In frak after all that, I still have not encountered, through the inadvertent channels I encounter everything else in, a solid case made FOR Clinton. Only against Trump, and in such an event people were never going to unite behind one opposition force, and trying to shame people into abandoning their alternate opposition was also never going to work. And Clinton still won the “popular” vote, because all that comes across is how popular she is and how good she is at knowing popular people. In New York and California. So make her president of New York and California. Ha ha ha I assure you the longer and bloated this post gets the less likely I am to make another!
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With regard to my freak-up last week, I think The Media owes people either impartial reporting or a clear presentation of its biases. But they tend to assume that is not necessary and that their audience is already of one mind with them. Because they have to sell advertising, and advertisers need specific targets. Television news is complete trash. It was never presented to me as: here are the facts on these candidates.” It always came across as “our candidate is cool and we’re cool and you can be cool too! plus oh oh oh she’s a lay-deh” I suppose I should have put THAT in the spiteful little comic strip but the exact sources for each of my frustrations have been difficult to determine.
If Trump is dangerous, that ought to have been reported, and reported how so, not just show the Clinton club’s latest stupid celebrity selfie stunt. I don’t understand how I become a like a pariah for refusing to support either of them, given this climate of non-information.
I realize my current stage of distrust and discomfort came about in part to riding a hype wave to electing Obama. I wasn’t closer to any of those people afterward and felt let down by the result, and I hated myself for letting myself be led. This time, I rejected the hype wave, but I still hated myself because I have so many people around me who continued to ride the hype wave that seems to be the dominant public opinion. The difference is that I hate myself based on my own choices rather than inheriting them, so this is better, I think, I hope.
I am not scared of Trump, I am scared that I have no soul. Once I sort that out I will get back to you. Obviously I am white and in Connecticut. You know I am so bent up by this I keep forgetting that I didn’t actually vote for the guy or say a single bloody thing in support of him at any point. He is a goon. Maybe I just subconsciously relate to goons. Is my personal problem the biggest threat to the country? It IS because it underlines that I want to fight almost everybody for silly reasons. But I don’t fight them and I still want to. I don’t know any white supremacists but I know loads of people who are paranoid about white supremacists and really smug about condemning them and looking conspicuously angry about them, like that’s a challenge.
Breaking: the cast of Chess has vowed to take on Mike Pence’s support for a federal flat tax if he ever comes to Sweden.
I have no recollection of ever lacking for hamilton news, but i appreciate that it recognizes its solvency and would draw a line in the sand like that, and I don’t know what a dork like Mike Pence is thinking will happen when he attends a liberal mass service like that in person, and then when he tries to walk out while it’s happening. It’s like a scene from Rent.
One more redrawn page.
I did not consider that when redrawing old comic pages it may turn out impossible for elpse to be holding nemitz in the depicted manner.
I also did not give deep consideration to whether I should replace the psychedelic patterns in the doorway here. Initially, it should not surprise you, I had not yet designed an interior for the room. Now that I have one, it is less interesting to show that than the pattern. However, it is less distracting and confusing. As bland as it looks, if were to REDESIGN the room, then I would OBVIOUSLY not do it until after I drew this page!
the tower on an isolated island on the next page is a problem. every other exterior shot suggests a group of stupid little dome houses with just trees behind them. HOWEVAH
Why am I so obsessed with proving other people wrong who do not really have different goals than I do? Because they are proud of themselves, greater in number, back each other up and treat me poorly. I think it might come down to that, and maybe it always has. I cannot devote energy to being afraid of the president-elect since I am too preoccupied with being afraid that I have no soul. If I ever sort that out perhaps I will get back to you.
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Oh but you want to know my thoughts about the united american election, right? Statistically speaking, you probably do not!
I was writing something item by item as it happened but then afterward it turned into a different story.
People love to blame Ralph Nader for W.Bush’s election, some of them more so than they blame Bush for being awful or Gore for not being better.
So instead of doing anything to alter how the system works, we shamed people who refused to go along with it. And by gorby we did it once, we can do it again.
You can grow up to be anything in America! But don’t you dare try and vote outside these two colored boxes.
I must acknowledge that without the insincerity and corporate synergy Hillary Clinton would be more appealing to ME, but would never have gotten this far.
I relate to Hillary Clinton because nobody relates to her except when she is totally fake. She changed everything about her public demeanor to help Bill Clinton’s political career, including changing her own name. It was a political liability for a husband to have a wife who kept her original name. Although perhaps that fakeness has become natural to Hillary by now.
When all the celebrities of society, especially the terrible musicians, whose influence leaves me unable to relate to a majority of the apparent population, become synonymous with a political candidate, it is hard for me to be enthusiastic. Even if that seems fickle to you, that these things are unrelated, I say they are related. The point is that I am meant to feel like I am one with these people, and these are all people that keep me alone in groups. You preach diversity but are of one mind where culture is concerned, and I objectively dislike the most highly promoted items. beyonk, ga-ga, adel, bruce stringbean, new bon jovi, I cannot listen to this. I cannot get in on this message of “love” from people who ignore or diminish me when I love something else.
I noted around 7pm that somebody had accidentally switched ABC’s live election feed with an episode of MTV Total Request Live from 1998. I didn’t want Trump to win, but I enjoyed seeing chummy smirky news people suddenly more reserved and analytical once it appeared less inevitable that their pre-coronated Clinton was going to win. I loved seeing their stupid, stupid years of speculation turn to mush on live television. I relished seeing THEM lose. I relished seeing this alliance of overconfident scumbags uncertain they would get their way. I wasn’t getting my way whatever the case, and I am not convinced their way is best. And I say that as somebody who has felt held down and alienated by republicans my whole life. The obsession with religion, the demand that I feel a certain way for certain things, the dismissal of some forms of expression as invalid. Now both parties represent that to me. So I just want whichever one is more insufferable at present to lose, but without really wanting either to win I did not feel like I had a stake in this. But I did not vote for Trump. It wouldn’t have made a difference if I had but I would never have.
Stephen colbert announced that his election night show would be LIVE on the showtime channel. Not saying anything resembling an apology for viewers who don’t have access to Showtime. Because we who don’t buy and don’t buy INTO everything are not considered real people. Just like the Throneger Games and the Soprano show, programs that require a year’s HBO subscription to get less than one new episode per month, it is presumed that if you aren’t in the club to whom that is reasonable, you don’t matter.
The night before that, Colbert had a lengthy musical piece equating a lack of desire to vote [for Clinton, who was not named during the piece] as a lack of desire to vote at all. And of course Hamilton came out at the end to win the day with rap because hip hop always wins because nobody is allowed to not be totally into it. But thankfully it was the replacement Hamilton that is less irritating despite copying the first one’s weird anachronistic facial hair.
I can’t believe ten years ago I felt like I knew this guy. Although ten years ago I thought I knew zartan and ukuhawa and bridgeportcat and it was three more years before I thought I knew science fox and you can wager none of them are talking to me ever again (although to be fair they aren’t likely talking to each other either). Am I just getting worse? (although if you are reading this please talk to me I will call you whatever name you want those are just the ones I used to call you if I mentioned you and you can call me or roneldo or john jacob jingleheimer skrimpf if you want to). Sometimes I feel like I cannot know myself and anybody else at the same time. On the internet, anyhow
As far as I have come in 15 years, I am back at how I felt: It isn’t all about New York, and it isn’t all about Los Angeles, even if that is where all the tv comes from.
There is the old part of me that thinks “oh no, democrats are losing!” but the newer part of me that didn’t see conditions improve when democrats won is uncertain how it feels.
“What this says about our country is horrifying,” a manner of statement I have seen a bunch. What it says is that no attempt is made by democrats to appeal to people who aren’t already on their side. And republicans don’t have to because their fanbase has always been more enthusiastic about voting, with better access to doing it. And they are accustomed to voting for cartoon characters. I said almost a year ago that I hoped Trump would be nominated so the party would eat itself alive not keep him out. I underestimated their ability to get behind The Party WHATEVER the cost. Even when loads of them say they won’t, they do.
It IS depressing seeing all these people despondent on twitter and thereabouts, even though prior to then I never shared in their joy. I suppose I just don’t relate to that. I know how sadness feels. I don’t know how it feels to be moved to tears over this, but I cry over things that they would never understand.
Trump of course was accused by Theodore Cruz during the campaign of having “New York Values.” And he DOES. He lost that state but he won the states who don’t realize that putting yourself first and never admitting fault are the quintessential New York Values.
Looking back to that first picture from New York City, that sums it up. “Look, all these people in NEW YORK CITY are happy, why aren’t you? There must be something wrong with you!”
I cannot support that. BUT it was not my thinking that did this. It turns out when there are two enormous groups furious at each other, they hate you even more if you refuse to unconditionally agree with either. The “with us 100% or you’re the enemy” attitude is very w-bushy. What is funny is that people who have a problem don’t actually disagree with me, they just think I disagree with them because I am not on board their socially-mandated mourning barge, even though I never have been. I wasn’t on September 11 2001, I sure as shingles am not now with regard to a man that has not actually killed somebody, however many he has groped or bankrupted. I survived two bushes and half a Reagan, can we really say this is worse before it has even happened? There are thugs in this country, and there are thugs in France and there are thugs in Russia. There are thugs in the world. There was a thuggish racist movement in this country before Trump got involved. They probably voted for Trump. And they probably voted for Mitt flippinmitten Romney because paranoid people who think the segregated water fountain period were the good old days because they had reduced awareness of world hardship at that time compared to now have gone with republicans my entire lifetime. Trump is himself thuggish but he did not create the thugs. Why do I care about this? Because this is not something that instantly came into being, and you were not going to instantly stop it. There is loads of outrage over failure to use a solution that was not actually there.
Of course it was Trump-attituded policies that likely brought about 9/11, but then make that case, please, I want to say to people. We ought to not assume everybody has the same context as we do when it comes to things like this. Try and have some empathy even when speaking of people that you presume have none. You cannot call millions of people morons and expect them to get along with you. Unless you are Trump. I think all that “haters gonna hate” swagger which the youth supposedly espouse fits Donald to a T[rump]. He wouldn’t be a billionaire without shoving his name and face everywhere with no regard for anyone else’s feelings. He seems to me more careless than hateful. Now that he is being briefed on things he seems to be, as I expected, increasingly aware that none of his ludicrous promises are feasible, or maybe he knew all along. So those unhappy about the election can at least see how it feels when the other side gets let down by the silly stuff they believed. Guantanamo Bay Prison is still open for business, but we aren’t going to start banning all Muslim immigration either! Hip hap hoorosh. The candidate got the party in power, and the party takes over with precisely what it would have done whoever was there. We might as well vote in Dennis Rodman; he at least has been to North Korea. I don’t think President Obama has even been there.
Be sad or afraid if you are, but please do not make it a contest to be saddest or afraidest, especially at the urging of a retweet chain.
The question i need to ask: was it my job to vote for Hillary Clinton or Clinton’s job to make me want to vote for her? If I had, I would have hated myself. If I had voted as I did, for Jill Stein of the green party, but claimed I voted for Clinton to join the party on facebook, I would have hated myself. If I had actually voted for Clinton, and if everyone else who voted as I did ALSO voted for Clinton, she still would not have won, because there was not a single state that Clinton lost where the number of votes the green party got was greater than the amount Clinton lost by. Gary Johnson the Libertarian, however, took a considerably larger bite of the total, and every libertarian I ever knew –granted, just one person– was a republican otherwise.
And if you go back in time and prevent Bernie Sanders from being sabotaged and change nothing else, who knows what irrational unaccountable jiu-jutsu Trump club would have dumped on him? And then you would probably see hard corn Clinton backers going libertarian because Clinton was always the foregone conclusion and Sanders was too liberal and unrealistic.
You will believe being silently unwatched by 4 people on twitter who don’t even consider you a valid enough human to disagree with and risk realizing you don’t actually disagree with them the same day, while also receiving no input from anyone else can send somebody over the edge. I have had to repeatedly remind myself that I didn’t vote for Trump because I find myself being mentally defensive of stuff that I think people are aiming at me because they think I did even though I plainly said I voted for Stein. It is bloody absurd. This is dumber than high school, and high school was extra dumb for me.
And I figured out who they were, too, nobody who should have had any problem with me. You might think it insane that I try to determine who they are, but that helps me ascertain why they did it, and if there was anything I could have done to prevent it, or if there would be any point to, if they would just overinterpret something else later. These people, they didn’t even know me and they didn’t care to try. Except one sort of did, and still dumped me without a single word, and that hurts. It isn’t as bad as fearing for my life, but what is that life worth? This amounts to feeling: I don’t matter, and nothing I try can make me matter. Please understand, I do not relate on a mass scale. I relate personally. And how many others have not taken the step to numerically shun me but have censored me, again without checking if I meant what they thought I did, with the mute command? And who else are they doing that to? That is just dirty. That does not aid discourse or clarity. I am a real person, not an episode of Blue Bloods.
With that said, if I have not opted to follow these accounts myself, do they really owe me any level of regard? Maybe not, but I end up thinking they do since it IS to me a big deal when I do opt in like that. It means I believe in this person and their content to a degree beyond what I would by default. It means I have a desire to be close to this person in this medium. And when I give up on it, I have a reason for that also. Even if it is a stupid reason. If somebody were to ask why I could say: because I don’t like when you talk about the digestive enzyme fluid generated by people’s mouths. I should go to bed.
Perhaps this is old news in the electronic communication realm but this is the first time I could articulate exactly why it hurts me personally. This is a real issue for me right this moment. Communication barriers are important. How often is this happening every single day over dumber slights than this? And I unwatch others for fickle reasons. Like stuff nobody could ever guess. But generally it has to be personal. Sometimes I resist doing it because I think it will come across as hurtful. Is this the mindset of a hateful person? I hate to th- oh well there we go.
Maybe if I spent more time styling my toothbrush and raising awareness of the end of the alphabet I would have less time to dwell on things like this!
A new music “video” that is perhaps best off only listened to!
The music was started in 2011, and “finished” the past two weeks.
Initially I intended to use just one picture, but it did not match the horizontal frame orientation, so I needed it to scroll. But that created the impression this was a “video” and not just music, so I added a few more drawings. They seemed to linger on the screen for too long, so I extended the theme to every picture I had of a dangerous or scary vegetable. Later it became any picture of a vegetable. I have observed that the increased amount of motion has reduced the acceptable length of time that anything can NOT move before I feel uncomfortable looking at it.
And so, the NEXT time I upload music, it will just be one picture, alright? Great.
You know what would really hit The Spot this night? Some chunks. Boil me up a big bowl of chunks and I’m a happy camper. Or should I say chunker? I believe I shall. And why stop at dinner? Who is to say you can’t pack a satchel of chunks each day and have em for lunch? That’s assuming you aren’t like me and generally chunk-drunk by noon most days. And well gollybollywood they’re already frozen, put little sticks in them and have yourself a handy grandy chunky desert. Benjamin and his esteemed colleague Gerald are not the only ones with claim to the chunk name where frozen confectionery are concerned.
Do not try and unload on me any of what you call “nuggets,” “strips” or “fingers.” Those are childish, perhaps barbaric names for unaffiliated fragments of meat. These aren’t your average every day chunks scraped off the road, these are premium chunks scraped off a stain glass window. We grilled these esteemed distinguished chunks before we dumped them in a sack and froze em.
And florian helmberger do they taste big! These were guaranteed to cause synesthesia in laboratory animals. Now they can taste size, see sound, smell your deepest secrets and feel like wet stringy rubber in your mouth. Good night and good chunks.
another redrawn comic page. Much more orderly dialog than before! And no bauble stems that cross each other, although a few routes are lengthy, which perhaps some day I will decide is even more distracting. Yes yes I do like how the wordage and containers are laid out here. How did i ever think that old way was acceptable? Even if the last seven days of effort gain me no scrap of respect from one other person, I like having so many neatly-arranged colored sentence boxes.
Originally, on this and the next page I just colored under the pencil drawing, with a few touchups, to speed things along, since it was taking me weeks to do them the other way. But I had to do this one like that anyway! Oops. But this only took one week. So with about ten weeks left in the year, I should be able to get the second book printed, provided I do no other things. However, I have to do other things. Gosh I have to get up now to dump extra water into an electric cat water dish that starts to make weird noises if the water goes over a certain point that becomes closer to the brim of the dish as the filter breaks down and needs replacement. But I don’t know where you buy the filters, so I have to order some more, and I don’t want to register my own email address with any of these dubious pet supply websites, identify myself to marketers as a pet supply buyer thereby sentencing myself to junk email about pet supplies until the earth crashes into the sun, nor pay the shipping cost on this that probably exceeds the posted $7.99 price of replacement filters. Because I hate having cats and hate spending my own money on them. But nobody else will do it even though it is presumably for another human’s sake that cats continue to be kept on the premises. So imagine that every aspect of my life is like that. Outside of these lovely dialog containers. I have brought them under my control.
I cannot recall previously being this aware of how absurdly large i had drawn elpse’s feet.
page 18 of part 3 of the bimshwellian comicoid. This sure took long enough to get to, and finally resolves a matter that has been up in the air for too long. And now I must go back to the past to rework old pages because it was my intent last year to have the second small book version complete within this year. I have within this year tended to a number of long postponed matters, and ordinarily would consider that justification for postponing a less postponed project, but I actually printed inside the first book that the next one was “Available 2016″ so that makes it closer to law. Even though I added *hopefully” afterward. Hopefully does not mean “no self-imposed psychological consequences for failure!”
I am so tired and busy that I have only a faceboor post to link at to attempt to explain why that is, roundabout there. It pertains to an art show that I also pertained to last year, for it seemed pertinent to my attempts at being a slightly less illegitimate figure.
There are 63 individual print designs hanging up presently. And that does not include the cheap ones I am going to stick wherever they will fit or the few paintings I had the patience to bring in. I want to over-load people with this. There shall be no chance of somebody glancing in, dismissing it as simple frivolity and getting out of there. I shall force everyone to see how deep and varied my frivolity is.
Website, you know you are very important to me. The fact that you are the only stupid internet trinket I have not updated this week should not be seen as neglect. That means I know you can handle not being the center of attention. It means I TRUST you with RESPONSIBILITY. And I also trust you to not demand additional compensation for the increased expectations I have of you. That is life, website! And you are not truly alive anyhow! You are lucky I gave you anything! Now get in your room and practice! I want to hear those scales! Get in there NOW!
I am SHOCKED and OFFENDED by Donald Trump, suddenly. I was really hoping he was going to put this jerky, misogynistic behavior behind him, but then he had to go and be even worse last decade. I didn’t support him through 2015 by scrutinizing any single thing he ever did or said, after ehhh. If I can’t hold him to a higher standard off camera eleven years ago than I could in plain view last week, how can I ever trust him?
Also, I am withdrawing my support for Jeffrey Dahmer because I just read that he was into necrophilia.
Worse, it turns out that reporters for Hollywood gossip shows are soulless smirklords who will march in any direction they are turned and nudged in. Who would have thought that caring who Angelina Jolie is married to requires a distinct lack of discretion and earthly purpose? Who would have thought that a member of the Bush family will put on any suit of opinions necessary to appease the richest person in any location?
Middle School colon The Worst Years Of My Life might look like regressive uninspired trash but it is in fact based on the writer’s real life experience watching terrible movies about going to school.
In old bimshwel days I would look up who the actual writer was and try and make a point, but I am so detached and frazzled these days I cannot even be certain I am writing this now, which would not be good form when that writer took offense and tried to make me feel bad in my comment section.
Also, I posted this on faceboor last Sunday for some reason:
I saw the Saturday Night Live season premier for some reason I cannot wholly justify.
I think the program is in trouble when its only memorable characters, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are just celebrity impressions and played by actors who aren’t in the cast or any other sketches.
Of course Saturday Night Live has been in trouble for about 75% of its existence, as 3000 nearly identical retrospective clip shows will remind you.
But does the present cast have any hope if all the attention, and presumably most of the money, goes to Alec flippindippin Baldwin?
Gosh is it fair to the actual credited host? Who even was that? I do not remember.
There was a sketch called “political family feud” that was just a mash of 9 different impressions with no time for a point.
And most of the camera time went to Kenan Thompson, who has been there for 13 years, and Darrel Hammond, who I guess just lives in the building now.
There was a Lin-Manuel McHamilton impression that was amusing just because they dared to mock that guy at all, but it didn’t really go anywhere and immediately afterward a notice stated that he is the host NEXT week, which means if that impression shows up again it will be in one of those character-meets-self sketches, which got old before I did, or far far worse, the impression meets real person and apologizes sketch, which should never have even happened once.
This is the kind of garbage MadTV was doing before it got cancelled. I distinctly remember a Buffy the Vampire sketch in which all these different characters had impressions done of them for one line but then just had to stand around dorkily while Buffy talked to Stuart or Ms Swan or whoever.
I realize I said television was “dead to me” a while back and it is. This means I do not watch shows on purpose and no long aspire to be on them or acknowledged by people who are through twitter. This makes an embarrassingly large difference.
I must also give credit to Bobby Moynihan, who joined the show right before I stopped deliberately watching it back in 200x or so, and 1) is also still there and 3) still hasn’t done anything I remembered afterward. The show in general is yet doing the exact same Kristen Wiig-style awkward chatter schtick it was back when I realized I wasn’t enjoying anything. Which would be fine for it if every ad on television and every movie in theaters (and likewise every ad in theaters) weren’t also doing it. And there is no sense to doing Jimmy Fallon-style no joke but the actors are laughing schtick either because he also has an equally non-innovative program on the same channel five nights a week.
Saturday Night Live’s only goal at this point is to stay on the air. It doesn’t have aspirations; it has a LEGACY, and more importantly no viable timeslot competition. It won’t die until somebody shoves a wooden stake through Lorne Michaels’ heart surrogate organ.
Oh deef what is this
Is it fair to joke about something that killed 300 people and destroyed 3000 homes? As long as it hasn’t killed anybody in the US yet, apparently.
Also apparently, it is better than my personal best. Far less depressing!
The hurricane edged me out by 0.13 points.
If you liked this, you obviously hate yourself, so here’s some stuff to help you realize you could be worse off.
Ah ha and this here is the original vector source of the tou yube video. I did not bother to make a fancy “loading” graphic since the knowledge of how to make them only temporarily took residence in my mind twelve years ago but I assure you it has the capacity for movement after a wait that on most modern internet connections will not be as insufferable as it would have been twelve years ago. And otherwise you can “save as” it and suit yourself that way.
It is not nearly as strange as it ought to be for something that barely makes sense, but it is fun to look at, and not very long. Rewriting it to make sense was not an option since I do not know how to make sense without copious dialog, it seems. I personally think it makes more sense than the film Eraserhead and is over a heap of a lot faster, and people love that miserable thing, so mine is valid to a degree.
Also, while reassembling the sound outside the animation Flash software, since flash’s export functions are inadequate for anything practical and always require post-production, I saw to it that the volume level did not enter the red zone at any point. However, I did not check the volume relative to any other noise-making process inside my computer machine and consequently it seems rather loud. So please be aware of that.
“Snakes” since several years ago I wanted to make a demonstration animation in a hurry, and I figured finishing something that was fairly easy in 2012 would be yet easier than that in 2016, and would not delay other matters much, and therefore was eminently worth doing. Despite being completely wrong, I made similar equally wrong estimations on several other projects that I let distract me from THIS one between January and this present point, not all of which reached displayable levels of functionality. And now that I am here, with one more that IS, it does not feel as nice as I thought it would, but it is better than I felt yesterday.
It is fun to look at.
Not for ME, now that I am unable to make alterations, and thus more able than ever to detect errors that require correction, but theoretically other humans might find value in it. Goop night and good muck.
It is fine to experiment with ideas whose relatability or comprendability are uncertain, but do not commit to laborious coloring methods for them. I just got through saying not to tighten the humor out of the artwork, and then went and did something that is almost as bad.
The Donut Trump Skittles story is a ruse to distract from the real insult that Skittles at some point replaced good old lime with an awful apple flavor.
And if you want the lime flavor, you need to buy a bag that ALSO has a lame apple flavor in it. And Death too, apparently. Combined with the orange that’s two duplicate flavors and one flavor that should be in the red bag in the green bag. Inexcusable! Some brands of gummy bears did the same thing, which I complained about years ago, possibly pre-bimshwel. Back then I had real problems. I would still be furious if I had not at some point decided that I like having teeth and stopped eating gummy bears. But that does not help with Skittles since I prefer to swallow them whole rather than bite them, and so having no teeth would actually aid in the process. You might argue that I could keep one tooth and still prevent myself from chewing. However, then I would come across as quite foolish.
And I say all this as somebody who eats apples but does not eat limes. I rely on cheap fictional representations to fill the void. You might as well replace the yellow lemon flavor with a french fry flavor. Although if you are in the candy business and want to use that idea I will gladly accept royalties, and then I will be able to afford something with actual limes in it.
Apparently we have to re-live the Jonbenet Ramsey story now. Last year we did the OJ Simpson story again. I suppose next year it will be Princess Diana and Monica Lewinsky again, then Macarena, whatever mass media tragedy is next in line to have a twentieth anniversary. Believe it or don’t, every one of them WILL at some point. And nobody the whole while will question why this is necessary or acknowledge that we just did this the year before. Can we get these stupid 1990s remakes out of our systems now? Toss in Y2K, Verne Troyer, Jar Jar Binx, whatever you have to do. You already had your chance to try and convince me I cared. I don’t want to be reliving Jay Leno monologue jokes for the next twenty years while simultaneously being expected to give a pumpkin about the latest sass-loaded personality-free multimillionaire who isn’t old enough to remember any of those things.
Additionally, yes, I know this television machine’s aspect ratio is horribly off. I was not in this house while its original control device still lived and don’t know what atrocities were inadvertently committed with it. My feeling is the less of its contents I can see, the better. A pity we can’t cut off 10%-100% of all the audio also.
The next thing I post here will be intended to be less depressing than this!
Especially if it comes at the expense of a fictional large-snouted-being’s depressing incidents.
You know what’s great about insurance ads? Instead of talking about their products they recycle old gags and they never get old even if they fixate on it for 30 seconds, 70 times a day for six months.
I tried drawing this person as a 40+ish year old man with a black 1980s-looking mustache but then I felt sympathy for him, which was not the point, but I couldn’t get a clear idea what stereotypical person I was angry at, so now I am not sure what it is. But I sure dwelt on this stupid thing for long enough. I need to have this away from me more then the execution needs to work. this is the sort of thing that would probably have been much funnier if I had drawn it as obnoxiously as possible in ten minutes.
Here is my base sketch to establish the concept. If I had drawn crude impressions of the idea of far side cartoons rather than directly sourcing specific ones and put blatant stupid labels on the books like “FAR SIDE LAST BOOK” instead of trying to use real covers that plenty of people familiar with The Far Side would not necessarily recognize. The cruder way it is plainly a joke, without being stated as such, and I can not be held deeply accountable for it. The eyes look less creepy because that is the natural, unnatural size I draw them at. I would not feel as ashamed putting this out somewhere and having it be ignored. The more accurate and specific something is, the harder it flops if some aspect of it is wrong. That is why John Callahan, a quadriplegic cartoonist who couldn’t draw worth a basket of tumbleweeds but was free from obsessive compulsive fears had a career and I probably won’t ever. I probably won’t die at the age of 59 from complications of a botched bedsore surgery either, but I have 26 years to dwell on what a rude thing to say that is/also become quadriplegic.
In fact that “FAR SIDE LAST BOOK” was one of the last things I changed; since I used a real cover on the other, less focal book, having the one in the center be generic looked lazy. I worked harder to make my joke less funny because I apparently would rather not look lazy than be funny, even though trying to be funny is the whole point of doing it to begin with, and it was only just barely funny. And I KNEW that but I couldn’t stop myself.
As the tentatively final version is, somebody could point out “ah HA, geico put out an ad specifically referring to a problem invented by contemporary phones, which cannot possibly have come from The Far Side.” or “ehm excuse me that is NOT the real far side panel that was used for December on the 1996 wall calendar.” I showed this to my older brother, who I only see twice a year, and whose approval I am desperate for, because he was my first idol and my last idol that still talks to me (Zartan come back, I forgive you, I forgive everyone), but who won’t look at anything I do unless I specifically show it to him, and he asked “DO they do that?” As in: DO the geico people steal old Far Side gags? Like he thought I was making a sincere political statement with this. And I had to say some waffly nonsense like no, but sort of I suppose they could maybe, like with the parrots and Tarzan and Marco Polo in the pool, you know? I felt like a profound moron.
Nobody cares that gary larson’s dinosaurs all look generic and unscientific because he doesn’t draw elaborate shading and scales and muscles on them like i would try to.
This is how autism affects me. I cannot take hints, and nobody takes mine, so I need to be as specific as possible. But I do not have the manual dexterity to be specific beyond a certain point so everything i do turns into uncanny valley mush. And by dwelling on this so hard I am doing the same thing I accuse geico of doing (outside of airing the things repeatedly forever)
Someday I will write a great book about how not to screw up. I will spend years on it, and all the advice in it will be the opposite of whatever you should do.
Here is another example. My plan was to post this on all the usual totally redundant websites with a heading in the vein of: “the REAL reason he quit the show.” Being as vague as possible, and likely not quite communicating my point, because I always over- or under-do all things. Goopness grapejuice I’ve even digressed and overdone my story about how I overdo things.
I didn’t finish this. I noticed that once I added the font it wasn’t funny to me anymore, even though the font is approximately what it ought to be. Because once the lettering is solid, the drawing looks unsolid, but the whole is solid enough that I start to wonder: why is a Broadway show using a movie poster? Is this a movie sequel TO a Broadway show? Why would that be the case? Who specifically does/should this second person look like? Is it funnier if he is billed first? Do I need to add a background now? What sort of background would it have, and would it match the anachronistically dressed person or the historically dressed person (with anachronistic hair that we don’t talk about)?
HOWEVER, this was ultimately a positive step, since drawing this turned the Hamilton guy into a joke to me, so now when I, inevitably, see him, I think it is funny rather than annoying. I can coexist with him.
I no longer need to seek refuge in the bizarre alternate universe this New York Post headline is from in which Stephen Colbert doesn’t mention Hamilton at every opportunity. Broadcast television is still dead to me, however.
Also, I went to look up lyrics for a different show on some stupid broadway site that I didn’t realize was covered with graphics detailing all the awards hamilton (and flippin dippin RENT) had won, but when I saw they used this exact same dorky publicity shot it just made me laugh.
But then I got annoyed again when I realized Hamilton Guy also had the same approximate run of credits in “In the Heights” which I had not prior to then considered or cared if it had won anything.
Also that site is trash since it didn’t have lyrics, but the link that I THOUGHT would lead to them just went to a page to BUY tracks on i-tunes, which presumes both that I will suddenly spend money without having planned in advance to do so and that I would willingly introduce parasitic organisms into my operating system other than the 24 gigabyte folder of every pathetic redundant cash-in gameboy advance rom ever released.
And THAT was already on the hard drive when I got it! I swear. Somebody else specially installed, on my request, a 1 terrorbyte drive in the computer I bought from him, in place of the 320gigabyte drive it otherwise would have had, and perhaps he was trying to show me that I didn’t need half as much space as I thought I did by half-filling it with nonsense that I still haven’t totally sorted through (I am kidding, it was only one tenth. Come back Pez, I forgive you).
Going back to the anachronistic facial hair, I can understand if the first guy just looks like that anyway, but why does the second one, taking over the role, ALSO need to have that “I forgot to use a napkin after I ate a chocolate doughnut” beard? Alexander Hamilton didn’t look like that! He also didn’t rap or refuse to be photographed in poses that don’t make his pants look as tight as possible either, so I should excuse other fantasy aspects, but I never considered that the appearance was deliberate, like when there is an anime about Julius Caesar or something and all the men look like Sephiroth and all the women look like Sailor Moon. Also all my Japanese cultural references stop at 1997, you know that. Sometimes I wish my American ones did, too!