there’s a huge stain down the front of my outfit or a massive rip in the seat of my pants, too.

Pineapples Make the Best Projectiles

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There’s actually an almost perfectly mundane explanation for why I’m carrying a pineapple around this party, but it’s much more interesting if you don’t know that. But I guess bringing a pineapple to a party for any reason is a little bit unusual.

My life, as you may know, involves a fair degree of surrealism, but I think it’s a good idea to help the weirdness along. I really thought I was going to carve that pineapple up at that party and then probably eat most of it myself, because I can eat a lot of pineapple, but then there was all this food already and so many people to talk to and then Misses Kitty randomly texted asking me to go downtown with her while she got her lip pierced, and by the time we got back to the party I actually really wanted that pineapple, but there were even more people to talk to and by that time The Man had left and Misses Kitty was my ride and she wanted to go. So I went and retrieved my pineapple from the kitchen, to the great hilarity of all who witnessed it. People more or less said these things to me while I made my rounds to say goodbye.

There was another comment about the TV show Psych, but I only watched part of one season of that show before deciding it was too silly even for me, so I had no idea what they were talking about and didn’t know how to make it funny for the comic. But someone did tell me that they thought pineapples were natural projectile weapons.

Anyway, making the world a weirder place is just part of what I do.

Love Is Real Not Fade Away Mandala

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I didn’t leave it in the window. It started out this pale.

Sunday night as I write this, and I already have scripts for 3 days’ worth of comics, plus a couple cool macros. As The Man and I have another exciting adventure coming up this week (2 more days of airline travel…I shudder to think) and if I can’t get a couple days ahead, I’ll probably accidentally miss half a week like I did the last time I had to endure the tender mercies of the airline industry.

Tonight we counted and I have 900 of my 1000 cranes, which is also exciting. I’m completely out of origami paper, and everyone in town seems to be out of it, which is frustrating, but with only 100 to go, I’ll probably start cutting squares out of random pages.

OK, back to Tuesday’s comic, and maybe Wednesday’s if my brain can stay on that long.

Scientists Adjust Their Beliefs According to Evidence

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And yes, I know it’s more responsible to say “we share between 40 and 50% DNA with cabbages” but it’s much funnier to say 42. Trust me. It’s a reasonable conclusion

Today has been an angry day. There are ridiculous fools spouting untenable propositions everywhere I go on the Internet. My outrage isn’t really about people who deny science, even though they are trying. It’s just about people who think they know everything, and who honestly believe that their personal opinion must be undisputed fact, and that therefore everyone who disagrees with them must be wrong. Also, the punchline is something I like to say whenever people bring up the subject of what percentage DNA humans have in common with vegetables, and sometimes I just draw a comic because I have a joke.

I do happen to know something about science and religion, because my father holds a PhD in chemistry and strong religious views, so I was raised to read the Bible but to also apply the scientific method, and to understand the difference between spiritual truth and objective truth. My dad was a research scientist for 30 years, but he transitioned into education late in life, and now he teaches science in religious schools, where his work is not always appreciated. It’s hard for me to believe that these people really, truly exist, but they do. He had a class where kids were literally sticking their fingers in their ears so as not to hear a lesson about evolution. Sure, they’re kids, but at the same time, what an apt metaphor for the young earth creationists, the climate change deniers, the anti-vaxxers, and of course, most perplexingly, the chemtrail believers in our midst.

But, like good old Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe it or not.” Your opinion that one particular book written by people whose technological advances never went beyond blacksmithing is the only legitimate reference work on the planet doesn’t changes the observations of natural phenomenon made by people who actually wanted to learn the truth about their world. Whether it’s a statement that runs counter to your religious belief or your personal view of yourself, sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly doesn’t change reality.

I will refrain from discussion modern physics’ take on the nature of reality.

Gardens in the Rain

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This image has been cropped and color corrected.

I went out to photograph some tiny tomatoes in the rain, but I didn’t realize that the reason all my macrophotography has been looking weird lately is that there is a filter on the lens and the filter was filthy. That accounts for the soft focus-looking bit on the right side of the image. Still, cropped, it looks nice, I think. This is the peach tree in my back yard. It’s been back there for year but never managed to do much growing, because it is apparently tasty to caterpillars. So I’ve been super-vigilant about caterpillar murder (I use a bacteria that actually murders the caterpillar for me; I’m not much of a killer) and now here we have the testimony: tiny peaches bursting forth from the dying flower.

Now, apparently, I have to start killing ants before they eat the baby peaches?

I would have liked to have drawn a comic tonight, but I think my allergies have achieve sentience and are building a more enlightened society in my sinus cavity. I tried to appease them with some soup from the hip ramen shop downtown, but I suspect I may have consumed some MSG, because now my temples are as seized up as the rest of my face.

Every Time I Tell a Joke

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Man, I wish I knew the ending to that joke.

He likes to pretend I’m not funny. But whenever I tell a good joke, he immediately calls his brother to repeat it, and then every single time we go out with anyone for the next 3 weeks, he tells it again. That’s what love is. Putting up with that.

Yesterday’s comic got a pretty good reception, tons of upvotes across various platforms, which, of course, led to a bunch of misogynistic online criticism from anonymous cretins. It’s sort of disheartening to know that they exist. Do they hide their sexism under a cloak of kindness when they move in public and only air their shame from behind the safety of the keyboard, or do they spew that acid wherever they go?

Gender-based criticism never really affected me that much, since I have never actually felt like a girl. Genderqueer dragons are immune to that nonsense. But attacking the characters in my comic is another thing! I am overwhelmed with outrage. Philistines! You know nothing. Anyway, if you think you can cut me down with words…that’s like trying to burn Superman with the light of the sun.

Selfishness

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I’ll be sure to get on that as soon as nobody needs me and I have nothing else I have to do.

These aren’t all my experiences, but they’re all pretty common experiences, especially for women, I think. Don’t be selfish, don’t be selfish. Always put others first. Don’t ask for things. Take care of your siblings, take care of your children, take care of your parents. There’s no time for caretaker burnout because everyone depends on you. You never get to be the selfish one.

But that’s exactly what you have to allow yourself to be, or so I’m told.

Queen of Hearts Mandala

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Off with her head. Off with all their heads.

I’m starting to suspect that posting mandalas actually decreases the traffic on my blog, but goddamnit I have all these freaking mandalas and they need to be uploaded and I’m going to post them on the Internet. So there.

In other news, I read that the standard style book is changing and “Internet” will no longer be capitalized come this summer. That makes zero sense to me. That’s like saying that we’re going to stop capitalizing “America” or “Europe.” The Internet is like its own country and deserves to be a proper noun. Sigh. /end nerd rant.

This weekend was a wreck. I’ve been sick all week. I thought it was just a combination of allergies and the residual stress of my bullshit nightmare journey at the beginning of the month, but The Man, who also thought it was just allergies, has had all the same symptoms, but 2 days in advance of mine, so clearly he caught a weird cold and then gave it to me. And I’ve probably given it to everyone I’ve hung out with since I got back, because our friends are all pretty casual and we sharing drinking vessels and other things that touch your face. Sorry guys. It’s really just a mild cold. But still annoying.

Also, it rained all weekend, which is just completely ridiculous. I didn’t move to the goddamn desert to watch it rain constantly. On the plus side, in 50 years when the entire east coast is under water, climate change may very well turn the desert verdant and arable. If the Big One hits California and it falls into the ocean, Arizona could be the next Garden of Eden. Still, it wasn’t what my brain needed.

I’m writing a sad comic for Tuesday. It’s about my life.