forget just for men hair paint phony ads, now THIS is realistic.

I know when I personally snayack i also balance a plate with a sandwich on one knee while simultaneously holding another sandwich in a hand and continuing to shove popcorn into my mouth with the remaining hand even while stating that i have problems when i do that, instead of chewing it, thereby causing the popcorn to tumble out of my mouth. How is that the bed’s fault that this guy is a moron? I appreciate that the adjustable bed owner is both aware of and gloating at his counterpart, whom he only refers to as “that guy.” Perhaps that guy’s name is That Guy. He LOOKS like That Guy. In a still picture it looks like his head has been edited onto someone else’s body as a gag to make him look stupid. But this is all natural! I don’t know who he thinks he is fooling with that napkin, he looks like he just hurried over from a dentist appointment, leaving in disgust after being told to cut back on popcorn. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t feel like chewing.

notably, the dork in the craftmatic bed doesn’t have any popcorn, he has a banana! Somewhat more nutritious, much less messy. He also went and got a tray, which definitely isn’t part of the package being sold here. Maybe the problem isn’t so much what bed you buy, more how much of a slob you are. Which isn’t to say I recommend That Guy take up bananas because I am convinced he would find some way to slip on its peel while still in the bed and then blame the bed for it.
even with the disdain he still refers to the product as a “quality flat bed.” Craftmatic ads always use that phrase, consistently, and I never had any clue why. Is the idea that hey, we’re not comparing this electric monstrosity to a RINKETY DINKETY flat bed. The people in those things are so worthless they can’t even get the popcorn in their mouths before dropping it, much less possess the poise to hold a plate on a knee, why would we trust them to complete the payments on one of these?

a “good night’s sleep” is only the THIRD perk mentioned of having a craftmatic bed, even though it is rare to see somebody actually sleeping in one of these advertisements, as they are too busy doing other things that you shouldn’t do in a bed anyway.

The real reason That Guy can’t sleep is because he just drank a bottle of soda and the bed is covered with sandwich crumbs and popcorn. The plate is probably still in there. In fact Craftmatic Guy doesn’t even say he sleeps in the bed, only that he’s “no dummy.” Because dummies advertise hard wood furniture and are slightly more convincing actors because I at least expect them to look unnatural. Then he takes off his glasses and lies back, as if he is going to sleep but obviously he isn’t because the light’s still on and the covers are still off!

years later craftmatic ads still emphasized the fact that you can buy your own eating tray separately even though you can use that tray in a regular bed. You can even use that tray if you don’t have a bed at all! Although more curious is that this man is so well organized that he keeps the bed immaculately made in the absence of his wife nagging him to do that, and is able to climb on to the bed AND set up a tray without disturbing that, yet he also WEARS SHOES in the bed!

there’s that dumb tray again! and the user is actually under the covers for once (presumably entering… to Win!) and so I cannot check for shoes.

the real problem with this advertisement series however is that it fails to disclose the full implications of the curse attached to using one of these beds.

curse in progress. the text calls it a massage and claims it to be optional but I would be curious to interview those who have experienced its effects.

Alas they rarely have much interesting to say afterward. I reckon they didn’t get much CHOICE about turning into dopes! Yet they should have known! Your body doesn’t turn all purple and featureless with lines rapidly going through it when you are being massaged! Right? Well MINE sure doesn’t.


the guy with the shoes, instead of saying “because i already have one” he should be saying “because i do not want to turn into a dope!” i will praise craftmatic for accurately representing how annoying and pushy their unsolicited calls probably are, but transforming people into dopes without their consent is hard for me to get past. And doing it WITH their consent is probably even worse because whoever wants to be a dope obviously deserves to be in jail and Craftmatic should pass that information along.

Hello! I’d like to be turned into a dope? thertainly, thir!
NO! Don’t go along with that request!

Turning into a dope is right up there with transforming into a skeleton, really.

although at least there is no item combination in castlevania circle of the moon which causes the hero to transform into a dope. for one thing since that game was released several years before dopes began appearing in my business that would mean I owed Konami royalties on dopes.

I hypothetically REFUSE to pay! Even IF that would allow me to blame somebody else.

More questions i pondered recently, were craftmatic adjustable beds designed to turn people into dopes or was that an unexpected side effect? and is it worse to BE a dope to begin with or to get turned into one?
AND, assuming it is possible revert a craftmatic’d dope back into a “normal” dumb old imp person, what would happen to a natural dope if the same process were used on it? and what GALL for dopes that weren’t people at one point to assume they are natural, they aren’t. I can’t believe it oh pardon ME dope, do craftmatic dopes FAIL the dope purity test? i can’t stand it who do those dumb dopes think they are? dopes?!

they think they are the MASTER dope race? dopes are so dumb they LOSE every race because instead of moving they just stand around at the starting line smiling at people. that’s right (wrong) KEEP smiling, like you ENJOY this, like you planned it all along, which I doubt you are capable of.

you would need a butler to do it for you! and you have no money to pay one! only the original rich people who transformed into “inferior” sub-dopes have it! ha-ha, ho,ho, teehee humperdink.
actually obscene affluence and servants is the only way all those weird trays, perfectly made beds and pajama-clad freakadoodles who never seem to be out of them make sense. Maybe we SHOULD change them into dopes and kick them out.

I have PROBLEMS when I try to transform into a dope in this quality flat bed!

ARRRRRGH of COURSE you do! Turning into a dope IS a problem! The QUALITY of your bed prevents it! WHY are you trying to do that and WHY are you telling ME about it?! Maybe you’re a dope already!

urf thursrday, friday now? yes yes i have something coming, uesh.
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HOLD it. This isn’t you, it’s an older guy.

this has never happened ONE TIME in the history of cordial police traffic stops. I also question whether cordial police traffic stops ever occurred.

how dare you ask this question!

you fool! they CAN’T!

it is true, i asked this on my own and therefore am calling myself a fool. i cannot expect everything I do to make sense to you!

as dopey as this ad is I prefer it to the other one I wrote about in my previous life or the one I wrote a few years afterward while evidently neglecting to notice and or care that it was the same product. because in the early 1990s ads were still hokey and corny and didn’t mind if viewers laughed at them.

i could not easily find video copies of the ads i took camera pictures of and crummy mp3 recordings of, but this one has the sport oafs at the end of it, evidently in another dimension from the main ad,

in which some dork loses a sword fight because his hair is the wrong color! and the hair wasn’t even visible until he took off the sword fight mask! and THEN after he changes his hair color enough that he gets better at sword fighting his opponent turns out to be wuh-wuh-ZOWIE! itsuh LADY!

a lady with perfectly brushed hair despite having it crammed into a fencing outfit and perfectly made up, sweatless skin despite being in a real sword fight and not a contrived television advertisement. Her hair isn’t even grey and she STILL couldn’t beat a REAL man in a fair fight! Or MAYBE she WANTED to lose *wink hink chortlebleem*. This ad is simultaneously blatantly unrealistic, even beyond the “this is an older guy” ad yet it is much more smug and bro-y about how fake it is.

I do not have a pertinent conclusion ready but here is King Richard from the 1938 Robin Hood film (which features slightly better sword fighting) wearing a real belt as he simultaneously wears an oddly-angled fake version of the same belt which is patterned into his clothing.

I was in Wells, Vermont, then Queensbury, New York, then Wells Vermont again last week to watch other people have a vacation. The following section is largely unrelated to that apart from where the photoglops were taken!

i don’t want to try and deny The Jade Lightbulb or Emerald Lamppost or whatever he’s calling himself a livelihood but “pests” ARE nature’s way.

it really is about time for somebody to TAKE OUT the trash since it seems to be accumulating unnatural characteristics and colors.
I figured out that the object on the left is supposed to be a chicken leg, am not certain if the drink has a face or just the cup, and likewise am not certain which of those is worse.

yes indeed they are STILL here for you on the opposite end of the sign. I suppose i appreciate this proactive approach; i need not worry about them coming for me since they are already here for me. I WOULD appreciate that the artist painted them fresh on both sides rather than printing the same image twice but it is also badly drawn food with ugly faces which I am against even on material that looks edible.

hey look it’s 40 Classic American Grille Oak, the world famous restaurant specializing in wood-based cuisine. It has a slightly lower art budget.

Yeah support local businesses, not multinational corporations that pay millions of dollars for super bowl advertisements every year to push their gross painted sugar sludge at children and adult children. I don’t think it is valid to use guilt as a marketing tactic when you promote yourself with pepsi logos. nor coke logos but those are more likely to be marketed at hokey old people who deserve what they get.

also this it isn’t actually open! but still very pepsi.

religious instruction is getting pretty abstract. the artist has a 1940s buck rogers concept of how space travel works, wearing fishbowl helmets and flying around with flame gurgitating jetpackages that somehow avoid incinerating your feet. Yet the very idea of outer space contradicts just about every biblical statement and subsequent illustration ever made regarding the concept of “the heavens” as being above earth. That can only occur if alternate earths or “dimensions” also exist, and thus this is really depicting more of a 1960s comic book sort of idea, and very much confounding the point! If I had kids I would NOT send them to an institution that deliberately confuses the gold and silver ages. This is outright heresy.

As I understand the multiple earths were introduced primarily to allow writers to take over a character and bring back an older version that they liked better which a previous writer had erased from continuity, and then eventually even the multiple earths started getting their stories rewritten. in fact scriptural accounts of what “heaven” “is” contradict each other just as much, and the persistence of worldwide religions suddenly makes sense to me when I consider them to simply be fandom for ancient cartoon heroes, which I was also very bored with as a small child. I had as much of a choice about going to catholic church thirty years ago as kids these days have about getting elsa and baby yoda shoved at them as soon as possible, probably in utero once technology permits it. I don’t know if it is even POSSIBLE to get baby products that don’t have pictures of mickey mouse or elmo on them unless you go quite out of your way to procure them, or make them yourself, which you probably won’t unless you are Amish or part of a doomsday cult.

something is really unsettling about this ventriloquist puppet. it looks less like it was designed and built than a real person was cursed and turned into it. I presume it either dines at oak grille or is dined upon there.

apparently the character is a local advertising fixture, or the company wants people to believe it is. the ads are incredibly low energy, badly edited and depressing in how zany they think they are.

this is probably the best produced and most openly surreal one they have and it still makes me uncomfortable. That “aren’t we mischievous!” piano music is on all of them, except one that blatantly steals the piano music from charlie brown christmas, which is a substantially worse video but it only features the guy since he apparently hadn’t adopted the puppet gimmick yet and it makes me VERY uncomfortable so I am not linking to it! Despite not bothering to change his voice or disguise his mouth movements while operating the puppet –though sometimes there are weird, slow cuts to the puppet alone with the guy just suddenly not there– he still has a more bearable presence once he is partnered with a pretend person made out of wood, even a fraction of the skill or emotional investment of someone like Paul Winchell. Yes indeed at one point in history this was a legitimate form of entertainment that performers worked at rather than a weird embarrassing curiosity to make people remember what your business is called. It seems to subconsciously communicate: “obviously there is something seriously wrong with this man, you may feel better about yourself in comparison.”

children should not drink alcohol, unless they are chemotherapy patients delivering fav brand wine on a skateboard.

i examined the reverse oriented version on the left side of the car and while the large WINE and LIQUOR text is intact the “artist” neglected to correct the text on the bottle or the hat! How could anyone not notice this? Please, how? I want to not notice and think about stupid garbage like this.

And then I had to recheck the proper version and in fact the hat text is gibberlish. Presumably this image was auto-vectorized from a line drawing by someone not familiar with all the settings or who simply did not care, such as whoever drew it in the first place. The hat would have been better left blank or adorned with another wine bottle drawing WITHOUT letters on it. isn’t this interesting?

eh last week was very boring and unproductive! I have been trying for days to make some sort of update out of what I saw and the most interesting part was driving through

Winhall Vermont, ancestral home of the world’s most famous S.
which I was not able to get a picture of until leaving! I saw it on the entry trip but was positioned improperly to photograph it. Truly I thought about it for eight days. Thankfully it was not detailed as a backwards s on the north-bound side! maybe liquor kid should have one of these on his hat since it is so sensible. Again I would very much like to not think about that.

6-28 310pm the next post yet refuses to be concludable

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I escaped vermont but having something coherent to say about it continues to be unfeasible.

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help I am stuck in vermont

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congratulations, you qualify for a free trial of Guy Fieri. If you decide you are satisfied, thereafter for a modest monthly fee Guy will continue to visit your home and eat your most disgusting food.
I remember being surprised when i learned Guy Fieri actually owned and operated restaurants. I truly thought he was just some guy who drove around eating horrible things, hence him being called “guy.” He looks like how the band Smash Mouth sounds. He looks like Scott Steiner without chainmail or steroids but just as much buffalo wing. In fact Scott Steiner ALSO owned a restaurant. A Shoney’s, admittedly.

i cannot at this time confirm or deny the rumor that Scott Steiner is the original shoney bear but I would like to start it.

he has definitely seen to it that his successor is smaller than and unable to challenge him.

in any event I doubt he invented triscuits like this Guy, who seems to be tossing an enormous, presumably lethal wheat thin at me, perhaps to keep me from leaking the family secrets.

Blogroll | May I have a word with you? | !

this month is, as an increasing number of businesses want to tell me, a “pride month.” Specifically with regard to whom you do or do not want to have sexual relations. But I do not know how to be proud of something that I did not have a choice about or work to achieve, particularly when the things I DID work to achieve I am also often not proud of! Even if I could manage it, experience has shown that no established group represents any of my own interests, especially as more and more of the symbols are co-opted by global corporations that are larger than many national governments. I am destined to be confused and alone! Is it possible I am proud of THAT? I hope not. But I am confused and consequently uncertain.

Contrary to what deviantart and world-class comedian Fortune Feimster suggest, my true self’s pride is not what it creates with, but what with which it distances itself from other people.
i do appreciate that the person i never heard of being shoved at me today by a corporate entity is not a fraction of my age and famous for smirking on youtube or singing shoddy songs, but I still find no fun or camaraderie in marketer-approved activities.

I used the pathetic snake in the illustration because it has and is problems closest to coinciding with my own, despite being subtly different in appearance from my self.
my “regular” characters are extremely proud of themselves but none of them know what “sex” is as far as I am aware. YOU may, naturally, be proud of whatever you want! this here is only about me. and it.

for other websites I named this piece “pride and precipice” because oh how droll it rhymes with the title of a book I never read. But I also realized that

years ago naming this painting “unimprecipe” must have made no sense. i confused “precipice,” a word for the edge of a cliff (specifically a vertical edge rather than the cartoonish, ready-to-crumble overhangs I prefer to draw but nobody knows that) with the evidently non-existent “precipe.” This is otherwise irrelevant to the present subject matter.

a few weeks earlier my mother had sent me a link to “asexuality, the ascent of the invisible sexual orientation” but which seemed to especially focus on “asexual” folk wanting to see more asexual folk on television, and I was not sure how to respond to the link-sender about it, and never did. I am not asking you to read that! I am merely issuing proof that it exists.

I appreciate my mother’s consideration, as twenty three years ago when I first knew I didn’t want to be called he him his, there was absolutely no way to bring up this topic and not encounter misery or mockery. I remember the first time I did I was asked by this person “do you want to be like TOBY?” a ridiculous ‘neuter’ person who had appeared on the Sally Jesse Raphael show, clips of which were subsequently shown and laughed at on the E channel’s Talk Soup program, which we both watched. I did not want to be like Toby. I still do not want to be like Toby.

it’s about 40 minutes, this link is just to prove it exists, I am not asking you to watch it!
Toby is boring and has a boring name, even though Toby’s stated approach to sexual matters and method of responding to people who are far too curious about it is similar to mine. Asexual is not the same as agender but they occupy the same “nobody is selling what I am buying” part of their respective spectrums. AND I don’t want anyone to sell it!

However I am not at all concerned about the more recent self-labeling asexuals’ “representation.” Any group with photogenic representatives will eventually get represented in photography, and they are certainly prettier than Toby. They will get what they want. I do not seek representation, as I do not trust anyone else to achieve it. What I want is to be believed and accepted when I describe my own condition, not have to check a box and not have to choose a flag. Maybe news of self-described asexuals would reach more neuro-normal fans of awful media, and after long enough eventually be believed by them, and make it easier to describe my own problem to them, but that would be a side-effect.

Admittedly I have in the past appreciated fictional characters that are never shown to have outwardly sexual identities, like Samus, Tintin, even dumb old Rygar. I don’t need an official seal of “by the way they’re ASEXUAL!” to appreciate that they do something important without romance screwing things up. And I would continue to prefer them if labeled asexuals started appearing in crummy tv shows, having that be their core defining trait and being exactly like every other annoying complacent smirking jeans-wearing forklogan I don’t like otherwise.
And I do like Olive Oyl, Dynamite Headdy and certain Batmans, who sometimes have their decision-making skills impaired by the appearance of romance potential, because they are able to remain interesting. Sailor Moon is perfectly capable of both fighting evil by moonlight and winning love by daylight. What I don’t like are gross, boring “sex scenes” and contrived pairings, like when a woman and man fight each other a lot and then out of nowhere start kissing, I can’t stand it.

it is the “love” as a completely embarrassing and forced plot device that I cannot tolerate. I may also experience difficulty tolerating the people who tolerate them! Even if asexuals never do this I have every confidence that terrible writers will think of other disconcertingly moronic things for them to do instead.

I can imagine the gay porn test being a quad-annual requirement for renewing your asexual license.

I don’t even like the WORD “sex” and I think “ace” sounds stupid but that isn’t necessarily the fault of anyone I am griping about today.

apparently there are rings you can buy or forge to grant yourself the magical power to not want to do sex. I should be grateful to not need one, perhaps. I suppose the idea is to identify yourself so you can be found and find others with a similar condition without having to be very ostentatious and PROUD. A little black ring is more discreet than a big dumb flag. I don’t like having constricting trinkets stuck to my skin, though. I have never even been able to wear a watch, back when people wore watches. A ring is worse since it will either be too tight or inclined to fall off and get lost, and I would want to constantly fiddle with and adjust it before then.

and now I need a flag to let everyone know I am a fiddler!

very busy tuesday and wednesday. thursday should have a proper update with hopefully most of the text I fussed over on wednesday and tuesday when I was busy and boring not included.

comic page 53 of part 3 of this

as has frequently occurred, I came into conflict between wanting to be accurate with what i already showed years ago that i drew on a whim and what purpose I actually require the already established form to serve. one of the events that occurs at this location requires a hallway, which I wrote without considering I had already drawn a narrow tower. But I suppose it can work in a tower.

and even now i am not certain what sort of business goes on in this place. is it administrative offices? a shopping mall? a hotel? maybe it will never be important and I can avoid being clear. maybe these smiling morons are so dumb that they have businesses that don’t make any sense and I should not attempt to understand or explain.

a rather alarming series of email messages from an old foe. what could they portend?

a peculiar delivery seeming to correspond with the e-mail, but evidently from someone else.

oh no! RYGARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! (the book)
Plus his assistant Rygarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Junior.
to be clear, this guy looks like he is SAYING “Rygar,” I do not have official documentation proclaiming that he IS Rygar, but that seems like something Rygar would say if he spoke in words rather than disapproving game-over jingles.
I hid the smaller Rygar object that I thought was simply a little card with a picture of Rygar on it, because why WOULDN’T there be such a thing, in a stupid place before I went shopping last week, wondering how it would be received,

and it was stuck to a car when I returned. Which is probably for the best because I might never have realized it was a sticker otherwise, and if I had I might have perpetually imagined a superior place to attach it was yet to be revealed, and kept it unjustly out of public view.

The important matter here is that somebody did indeed write a book about Rygar and I bought one. FINALLY a book I can read in public, or at least keep at the ready to show how intellectual and absorbed I am until someone gets close and realizes it is about RYGAR. It is the perfect conversation starter, or if necessary conversation concluder. Perhaps Rygar was Ender’s game all along.

apart from providing more information than any sane person could require about rygar, it is also an effective tool for reminding various people you may know in your own life what rygar has done for them and how much worse off the world could be were Rygar not there to throw his trash can lid on a string at angry turtles.

as the back of the box states, now rygar is battling evil EVERYWHERE. I challenge you to identify a location not covered by that statement.

I became aware of the book when some months ago the author Brian Riggsbee asked if I would like to contribute this piece to the book, which was initially drawn in order to accompany my comments on the Rygar Racing phenomenon that is sweeping the one youtube video I saw several years ago. I certainly was not going to say no. I did however say just about every other thing I could think of about Rygar, and the author at one point thought he might be able to include some of those in the book, but I didn’t realize what a graphic-design intensive tome it would be, so I can understand why space for unplanned contributions from people nobody has heard of, especially ones which don’t take the subject matter seriously, would be at a premium.

It takes devotion to list factual information in the form of this CORNY rygar tower, complete with the creepy lines, those dopey gremlins AND the stupid island up there. I wish every book I bought had Rygar graphics incorporated into its layout. Although in fairness, so far every book I bought this year has. It reminds me of the magical, tragical period when I changed this website’s appearance every month.

Unfortunately there is no DOOR floating there with a ROPE going up to it, but considering how uncommonly tall this variant of the tower is I can excuse Rygar for not reaching the top and playing the dumb bagpipes yet.

excuse me the INSTRUMENT. You are never going to achieve your dream of hosting Jeopardy(!) with that “please be less specific” attitude.

it appears without context, and I wonder if it might be better for that. I WANT somebody to look closely at this and realize that it isn’t quite what the text says it is.

Initially I was a scrap miffed to have my picture that, contrary to what it may seem, I DID think about and work hard on, appear between several examples of people who just pasted or recreated existing sprites for easy internet forced retro-stalgia points, one of whom apparently SELLS them on merchandise by the hundreds through etsy as if that is “legal”. On closer examination the Kari Lyn sprites are retouched as if for a sega genesis release in the vein of Megaman, the Wily Wars and there is purplish gradient lighting on the scenery, neither of which are my particular cup of beans but I can consider some thought went into the presentation. And I don’t know enough about Mine Craft to say if creating an enormous Rygar even with instructions is a simple task, especially with a name like “Slugboi,” meaning a man who has not grown to maturity with the further physical and academic deficits of a slug, but I like the idea of it being visible to other players who weren’t expecting it. ALTHOUGH I think a wise adventurer should always allow and be prepared for such a possibility, but whatever the case people are celebrating the legacy of RYGAR who do not necessarily need to.
I still seem to take umbrage with the collage-person presenting the sunset mountains as awkwardly symmetrical. Maybe the lighting, at least for a still shot with no scrolling, matches where the sun is better, but it could have been done in a way that didn’t look folded down the middle. And besides the foreground pillars AREN’T mirrored to match the sun, even though by being far apart than the mountain graphics it would be less noticeable if they had been! OH!

It reminds me when doom add-on authors would make the sky repeat like that since they couldn’t be bothered to match the edges of the graphic they wanted to use or because they are afraid of the doom engine’s sky-mirroring bug

in fact it may be ideally suited for that!
And anyway having my drawing in that position DOES help it show how I used the sprites for inspiration. Anyone who wondered why I would elect to show the right-most Rygar in such a stupid running pose need merely examine the image before mine to understand that ah of course, Rygar ALWAYS runs like that.

However the left-most Rygar may be in an unorthodox position because the in-game Rygar simply recycles the jumping pose for using the rope-attachment item,

and it only occurred to me this very week that the developers may have intended that to be not a hat but a hand-held object, and the pose may indicate a raised arm. Which is still impractical but a helmet wouldn’t hold up its wearer. UNLESS rygar has the arm up to grasp the helmet. The fact that in some stages he is content to walk into an instant death pit instead of grabbing the rope is just more proof nobody needs that Rygar’s ancient methods are mysterious and not always meant to be understood by us. I always thought of it as a hat because my cousin Patrick told me the item was “The Mickey Mouse Hat” and the game never definitively stated that it was not a hat, and so I continued believing it was one long after I became skeptical of Tecmo deliberately violating one of Disney’s most sacred copy rights. This is Argool, not Etsy! Shirts may not exist here but there are laws.
I was so CERTAIN it was a hat

that I prominently featured it in my extremely important hat video. I have to believe that if it wasn’t a hat the Washington Post would have awarded me four out of four Pinocchios by now, and then I would have had to replace Rygar with Pinocchio, and I can assure you that Pinocchio is battling evil in relatively few locations, and even a dedicated team of four would have trouble covering as much ground, much less groundless areas using their less-adequate hats.
Patrick also told me those red gargoyles in the tower area were “the guy who flies with his pants on” and I believed it, because why would such a guy fly with his pants off? Pants don’t always restrict wings the way shirts do, or would if they existed in Argool, anyway. You need not remark upon the great number of beastly creatures I have illustrated engaging in activities without proper clothing on because I never show them flying!
In those days I knew little of Rygar and readily accepted whatever I was told. But even in 2021, with a scandalous expose at last in print, there are a multitude of facts about Rygar that nobody knows.

For example, were you aware that Rygar started a deviant art account in 2002 and never used it at all? Undoubtedly he has the power to have illustrated the whole book himself but recognized that deviance is a step removed from evil and Rygar will have naught to do with that apart from battling it, but he reserved the account anyway so that no impostor could sully his good name. Or even his less-good name, Steve. I wish I had realized this back in 2010 when I was dwelling in New Haven and would occasionally place take-out orders at Modern Apizza under the name of Rygar. I could claim I assumed the pizza was a new kind of diskarmor but that would be disingenuous.
OR perhaps by being an undead warrior from millennia ago Rygar simply couldn’t figure out how to log in. You know, old people and computers and all.

I wish I had prepared a more interesting illustration (and incorporated more details from the official concept art items), since I certainly drew plenty of boring stuff (furries) for less interesting projects (getting $30) in the time between when I learned of the book and when it went to press. And I already had plenty of old, stupid rygar sketches which I had even scanned and uploaded to a page I don’t talk about earlier the same year in case I or anyone else needed them, and somebody making a rygar book and telling me about it so that I could contribute a drawing is undoubtedly the closest that would ever come to happening! However late last year I was very concerned with moving out of my old residence, which took months to execute on top of the years already spent nudging that process along, and by the time that was settled I figured the book was already being finalized and I didn’t have time to bring anything elaborate to completion.

This may be more important to me than is reasonable!

I am glad to know I am in good company.

Despite primarily talking about ME, I do think that all in all it is a fascinating, well-designed book that I might have even bought if it didn’t have a picture that i made in it and I appreciate that Brian Riggsbee permitted that to occur! I could probably write a book about Rygar, and it would have much less justification to exist than this one, and it is fortuitous that I shall devote that energy into other endeavors.

some of which may even have nothing to do with Rygar.

The might of his diskarmor ranks second only to his guiltarmor.

welcome to stop and shop

It is being reorganized; the one nearer to my previous location went through the same screwy phase last year, but this temporary sign is showing the obsolete 2008-2018 logo from when Stop and Shop was merged with the Mid-Atlantic supermarket chain “Giant,” which it no longer is, so I don’t understand why it is considered preferable to the logoless, proper sign that had been here two weeks ago.

it is a dinstinctily nonsensical logo, reminiscent of the incoherent mass of shapes beside the “L” in the dangelogo, so i noticed immediately when it stopped being used, and again with it reused.

I am getting mixed messages at this store. Or maybe just a mixed mess.

Despite the arrows, or perhaps to spite the arrows, people would blatantly walk the wrong way into the narrowest aisles and then just stand there like The Zax until *I* turned around and go out the opposite way I came in because I want to avoid a fight, which is the only reason I follow the arrows to begin with. I will obey a rule that makes no sense in order to prevent hypothetical conflict but I won’t hold up such a rule when conflict picks a fight with it. I will walk the wrong way over an arrow to get something at the end of the aisle and if nobody is facing me. Overall I want to not do anything that will get me faced.
Yes I drew that stupid header picture for this one bit. I initially intended to put the drawing with this section but I also don’t want a boring photograph of a shoddy storefront at the top of the website I provide to people who ask about my art drawings since somebody did recently and I would prefer such a person to be put off by an actual shoddy art piece.
I postponed finishing this for 2 weeks since other stuff kept happening and the store went and got rid of the stupid arrows and mask policy but the aisles are still a mess, and people are just as inclined to go full speed in a one-cart-wide space and not care if someone is in front of them facing the opposite direction. AND with the mask mandate lifted it did turn out that the person opposed to me was masked and I wasn’t, though I also wasn’t wearing an ugly baseball hat with a stupid slogan on it. Additionally I was not naked, sticking my posterior end out needlessly nor standing in a Charlie Chaplin pose, so disregard the rumors.

What kind of loser would drink this?
I couldn’t tell if twitter people who saw this a few weeks ago thought I was legitimately accusing seltzer drinkers of being losers or they simply don’t think napoleon jokes are funny. I do share a home with two seltzer drinkers and I greatly prefer when they DRINK the overpriced, fouled bubble water rather than pour a little bit into another drink and leave the cans all over the place.

Charmin is great toilet paper if you buy that for companionship
and for bad math but that seems to come standard at this point.

dumb fact: I have had charmin toilet paper in my house approximately one time, last april, at the height of the bogus toilet paper shortage when that was the only brand left in the store because everybody in town recognizes it is inferior at its primary stated purpose and also thoroughly incompatible with all the septic tanks common in a seaside locale that used to be all farms. Supposedly it was “septic safe” and my guess is they determined that by flushing one square and observing that the house didn’t explode. I likely used most of it for blowing my nose and diverted my strategic toilet paper for nose blowing reserve to active restroom duty.

apparently plumbers have particularly heavy excrement which makes them ideal test subjects

hey you want chips? you’ve come to the right six different places

two of which even say “chips” on the aisle markers

you want 50 percent discounts that don’t register when scanned, that the service desk will say will register at checkout, which don’t, which the attendant will key in an exception for but that the actual store manager won’t see the big deal about leaving mislabeled and having less-attentive customers pay full price for? apparently I do because I still shop here and simply took two and unscanned one the last time this happened because I didn’t want to need to show anyone that I was buying hamburger helper, much less making a fuss about not saving one dollar on it. It usually happens on stupid products, like 2 pound bags of york peppermint patricias or cans of cat food. The latter of which isn’t inherently embarrassing but I don’t want anyone thinking that I personally approve of the cat’s actions.

this discount was also fake but fortunately the math still worked out.

there are occasional “random” audits triggered when attempting to check out, which prompt an employee to approach your purchases and rescan them until the computer says they can stop which fortunately hasn’t bumped up against my personal manual override of their broken pricing system yet.
at the TIME i was buying these in single serve containers because I kept making the 64 ounce size go bad prematurely by chopping up bits of lemon and dropping them into the bottle to improve the flavor which I didn’t immediately realize was responsible for spoiling the fluid early. I have a great many personal tricks that don’t actually work because I do not know how to do proper research. For example, I have on occasion considered that the creature nemitz, while an inexcusable crumbum, might be compatible with the concept of plush toys, but imagined mits possession of horns would be a problem. However some time in 2019 my then four year old neice violet showed up with a stuffed animal that appeared to be a mixture between unicorn and octopus and it had a horn which looked rigid but was collapsible and i tried to poke my own eye with it and it didn’t hurt, and was difficult enough to seem like it wouldn’t happen by accident, which would presumably not-hurt slightly less, which meant an accurate doll nemitz was perhaps feasible, if not at all justifiable. I am inclined to believe there was a better way I could have determined how safe it was to jab my own eye without actually doing that.
Also the reason I didn’t post this two weeks ago was because I meant to find that unicorn octopus doll in this house so I could photograph it, and I didn’t, and then I forgot. Absolutely nemitz’s fault.

ALSO even that iced tea purchase is also outdated, because I have lately been so inclined to augment the iced tea I buy with additional lemon or additional tea I decided to just make my own full pot of it, today. Eh my concoction needs some tweaking, and I don’t think i saved any money yet either because it meant I had to buy a pitcher, I found one here, for $14. When I went to remove the internal components to wash it before using it, I discovered they were broken. When I went back to return and replace the item, knowing that the longer I put off doing that the more it seemed like I broke it, I found the four of the remaining pitchers ALSO had the same part broken.

However Stop and Shop is still a better store than Shop Rite, a substantially better store than Price Chopper, has very good deli meats and self-scanning machines that greatly improve the overall experience. I just like to complain.

There is always someone to blame.

ah ha 18 hours later I thought of a purpose for this scene while sketching out the next nemitz-lope-elpse page, as it helps set up something else “story”wise that I was not certain how to set up, so I likely will include it or a piece of it. Kumquat WAS the original main character, and it seems to me now bizarre that I would consider omitting a scene containing that character when they are already in short supply simply because it contained no action, but I don’t like when people in fictional media stand around talking for prolonged periods, even if it has some amount of relevance, . i prefer for information to be delivered while something else is happening. This was hardly kevin smith “characters in movie talking about another movie” level unnecessary but if I were close to that I would quit making this comic strip and simply go partake of whatever commercial item i was having the characters talk about, because it would mean my passion lay elsewhere and passion is what keeps a slow, free, silly project like this going.

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The past year ish, apart from the dumb virus and dumb trump club has preferred me to spend time on things other than the bimshwellian comicoid, which itself is sending me mixed messages about how to complete the next section. Sometimes i have characters theoretically argue with each other and that gives me clues but this one doesn’t seem to be reaching a conclusion. at first I thought it was a needless exchange that didn’t necessarily need to be included, then it seemed like it might go somewhere, then it didn’t. I definitely don’t want to draw 40 consecutive panels of just kumquat and yibric talking about nothing, but also sometimes additional details that come to me while drawing the panels help point me toward a more meaningful version of the exchange. I can postpone this part since it is separate from what other characters are doing, but I am also postponing the next part with the gnomes in the lizard’s apartment, because I am not sure which or how many to draw in there, and if there should be a neutral page of them in there before what I want to happen to them in there occurs, and that can’t happen until after the next dumb things that the lizard does.

I colored yibric’s lines but not kumquat’s because the html code is tedious and if you had difficulty visually distinguishing colors there is no way you would have been able to follow my pictures-in-boxes mess up to this point.

1 Hey kay kay, the stuff’s not here. I found the darts but no glob.
I warned you never to call me that!
2 is that your prime concern about this?
should I be concerned?
3 you said to deal with “the rest,” I figured the absence of the rest would mean something
it may mean that elpse has reabsorbed the material
4 and…?
we therefore need not clean it up
5 i think you are being deliberately silly in an attempt to antagonize me
hm hm hm the tables have turned!
6 if elpse reabsorbs the material then your antidote failed!
OR you sabotaged my antidote!
7 why would I do that?
I do not know why you would do that
8 there fore, lacking evidence, you have no foundation to accuse me of having done that
I did not accuse, I merely supposed
9 well suppose you hurt my feelings, would you like that?
I have feelings! You have schemings! And you brought this up anyway!
10 fine then I drop it! let’s go!
FINE then! We will go!
11 then we are harmonious!
then why do I feel so sad?
12 (because I actually DID sabotage the antidote! Tee hee heap!)
you had better not be think-laughing at me!
13 hey look it’s the dope
indeed
14 don’t you think it is strange to find the dope out here?
not exactly. It probably climbed out of the goop pool on my partially submerged chair and followed elpse thinking elpse was a dope because I injected elpse with with the same material from which dopes were made.
15 you have a strange perception of what isn’t strange
AND as I also inject myself with dope material I much prefer it to follow elpse, which it should continue to do following your meddling.
16 you COULD just blast it with its yellow antidope. why were you keeping it?
I was keeping it away from me!
17 OKAY BUDDY then why bother trying to uncurse elpse if you don’t care that you failed?
I was testing my creation, and that concluded the test! Your deed has foiled elpse, not me.
18 pog would see it differently
pog is ignorant of the specifics and will see what I show.
19 pog’s judgement matters to you! Why not my own?
because YOU relish it! Pog suffers from compassion.
20 I may tell pog
to spite me?
21 pog will regard me as morally superior to you
you are not
22 hence why I can do that without any psychological consequence. What is your excuse?
I do not need to explain myself to you!
23 how do you explain you to you?
I avoid doing so.

I don’t much know why I bother counting because it is the amount of dialog and the complexity of the drawings that dictate how many panels should [reasonably] be on one page, not simply how many times I require myself to draw each set of characters. In the past I have mentioned that planning for 16 frames consistently fails because I always want to cram in more than I initially expected and planning for 12 is safer. And also I have had to re-edit plenty of too-cramped pages into slightly larger numbers of slightly less cramped pages already. And ALSOer when reviewing other RECENT pages, to try and re-determine where I was in this and which lines from the terribly disorganized script document i had already made use of, the ease with which I could read the dialog varied considerably, despite my belief that I had greatly increased the clarity over what was acceptable to me back when I had the first comic book made. These pages were made fresh AFTER I had broken up earlier crowded pages, meaning I carried the awareness that such a situation should be avoided going forward, and I plainly have failed to avoid it! I shall need to break up and re-compile many more. 16 may simply be too many panels for one page, even a well-planned page, if I insist on hand-lettering them, and obviously I do. I could stand to fuss less over varying the letter styles because I lack proficiency in that despite nearly 20 years of experience. I may need to limit how many strange things that nobody else does that I do in order to have any hope of making this production coherent outside my mind. And once in while I even do break some of the obsessive compulsive habits that drive this forward without sending it off the road to its death. Instead it comes to a solid halt in the street. Nobody else drives on this street. It is lonely but it means I have time to fix this atrocious metaphor.