Tag Archives: sick

I Have a Cold

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Ain’t no rest for the wicked.

When I was a kid, I used to fake being sick all the time. I hated school with its rigid rules and social structures, where I was frequently bullied and rarely interested. Middle school was the height of it, and even though my mom was pretty suspicious, I managed to get away with it more than half the time. The old thermometer against the light bulb trick. I don’t think you can do that anymore, not with digital thermometers. The trick with the mercury thermometer was that you had to shake it back down because there was no way Mom would believe in a temperature of 107. The sweet spot is about 101. Too sick for school, but not so sick that you would need a doctor or an adult to stay home and look after you.

Now, of course, I fake being not sick all the time. Like every day if you count ignoring chronic and basically untreatable conditions that affect my performance as I move through the world. But after a couple days of a chest cold, it’s hard to play tough. Yesterday I got through the day (getting up 2 hours early, traveling almost to the border, being on as a speaker for 2 college classes, being on as a friend through lunch with the other speakers, and through the afternoon, and then riding back and then running errands with The Man and then being on for more people and for dinner, after which I was at negative spoons) with a lot of medication along with the help of a handy TENS unit, but I also passed out long before midnight. And today I have more important things to do, and have to keep pretending not to be sick as long as possible. But I still wanted to update my blog with this very important comic before I try to repeat my performance, except with 2 kindergarten classes instead of 2 college classes, and slightly less traveling (but lots more driving).

Just sneezed all over my screen and keyboard. Gonna be a long day.

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.

Babies on Boards

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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.

A Basic Workday Mandala

What you see is what you get

What you see is what you get

This design seems plain to me; had I started it in Photoshop it would feel far from finished. Clearly it wants elaborate dotting to achieve its full sacred potential, but it goes about as far as it can go in its medium. Standard floral motif with a limited color palette. At least I managed to scan a couple weeks’ worth, and I’m pretty excited about some of the mandalas coming up in the next 2 months. There are some really stunning and elaborate designs I’d completely forgotten about.

My sickness is diminished; I can breathe fine and am hardly coughing/sneezing. My 2 straight months of being sick this winter has provided my immune system with a more effective arsenal, perhaps. I was too tired for salsa dancing though.

Not to tired to draw! Hooray! Let’s do that!

Dragon Comics 89

Being inappropriate isn't funny at all. It's serious, serious business. It takes dedication and endurance.

Being inappropriate isn’t funny at all. It’s serious, serious business. It takes dedication and endurance.

This comic and its accompanying blog post brought to you courtesy of I can’t believe I’m sick again and also by Walgreen’s brand cold medicine. Except actually I can believe I’m sick again because airplanes are basically giant petri dishes.

Even so I managed to finish an article about a dinosaur comic and completed the full range of human duties: I cooked, I cleaned, I performed childcare. And I drew this comic, to overall, it’s a win. To hell with you, rhinovirus.

Bonus: also had my modestly nsfw XXXenophile post on Panels today.

Dragon Comics 55

This reminds me: maybe I should change the batteries in the smoke detector. Also, I should clean my oven.

This reminds me: maybe I should change the batteries in the smoke detector. Also, I should clean my oven.

Any excuse to draw cartoonish illustrations of things on fire is all right by me.

Of course, this comic derives from my very exciting Christmas cold, which was made more exciting by the fact that I had literally just recovered from my epic Thanksgiving cold. That seems sort of unfair. Why can my body not create sufficient antibodies to ward off all the virulent viruses in the air? Why am I exposed to so many viruses when I hardly talk to other people? Why isn’t the plural of “virus” “virii”?

Some questions will never be answered.

In panel 2, that’s a pretty original sound effect. In case you’ve ever wondered, the sound of a dragon sneezing due to a head cold is ker-CHOOFSH. Obviously, some part of the sound has to do with things catching fire whenever a dragon sneezes.

In panel 3 and 4, The Man is, of course, wearing a University of Arizona T-shirt because he is, apparently, some kind of wildcat.

Don’t worry about the table. Being magic, it cannot be harmed by dragon fire.