Carcissism

I think there is a gaping hole in the English language where excessive love of one's personal property quietly resides unnamed. Well not anymore! We've all seen these people and their precious automobiles. We're inundated with commercials showing smiling faces on actors and actresses paid to portray this. I'm talking about vehicular vanity, automobile affinity, yes even Carcissism.

And like vanity elsewhere, we're told to be proud of ourselves because of who we are on the inside while at the same time we esteem the outwardly beautiful people too highly. The same is clearly true for our cars. The man in the Corvette isn't driving a vehicle, he's driving a statement about himself. The woman in the mustang isn't driving a grocery getter, she's driving an attention getter. We tolerate to some extent the vain behavior of pretty people but in the same way that we ignore the plain and ordinary faces randomly on the street, we overlook the sedan, the station wagon and yes, the minivan. Well I'm here to tell you to ignore the small voices of superficial people and allow yourselves a little pride of your own. It is your world, however filled with soccer practices and band trips. Relax and take no heed of the roads crowded with sports cars and ostentatious SUVs, there will always be room on the road for your minivan(-ity).

Wouldn't you know it...

I get all jazzed for a comic idea today at work and then a few things happen:

• work goes 2 hours late
• fruitless attempt to send care packages wastes another hour
• my video card does a great job of making me think my $300.00+ monitor is going out on me and rather than test this theory with my $75 15" lcd monitor, I go and take the old 21" CRT beast to the dumpster (though I didn't throw it in, someone else did that for me before I could bring it back inside and salvage a huge cost)
• thus I discover I need to replace my video card which can't handle playing games anymore and my cheap monitor can't be trusted with color accuracy

Note to self: no rash decisions when it comes to computer maintenance and repair. So this weekend I'll probably be off spending anywhere between $125 to $350 replacing at least my video card and possibly my monitor as well.

"Why not do the comic anyway," you may ask.
"Because it is really hard to drop from 21" to 15" and from over 1600x1200 screen resoluton to 1024x768 and still get work done the same," I may sharply retort. I'm hoping to catch a deal on a nice 19" monitor if possible. Unlikely scenario though it may be, I just don't feel comfortable with anything smaller.

Shocking news

This might come as a shock to you, but it isn't easy being funny when you really get distracted by the wealth of time-wasting options available to middle-class Americans, particularly those of the nerdier persuasions who are into this newfangled thing called "the Internet". Take the image added to this post for instance. Is it funny? I thought so at the time and even forced my poor fiancee to take the picture right there in Ikea when the joke happened. She didn't laugh even for a second. Obviously I crack me up so I have to use other people as a barometer for what is worth pursuing as a joke. Therein lies the rub. If you're like me, living in your own apartment, by yourself, with a "serious" job and little social life outside of the weekends, you've got a real problem finding a reliable barometer for your jokes.

With this in mind, the comics that will be posted weekly here are likely to be simple one-panel gags (although hopefully better than the one in the picture). It really has been a long time since I've drawn anything with the intent of being funny. Oh well, if this comics thing doesn't work out for me, I've still got my "serious" job and the ability to hold up 110 lbs with my, well, you know...

Welcome to the once-per-week

So here we are, at the beginning of another year and here I am nearing my 10-year reunion from North Kitsap High School (in far away Poulsbo, Washington). It is a fine time to reflect upon where I thought I'd really be in the intervening years. I think about my plans for career, my ideas for what I'd be doing for fun, with whom I'd be spending my time, and all those things that you think you've got such big plans for when really you have no clue. I once dreamt of being a cartoonist but my cynical nature and distaste for rejection and effort just combined to make that dream impossible. I've done everything but spend any effort realizing it save for a short-lived strip here and there under different titles and with different themes.

I've started thinking that it is about time for me to at least make an effort to do artwork again and stop all the whining and excuse-making. This is not some grand scheme, however. This is my welcome to the once-per-week. Once per week, I'll be uploading a new comic and hopefully learn more about how this hobby can find its place in my life again. I'll be learning how to build an audience, create characters, write story lines, and hopefully have a helluva lot of fun along the way.

Enough talking, time to break out the tablet and get to work...