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Dragon Comics 111

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I'm actually really good at math for a liberal arts major.

I’m actually really good at math for a liberal arts major.

This letter really did come in the mail today. That’s crazy to me. I don’t get as many credit card solicitations per week as I used to when I had a job, or even when I didn’t have a job but the economy was great, but I still get a lot. Random companies just offering me a one time loan at 38% APR is a new one for me. These terms seem not good, but I guess they’re so favorable to the lender that they can afford to send out 1000s of these letters on the chance that 1 person with credit that’s not good enough for a credit card but still good enough for these people will consider this a good way to get some fast cash.

The other thing I get in the mail a lot, besides people offering to loan me money I don’t want to borrow, is people asking me to give to charitable causes. I do donate money to charity, but some of these places, while highly rated for spending responsibly, seem to waste a lot of resources asking me for *more* money. But I’m gonna give when I’m gonna give, and your dead tree missives have no effect on that. I don’t need 3 pleas a week; save that money and use it in lieu of a donation.

On the plus side, that means my name is on the list for a lot of poorly managed charities, by which I mean organizations to which I have never and will never send money, but who nonetheless send me free “gifts,” primarily saccharine greeting cards and flashy address labels.

I should do a post displaying my collection of free address labels. It’s pretty extensive at this point. I’ve never bought address labels. I actually don’t think it really takes that much effort to write my name and address. But, hey, everyone want to give them to me for free.

What a weird world. It seems like there’s more than enough for everyone, and yet we have really pervasive distribution issues.

Obstinence Only Education

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It's my religious right to allow my toddler to set herself on fire and she'll live with the consequences.

It’s my religious right to allow my toddler to set herself on fire and she’ll live with the consequences.

Giving advice is one of those things. I’m not sure, exactly, why people come to me for counsel, but I definitely like telling people what to do, and usually they find my words enlightening. So…sometimes I like to seek out and answer strangers’ questions on the Internet.

Every time I find myself on some site where people are asking for advice, I end up giving desperate teenagers straight talk sex education, because kids in this country seem woefully uninformed about birth control, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, not to mention their basic sexual rights as human beings. It’s surprising how ignorant some of these kids are. They definitely shouldn’t be having sex at all, but since they’re going to do it anyway, it behooves them to go at it armed with all the information they need to do it safely.

Why are they so woefully ignorant?

Abstinence only education is an oxymoron. The vast majority of Americans will have premarital sex. Most of them will do so for the first time before they’re 21. Half of them will do so by the time they’re 17. Some of them are younger. The ones who’ve learned to protect their bodies and respect themselves will learn and grow and stay safe throughout their experiences. The ones who have been taught nothing will end up like this. Or this. Or this. Because one of the most harmful things you can do to a child’s psyche is alienate that child from their body.

People like to have sex because, if you do it right, sex is awesome. But to do it right, you need to start with the right knowledge, and that information takes years to acquire. Toddlers need honest information about their bodies, and so do grade school kids, and so do teenagers. It’s a long conversation. If you think that you are somehow protecting your family by not having it, try checking those 3 links in the last paragraph again.

People who receive abstinence only education are much more likely to experience unplanned pregnancies and contract STIs. The only proven way to reduce the incidence of abortion in any community is to ensure that everyone receives comprehensive sex ed and access to affordable birth control.

Or, conversely, you could hide your head under a false pretext and pretend not to notice when things start catching fire.

Super Fun!

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Other super fun activities in which you could participate over spring break might include lobbying your local legislature to enact environmental legislation and turning your stupid baseball cap around.

Other super fun activities in which you could participate over spring break might include lobbying your local legislature to enact environmental legislation and turning your stupid baseball cap around.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 is a federal law that provides for the cleanup of some of the most contaminated sites in the United States. It is most commonly referred to as the “Superfund,” which is actually the money set aside to help the EPA and other agencies complete this task, although sometimes the parties responsible for the pollution are also required to pay. There are hundreds of these sites across the country. Most likely, one of them sits pretty close to your backyard. For example, I was surprised to learn that the Tucson International Airport is on the list.

Most of these sites don’t look like ugly pits of mine runoff. Many of them have been allowed to grow over with wildflowers and support abundant wildlife. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the ground is full of mercury, or mustard gas, or some terrible byproduct of industry that will cause your entire family to die of cancer.

There are approximate 1300 sites on the list, with over 100 more whose addition has been proposed. These are only the ones we know about. Undoubtedly, there are many places that would qualify for the list but lack the activists necessary to get that attention.

Fewer than 400 Superfund sites have been successfully decontaminated in the last 35 years.

Check out this handy list to find your nearest pile of toxic waste.

The TSA’s War against Reality

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It's funny because it's true. Actually, it's not funny because it's true.

It’s funny because it’s true. Actually, it’s not funny because it’s true.

These are all true stories, every single panel. I did overhear a TSA agent laughing about a dildo in a carryon bag on the X-ray conveyor belt. My husband did get detained because the TSA determined that gluten free flour tested positive for explosives. A TSA agent did take my unopened packages of hummus and yogurt, insisting they were liquids, because, if you turned them upside down, they would fall out. My father does say what he says in panel 4, female Israeli soldiers with Uzis do interrogate you if you walk through the door of El Al, and I really did accidentally carry a switchblade through security, and a TSA agent really did find it, decide it couldn’t possibly be mine, and ask me what I wanted him to do.

Airport security in this country feels broken, perhaps because we’ve given the TSA so much power, and so many of those agent don’t seem especially intelligent, generating a system where ignorant bullies have carte blanche to take out their insecurities on people who just want to go see their families. It would be nice if we weren’t all treated like terrorists, considering that the TSA apparently couldn’t catch a terrorist if they ran naked through security with a stick of dynamite in their mouth. Everything about airline travel is pretty messed up, but security is just a joke. I can’t count the number of times people have told me they didn’t even realize they had knives in their bag until they got home. The TSA misses all the dangerous stuff, and then ruins people’s day over 3 bags of gluten free flour. Plus, they talk to you like you’re the idiot.

It’s frustrating, and all we can do about, as far as I can tell, is bitch on the Internet. I actually wrote the “hummus is liquid” story on one of my old blogs, and I get a lot of mileage out of the switchblade story at parties. We’ve given up real freedom for imaginary security.

The Pancake Paradox

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I assure you, god does not play dice with breakfast.

I assure you, god does not play dice with breakfast.

It’s universal, and the lighter and fluffier your pancakes are, the more pervasive the problem. You get the perfect amount of butter and syrup spread evenly across your meal. There is just as much flavor on one bite as there is on another. And yet, a few minutes later, you need more. You can’t taste it; your pancake might as well be a piece of white bread. The pancake has soaked up all the excess syrup on the plate, and yet you clearly need more.

I especially like how the test subject is the one volunteering to go to Costco, although, after I drew panel 3 I realized that Costco doesn’t carry Mrs. Butterworth’s. You can only get pure maple (that’s what we use) or Log Cabin. However, Mrs. Butterworth’s is clearly the funnier brand name, so let’s call it comedic poetic license.

Also, the scientists are kind of half-baked, because I have a headache and couldn’t focus well enough to redraw them more sharply when I moved them to the foreground. So, while I’m pleased with the joke, it’s just a small one, and not my best illustration work.

Anyway: comic. Laugh. Like. Share.

Pictures from the 123rd Annual Meeting of the International Cryptozoology Association

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Not pictured: Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, Abominable Snowman, and Skunk Ape. Best session of the weekend!

Not pictured: Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, Abominable Snowman, and Skunk Ape. Best session of the weekend!

If you don’t get it, then query “Bigfoot” or “Loch Ness Monster on Google Image Search. It’s just a little joke. That’s all I wanted to tell today.

We used to report a lot of cryptozoology news on the defunct website, In the Weird. I’m sorry I let the domain expire, because we had done some cool stuff there. At one point we had a dozen regular contributors and were regularly getting 100s of hits a day. Even after we still updating the site, it was still seeing about 500 visitors a week. I’ve been thinking about hosting some of the content on this blog, at least some of my favorite posts. It’s very different stuff from what I would write now, much darker and more sarcastic than what I do here. I guess I thought that when the domain expired the content would still be available as a Blogger blog, but apparently I would have to reupload every single post, and there were many posts.

My big project is about 90% done, and should be visible here on Friday. It’s coming out pretty well even if it’s taking 4 times as long as I intended. Only one more complicated piece and then 2 more easy bits.

It’s a flat, 2-dimensional work that I’m giving as a gift, and tonight a woman suggested that the best way to get a cheap frame is to go to a thrift store and buy an ugly painting of the same size. Brilliant.

Submission

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For my followup, I guess I'll have to vent a spleen.

For my followup, I guess I’ll have to vent a spleen.

This one might be a bit abstract. I guess it either works or it doesn’t.

It’s true that I know I don’t completely suck due to the fact that I sometimes get personalized rejection letters, and sometimes agents or publishers write me back once or twice before ignoring me, and every once in a while someone actually enjoys my fiction enough to pay for it. It’s sort of like being in the top 1% in a field where only the top .01% really succeed.

I really wanted to do a funny 1-panel comic tonight, but my ideas were either not funny or not 1-panel. My brain was in the mundane sphere due to the fact that I remembered, just as I was about to start working on my project, that my car registration needed to be renewed, and that if I didn’t go down to the DMV and get my emissions tested right that very minute, there was an extremely strong chance that I would soon be driving around with expired tags. That ate up about an hour of my life, after which I needed to do other mundane things like acquire food.

Passing emissions also reminded me that Honda had recently sent a notice that all my airbags were being recalled because they had been suddenly proven to be deadly projectile weapons that would just as soon shoot bits of metal into your chest as to save your life. But at that point I really didn’t have time to deal with the situation. So it’s entirely possible that my car is going to kill me, but at least I can prove to the government that it’s not spewing too much poison into the air.

Disaster Movie Sequels

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Clearly, the way to prevent all these explosions is with even *bigger* explosions.

Clearly, the way to prevent all these explosions is with even *bigger* explosions.

According to Aristotle, of the six components of a tragedy, spectacle is the least important. The most important is plot, followed by character.

In the typical big budget, special-effects heavy blockbuster action adventure disaster film, plot is irrelevant, characterization is perfunctory, and the only feature that matters is the spectacle. Much like a circus, but with death. Escalating quantities of increasingly gruesome death. Explosions, monsters, blood, that’s what people pay to see. They don’t care if it makes sense: sound and fury, signifying nothing.

That is to say, the kids talked me into seeing Jurassic World and it gave me a headache. Not since Pacific Rim have I so fervently wished that someone would recut a film so that I could watch the 30 minutes of CGI without suffering through 90 minutes of pat stereotypes and cardboard dialog holding up a flimsy excuse to showcase primal violence and random explosions. This movie was very stupid. I read that it had one of the highest grossing opening weekends of all time.

Dragon Comics 110

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dragon comics 110_edited-1

I mean, there are options, but not if you’re constructed entirely of pixels and whimsy.

It’s half past midnight and I’m sitting in my car, parked outside of the public library, because Cox Cable is far more vested in sending me almost daily dead-paper communications trying to sell me cable for the TV I don’t own and long distance for the hard wired phone line that’s not connected to my house than they are in maintaining the Internet connection for which I pay them nearly $70 a month. They’re just a massive bunch of Cox over there. It’s incredibly frustrating, how often our Internets simply disappear for no reason–sometimes it’s for 15 minutes, sometimes it’s for 2 hours–and you know they never reimburse us for that lost time, even though you can be sure I’ll be hearing from them if I forget to pay the bill.

Anyway, the library Internet is slow–it took 5 minutes to upload that image–but functional. I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal to park outside the public library and hop on their network at night. This is certainly not as terrible as it was for me to actually use my key (I worked there in the 90s and had to open on Sundays) to go into the library at midnight to use the network and also sometimes to borrow VHS cassettes without checking them out. I probably would have lost my job if I got caught doing that. Probably the worst thing that could happen to me here is a cop telling me to move along.

Not to brag, but The Man and I had a pretty raucous weekend, with multiple pool parties, a vision quest in the desert, and dinner for 16 at a revolving sushi restaurant with no revolving sushi. It was basically nonstop from Thursday night until he went to bed, and even then he kept getting up and eventually ate half my waffles, so I didn’t get to work until after 11. This is my lame explanation for the low quality artwork today. However, the Owl wanted a Dragon Comic, so here it is.

Even Matt Paxton Can’t Help Me

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Suddenly, I know *exactly* what Betty Friedan was talking about.

Suddenly, I know *exactly* what Betty Friedan was talking about.

I was raised in a house where you could pretty much eat off the floors. My mother used to clean the entire kitchen after dinner. She swept, she vacuumed, she made beds. Once a year she would wash all the walls. Twice a month she paid someone to do more cleaning, but first she compelled us to clean in advance of the cleaning lady. Some of you probably know what I’m talking about here.

I’m a terrible housekeeper, even without comparing myself to my mother. If there are no dishes in the sink when I go to bed, I consider the kitchen in good order. Let’s not even talk about how often that floor gets swept. I hate cleaning, and I’m terrible at it, and I have a million better things to do.

When things get overwhelming–particularly that periodic geological phenomenon to which we refer as “Mount Laundry”–I like to turn on an episode of Hoarders for inspiration. Like, no matter how bad it is, you can still actually see my floors, and I’m fairly certain there aren’t any dead kittens in here, and I can clean a room in 3 hours without the help of an extreme cleaning specialist and a psychiatrist specializing in obsessive compulsive disorders.

The Man is way better at cleaning things than I am, but he only feels the need to do so if he wants to have a party and invite people we don’t know very well.

Our regular friends don’t judge us. Or, if they do, they do it silently, because we’re the only ones with a pool, and also I’m an amazing cook.

Housework has always felt like this me. For example: you make the bed. Why? In 12 or 16 hours you’re just going to unmake it. Dishes are just endless. I frequently run the dishwasher 3 times a day. Laundry didn’t really bother me before I was married; I learned in college that if a person owns 31 pairs of panties and wears the same jeans all week, that person only has to do laundry once a month. But now I’m doing laundry for 4, and 2 of us are very conscious about how they look. But it all seems like a meaningless cycle of drudgery.

At the same time, I like it to be neat. I just don’t like that I’m the one who has to waste time and expend energy to get it that way.

In this case, I’m glad I put the futon back together, and vacuumed, and put the laundry away. While I was halfway through this comic some out of town friends pinged me and asked if they could visit and stay in the spare bedroom. So I guess the effort wasn’t completely pointless after all.