Tag Archives: funny

Totes Inappropes

Leave a reply
inappropes_edited-1.png

Microsoft? Ew? Not going to touch that one.

It’s sort of a wonder that this blog is as accessible as it is; in person, I can be extremely inappropriate. Maybe I’ve never been thrown out of a day spa for using salty language during a company team-building exercise like some kitties I know, but, on average, outside of the elementary school and my dealings with children, I’m really not rated for anyone under the age of 17. I can make anything sound inappropriate. That’s why I’m not allowed to accompany the man to the hardware store or to the car parts store. I am totes inappropes all the time, but especially when the world is asking for it.

This one started with “clapback.” I guess that term was IRL slang before it was all over the Internet but I definitely associate it with semi-famous people arguing on Twitter, to at least the same extent that I associate “clap” with “gonorrhea.” Every time I hear it, which is increasingly over the past few months, all I can think of is a ping pong clap infection. You have to both get treated, people! Hashtag and Buzzfeed really speak for themselves; I know (from experience) that what I’ve done in panel 2 never works in real life, though. Nothing stops those people. Only the last one eluded me for a while. Originally I was going to make a 3-panel comic but the truth is that this template is easier to work with, so I ran through my knowledge base to find a 4th thing to make fun of so I could use this one, and “Google Doodle” it is. I guarantee if you asked someone to check out this Google doodle 25 years ago, their response would be much, much different.

And speaking of semi-famous people on Twitter, the author of Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, Christine Baldocchino, retweeted my comic making fun of people who didn’t like her book. I still don’t understand Twitter, but it is beginning to work for me on some level.

Happy Friday! Make sure you don’t get that clapback and remember to keep your Google doodle to yourself unless you have enthusiastic consent to share it.

Babies on Boards

8 Replies
baby on board_edited-1.png

Cookies are for closers.

This is what happens when I don’t sleep at night and then go about my business during the day and then work on this blog the next night. I draw Modest Proposal-themed comics. And boy, did I powerfully not sleep last night. Yes, this is the third child cannibalism themed comic I’ve drawn this year. If you think panel 4 is bad, you should have seen its original paint job, in which I attempted to color the baby like a roast suckling pig. Some blasphemies are too much even for me, though. See? Things could always be worse. That baby just looks like it’s sleeping, right? Easy mistake. Someone plated a sleeping baby by accident. It’s not like we went all The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover on a baby because it was evil or anything. That baby is just fine. That’s not even an apple in its mouth. It’s a pacifier. No choking hazard.

When I told The Man about what I intended to draw and got to the last panel, he appeared mildly distressed and then said, “It’s your career.” It sure is. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you stop caring what anyone else actually thinks of you. It’s nice to bounce ideas off of him. If he’s really disturbed, then I know I’m hitting my target audience, which is people who are more demented than me.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is an excellent film, by the way. I highly recommend it if you enjoy being disturbed by the depth of human depravity. I was just a little bit too young to get into rated R movies when it came out in 1989, so I only saw it for the first time in 2014, which is a pity, because as much as I liked it, I would have liked it 10 times more in 1989.

How am I still even awake? Literally, The Man got up for work this morning and I was sitting in my office, having not yet fallen asleep the night before. When I said something about not wanting to take sleeping medication because I wouldn’t be able to get up tomorrow, he said, “It is tomorrow.” And now it’s almost tomorrow again, and here I am, eating chocolate and writing about cannibalism. Again. Might as well be 1996. Nothing has changed.

Enjoy. Or don’t. No skin off my roast baby. I’ve even honed my ability to not respond to people who irritate me on the Internet. So go ahead. Let my know how you feel. I don’t care.

Ain’t No Party Like a Star Party

Leave a reply
stock photos 3_edited-1.png

Ain’t no party like a star party, because a star party takes place far from human civilization, and you can’t play loud music or jump around because the vibrations could interfere with the telescopes and also you’re only allowed to use red lights so you don’t mess up anyone’s night vision while you’re stumbling around in the dark. Also, they’re usually freezing cold.

Technically, they’re not all stock photos but hopefully people have a good sense of humor about it and see that it’s all in good fun, or else don’t see it at all.

Tonight wasn’t feeling like a funny night but you can only do so many jokes about not feeling funny so we gave it the old college try and thought of something that was sort of like something funny but not really. Which then led to Googling “star party,” which brings us to that first stock photo. It’s crazy. He’s out there by himself and he can’t even look through the eyepiece. Clearly, it would be too much back strain. He climbed all the way up that mountain and spent an hour setting up his gear and all he can do is stand wistfully gazing at the cosmos with his naked eye, his $1000 functionally useless.

After that, finding 3 more silly looking telescope pictures to caption took a matter of moments. Telescopes are inherently unwieldy, and from experience I note that that the people vested in carting them around tend to be fairly peculiar themselves.

The History of Rock and Roll

Leave a reply
history of rock and roll_edited-2

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.

Wicked

2 Replies
stepparenting_edited-1

Don’t be shocked. You know babies are so tasty you could just eat them up. 

After writing yesterday’s comic, I flashed back to this flash fiction I wrote a couple years ago.It took a while to figure out how to compress 8 sentences into 4 sentences and 2 pictures, but judicious editing is another one of my talents.

I do love my fairy tales. Classic tropes and all. So much fun to deconstruct.

I don’t know that being a stepparent is as fraught as people make it out to be. Before I met The Man I dated a couple guys with kids and they all liked me very well. Most kids like me. Obviously, I have a very good relationship with my stepchildren or I wouldn’t be joking about eating them, which I also do to their faces, sometimes. It probably helps that they’re very well-behaved, but I think it’s just like any relationship. If you go into things with generosity and empathy and an open heart, you can go pretty far, and if the other person comes into it with the same qualities, you can’t fail.

At any rate, they’re too old to eat now, all adolescent and full of artificial colors and flavors. They’re more interesting as human beings, but they’re probably less sweet.

The candy house and gingerbread kids were super fun to draw. I could easily spend another 90 minutes making them look even tastier, but it’s late and today was kind of rough, physically, so I’m hoping to be asleep in less than that.

 

Etiquette 2015

2 Replies
What I'm saying here is that technology has really transformed every aspect of our lives.

What I’m saying here is that technology has really transformed every aspect of our lives.

Some relationships are just closer than others. Or maybe some people are more forgiving. I have a couple friends who fall into the third category. All this constant communication technology is a huge imposition on my life, and if people want to v-chat me, they have to do it on my terms.

We’re talking really good friends.

This is easily the grossest comic I’ve ever written. Or am every likely to write. But the fact of the matter is, 20 years ago the idea of bringing a computer into the bathroom was unthinkable, and using the telephone in there was really reserved for teenagers with really long cords and no other privacy options, or for people staying in fancy business hotels. Now it seems totally normal. For some people, not bringing their smart phone into the bathroom would feel weird. Friday night I was at a party in a really loud bar, and I got overwhelmed, and went and played Words with Friends in the bathroom, and that was a totally unremarkable thing to do. No one looked twice.

At any rate, this comic should discourage people who don’t know me well from v-chatting me.

Dragon Comics 117

Leave a reply
Who has time to read when there's a Buffy sing-a-long starting in 10 minutes?

Who has time to read when there’s a Buffy sing-a-long starting in 10 minutes?

Honestly, I think one of the nicest things about Comic-Con is that it’s a venue for the weirdos to let their freak flags fly, and to see that they’re not alone. I get that this subverts the intended purpose of the Con, but we live in a tough world, and if spending 3 days out of the year dressed at Pikachu is what you need to survive, I wholly support that, and will work to make the Con a safe place for you to do so.

I love comics, obviously. I don’t buy a lot of them, because I am poor, and because I am partial to graphic novels/trade paperbacks, having little patience for story lines that are doled out a dollop at a time over a space of years, and because I have very little shelf space left and would rather borrow comics from the library or a friend and not have to store them if I don’t love them enough to make them part of my permanent collection. The allure of that type of acquisition eludes me, as well. If I buy a comic, I’m damn well going to read it, and I’m going to use my bare hands to turn the pages. I maybe even dog ear it as I do so. But I’ve known serious collectors, and I support that madness too.

There were probably fewer than a half dozen straight up comic book dealers at this convention: we have 3 major independent shops in this town, all of which were represented, and maybe 1 or 2 retailers came out of Phoenix. Most of the vendors weren’t selling comic books. They were selling swords and wigs and T-shirts and plushies and stuff that’s of interest to people who come to comic book conventions. Even the artists weren’t primarily selling comic books, but were instead selling paintings of dragons, or their own drawings of popular characters, or books with more words than pictures.

But comic books are the catalysts. And while the Star Wars area was bigger than the Marvel section, and I don’t even know what to make of the replica cars from non-comic related movies and TV shows, there’s room for every fandom at a good Con.

It’s the Hypoallergenic Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

2 Replies
The rock is also suitable for children with lactose intolerance, nut allergies, and chemical sensitivity.

The rock is also suitable for children with lactose intolerance, chemical sensitivity, and peanut allergies. Not recommended for kids with behavior disorders, though. 

There will be no teal pumpkin in front of my house this Halloween; at the rate I’m going this year, there will be no pumpkins at all, let alone jack-o-lanterns, unless we obtain and carve them Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. I feel for kids with allergies. Personally, the list of things I can’t eat anymore is almost as long as the things I like these days, but there are just too many variables, and my budget for candy is pretty small anyway. Plus, we rarely get more than 2 dozen kids, and half the time we take off around 8 to go to a party.

If you haven’t seen It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, it’s worth 21 minutes of your time. I mean, media-wise, the ’60s were a simpler time. There are no explosions, no gore, and nothing the least bit scary, but it’s still a Halloween classic, in its way.

For many months now, I’ve been turning over an idea for another big, serious, depressing comic about my childhood, something that I’ve written about in longer prose work, but couldn’t quite figure out how to frame it in comic format. Today the way in seems to have revealed itself, but there wasn’t a chance to get it started because I went to 6 shoe stores unsuccessfully searching for a pair of minimalist sneakers identical to the pair I’ve been wearing since 2012 instead of drawing a long comic. Maybe tomorrow. Or at least get it started tomorrow, as I now realize that today is only Thursday.

Mountain Lions Love Babies

Leave a reply
What the heck are *you* guys looking at?

What the heck are *you* guys looking at?

There is something, to me, unspeakably comical about this photo of a baby and a mountain lion. The mountain lion is real and alive, behind a thick wall of plexiglass. This mountain lion is relatively young; I remember he came to ASDM when he was still a cub, and he was very active, pouncing all the vegetation in his habitat flat. Once, a couple months ago, a dove flew into his enclosure and he stalked it for a good 5 minutes. He looked just like an enormous house cat: chest down, tail up, hips twitching. However, he didn’t have the slightest clue how to hunt. While a group of humans waited in anticipation, cheering him on (did you know in America it’s illegal to feed live animals to other live animals for spectators who have paid to be there?) he slowly crept forward and then, still a good 15 feet from his prey, pounced.

The bird flew away.

The humans sighed and laughed.

Undoubtedly, that mountain lion would pounce that baby if he found it in his habitat, but since it’s at the window, the mountain lion is used to just looking. Anyway, I know it’s not the best photo I ever took, but none of the other ones from that shoot really blew me away, even when I cropped them. This is the most interesting one from that day.

I think I’ve finally come through to the other side of this sinus infection. Hallelujah! I woke up this morning only slightly congested, took a handful of OTC meds, and was basically able to breathe all day. It’s a modern medical miracle. Last night I seriously thought I was going to have to live with impacted sinuses for the rest of my life. Although I have a zero percent chance of finishing my entire list tonight, I got through a good part of my week’s goals. There’s one more project I can squeeze in tonight.

A Barrel of Monkeys

Leave a reply
Don't be sad. You're still more fun than a barrel of fish or a barrel or pickles.

Don’t be sad. You’re still more fun than a barrel of fish or a barrel or pickles.

When you think about it, a barrel of monkeys sounds like a real nightmare. Once you open it up, the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak. You’re not going to be stuff them back in. There are going to be raucous, unsanitary primates swinging from your chandeliers and diving into your Cheerios.

I guess when you think about it, sliced bread really isn’t all that great either. It’s not like cutting a slice of bread is some kind of major imposition on your time or energy.

The thing that would really improve my life in a way remarkable enough for me to craft a metaphor concerning its greatness would be a housekeeping robot, one that could tidy up and accomplish deep cleaning tasks. My allergies would especially appreciate a non-breathing apparatus capable of dusting on a regular basis. Yes, I intended to clean my office today, and yes, I chose to do something more interesting and meaningful with my time. So it’s a little bit gross in here, but not as bad as it would have been had someone unleashed an actual barrel full of monkeys.