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I've always liked the idea of a superhero who's sole super power was the willingness to do things no sane person would consider. 

I have a long history of not being able to make jokes about superheros work.  One of the first comedy pieces I ever wrote was a long, rambling piece about Batman and Mister Mxyzptlk that helped make my first attempted open-mic the disaster it was. 

Another attempted bit was the thought experiment of how much more Superman would have accomplished if he'd only had a gun.  The idea was that if criminals were afraid of Superman now, they'd be terrified if he turned up with a hunting rifle.

Solomon Grundy: Hey Lex, did you hear what Superman did to Brainiac?

Lex Luthor: What, did he tie him up with a steel girder again?

Solomon Grundy: No. He shot him in the face with a squirrel rifle.

Lex Luthor: OH DEAR LORD!!!

The idea was that I'd start the act with that bit, then forty-five minutes later I'd be winding down, and I'd launch into some pompous moment of seriousness about man's place in the universe. I'd end by saying that God is a tremendously powerful force in our lives, but not nearly as powerful as he'd be if he had a gun.

These are not jokes that go over well in Montana.

Oops.

Those of you who subscribe to the rss feed of my news blog were subjected to a post entitled "test post" that was of no use whatsoever.  I was testing a new piece of software, and things got out of hand.  Sorry

Here's a little something to make it up to you.  The man pictured to the right is more than just a target for my ridicule.  He's also a fine writer and an accomplished poet.  He texted me recently to tell me he'd written a poem about our friendship, and pointed me to the poem below.  I just thought you might like to know that the abuse doesn't just flow one way.

 

with grateful thanks to the hostess corporation

i consider running

an act of optimism

fresh air

exercise

one foot in front of the other

and all that

perhaps a brand new pair of shoes

it’s nice

what could be better?

my friend

who loves to deflate this sort of stuff

says from his couch

"but, what

are you running from?"

nice try

captain buzzkill

pop open

another six pack

of twinkies

you’re not

getting to me

not today

bury your face

in a fruit pie, pal

on some days

i might fall

for that one

but

as it happens

today

for once

i feel pretty good

stuff another crate

of hohos

down your gullet

mr. smart guy

i know

just

what i’m running from

and i don’t care

i’m running

from

another stupid day

at work

from

my stupid

wrecking ball dogs

from

chores

from

boredom

from this mediocrity

we settle for

bad tv

and lousy food

grateful

when

once in a while

we get

ok tv

and passable food

i’m running

from age

and failure

and loneliness

and another long

pillow hugging night

and the knowledge

that i’m only keeping

one step ahead

of it

so

put that donut in your pipe

and smoke it

captain buzzkill

wipe the powdered sugar

off your shirt

it’s unbecoming

i know

i’m only

one step ahead

but

it’s better

than being overrun

and with a little luck

and these new shoes

i may even get

two steps ahead

and be able to relax

for a moment

you going to eat that twinkie?

Curiously Strong

Sadly, my most recent strip, like most of them, is from personal experience. I worked in close proximity for two days with somebody with horrifyingly bad breath, and it gave me time to think about the subject. I am now convinced that as long as people have bad breath, mankind will make no significant progress. As I stated in the comic, bad breath is the one problem people have that can be solved by eating candy. If we can't get everyone afflicted with halitosis on board for the "candy as medicine" plan, how can we ever convince people of differing religions to get along.

Id' like to thank everyone for the kind words regarding my art style. It's good to know that other people see what I'm trying to do.

One last thing, a question about the Confound Your Alien Captor strip fell through the cracks.

The answer is, it depends on my mood. If I want the authentic experience, I go for bone-in, but if I'm in a hurry, or wearing nice clothes, I'm not above boneless. Here in Florida I go to Buffalo Wild Wings, but in Seattle it was the Wing Dome all the way.

Rapture of the meat

My wife’s birthday is looming, in the way birthdays do after you pass a certain age. On your twenty-first birthday you get drunk because you can. Every birthday after that you get drunk because you must.

Anyhoo, as part of the birthday festivities I’m taking her to Texas de Brazil (Be warned, the website has music and a splash page, if you can believe it). It’s a type of restaurant called a Churrascaria, which is a Portuguese word that near as I can tell means “Cartoonishly decadent meat orgy”. You sit down, enjoy the salad bar, and then you wait. You have a small disk that looks like a coaster. One side is red, the other is green. Laying it on the table red side up tells the staff that you’ve had enough meat. If you put the disk down green side up, servers will come to your table carrying SWORDS covered with various PERFECTLY COOKED MEATS!



It’s not cheap, but few services involving South American men with swords are.

Which brings us to the subject of my mortality. More than one person has asked why I have so many comics ending at my funeral lately. The truth is that it was only two strips, and they were written over a month apart. I have a very confusing posting schedule. The Monday morning strip is usually over a month old, and the Thursday morning strip is usually a week old. I promise, if I’m dying of something, I am unaware of it.

Also, I think it’s about time a say a few words about repeated art work. I repeat art work. I know this shocks many of you.

I have posted samples of a traditionally drawn comic I submitted to the syndicates here, and while I’m no Berkeley Breathed, I dare say my artwork wasn’t the reason that strip was rejected. I repeat art work in Basic Instructions because that was part of the original concept of the strip. I had seen some web comics that used clip art and repetition, and thought it gave a nice dead-pan quality to a comic, but I thought using real clip art would be too limiting. I decided to do the strip in a clip art style, but make my own clip art. I also hoped it would make the strip look like an instruction book, but that illusion has never been very successful. When I relaunched the strip, I actually experimented with drawing Basic Instructions more conventionally, but it didn’t look like Basic Instructions to me or the people I showed it to.

For the record, when we did The Adams Experiment, I braced myself for a flood of criticism about the repeated art. I even noodled around with some character designs. Of the thousands of comments we received, something like ten people complained about the art. Also, the strip has gone from one-hundred readers to thousands a day, being on GoComics and having a book coming out in the space of a year and a half. I’d be insane to monkey with the formula right now.

Thanks for your time.

A little information and a great deal of whining

The only thing that bothers me about this strip is that the guy giving my eulogy is a friend of mine named Eli, who rather than being mystified, would be one of the first people to call my phone at my funeral. He'll also be one of the first people to roll his eyes at the next part of this post.

I got a new phone. A T-Mobile Shadow. I am very happy with it. It has been rock solid, it has all of the internet and productivity tools I need, works as a spare music and video player, and costs a fraction of the cost of an iPhone. I also think it's pretty cool.

The problem is that it syncs with Outlook. This shouldn't be a problem. I own a legal copy of Office 2003, which I paid for. Outlook, the phone's software and the syncing software were all designed by the same company. It should be seamless, right?

RIGHT!?

It ain't. I spent a sizable part of last night trying to get my work schedule for next week to sync. Eventually I played a nonsensical hunch and re saved all of the appointments with a slight change(I added a period to the end of the appointment titles). This fixed the problem.

I desperately want Microsoft's products to work, not just because I'm a former Seattle-ite who likes to cheer for the home team and knows several people who work for Microsoft, but also because I'm pot-committed to Windows. I learned to use computers on a Mac, but by the time I had the money to buy a computer Macs were prohibitively expensive, and sucked (This is before the iMac). Now, many years later, I use some very expensive software to create my strip. If I went Mac, I'd have to buy new copies. Also, I use a music subscription service and a non-iPod music player.

I love the subscription music model, btw. It may seem like a rip-off before you try it, but it's like having the golden age of Napster back. If I hear a song I like on the TV I can download the entire album with no guilt or extra capital outlay.

The point is, the cost of switching, for me, would be far greater than just the cost of a Mac-mini.

Yes, I tried Linux. The software available doesn't quite do what I need.

I am as loyal a customer as Microsoft can hope for. I like Vista! No sales pitch has ever made me consider switching. These kind of arbitrary glitches do make me toy with the idea though, and that's sad. It's like Microsoft is trying to convince me to switch.

Sorry about that. I just needed to vent.

Now, on to my customary answering of questions, or in this case, question.

I intended for the alien in my last strip to be taller than me. I am not standing really far from him, as you theorized.

A simple man, in more ways than one.

What can I say, I just really like hot-wings.

You may have gathered from reading this blog that my wife and I have many silly little games we play to make each other laugh. "Who would win" is one example, another is a game we call "Nice Freeze-Frame".

"Nice Freeze-Frame" is a simple game based on the fact that even the most attractive person can look like a freak if you pause the DVR while they are mid-word. To play you simply pause people mid-word. Hilarity ensues.

In case you've never experienced this phenomenon, below is a "Nice Freeze-Frame" from last weeks episode of Lost. It is a close-up of a very attractive woman named Yunjin Kim. Enjoy.



I trust you see what I mean.

I'm now entering the "corrections" phase of the book making process. It is not my favorite part. I try to make the strip as high-quality, error-free and apparently, hyphen-rich as I can, but it would seem I miss a lot of things.

Oh, and to answer another reader question, yes, I'm told the book will be available in Europe through Amazon.

A quick post.

For the record, I did not buy an HD-DVD Player. I was tempted more than once, but I own a MiniDisc player, and I didn't want to go through that again.

Dark Horse Comics has put some pre-order information for my book up on their site. The cover art isn't quite final, but the title and concept are accurate. I'm very happy with it.

Two quick answers to questions.

1. I don't know exactly how many rss subscribers I have at the moment, but I can tell you that I have nearly 4,000 subscribers through Google Reader. I am, as I've said before, the luckiest man on Earth.

2. No, I don't expect my trainees to know what direction North is without a compass. I merely meant that the question I ask them that they get stuck on is equivalent to pointing at the North wall and asking "Why do we call this the North wall".

Is there anything less "Ritzy" than a Ritz?

I have always been a fan of bad running jokes. I refer to Hugh Jackman as "Huge Ackman", for instance. It has never made anyone laugh, but it amuses me, so I keep at it.

I should also point out that the first panel of the "running joke" strip is an actual question I asked my wife when we saw Chubby Checker's name on a sign. I wonder if other people's wives have to answer these kinds of questions. Mine gets them on a regular basis. (the title of this post, for instance)

After last week's strip, a surprising number of people wrote in with complex strategies for how to win at Rock Paper Scissors. I'm loathe to share the most powerful of these strategies with you for fear of losing my edge, but I will issue a warning.

If we do battle and you dare open with scissors, I will destroy you.

Safe for work right up until the last two words.

Again, this one comes from real life. My wife and I have these ridiculous, drawn out Rock Paper Scissors matches. You can't really call it a game the way we do it. "War of attrition" is more accurate. It's like Anakin and Obi Wan fighting in the volcano, only instead of lightsabers we have hand signals. And instead of a volcano, it's our living room. And instead of the fate of the empire on the line, it's who picks where we go for dinner.

I have an answer about international availability for my book. It will indeed be available outside the United States through Amazon.

The preface for the book was written by my friend Ric (That guy with the shoulder length hair I'm constantly insulting in the comic). The thing you have to understand is that like me, Ric's a former comedian, and comedians from the Pacific Northwest hated my home town, Sunnyside Washington, long before they met me. There was a one-night comedy show in my hometown that was notorious as one of the the worst gigs in a three state radius. One typical story is a friend of mine who's full-blooded Hawaiian, and was unable to get through his show because he was being harassed by a guy who didn't want to "Listen to some Mexican". He, didn't use the word Mexican though. Every comic I became friends with knew all about where I was from, and most of them asked how I survived.

So, Ric's preface is a page worth of vitriolic slander of my home town. It's quite entertaining.

I sent it to my best friend from elementary school through college. He had two responses, that pretty much sum the situation up.

First he thought "Sunnyside isn't that bad."

Then he thought "I can't believe I'm defending that shit-hole".

Answering questions.

Writing the most recent strip was more than a little cathartic. I'm a trainer at the moment, and often I'm forced to smash my head repeatedly against a brick wall that is masquerading as a fellow "cast member". Oddly, it's not made much better by the fact that I have personally liked pretty much everyone I've trained. When you have contempt for someone, you can let their lack of understanding go as an example of why you didn't like them to begin with. When you like and respect someone, and they refuse to understand why one part of the building is called the "North side", it begins to feel like they are either messing with you, or your initial judgment of them was disastrously faulty.

(Note, the "North Side" example is a fiction. It stands in for a different detail about my workplace that I promise you, is just as easy to grasp, and yet more than one trainee has struggled with it. The company I work for is very conscious about corporate espionage, but I figured even the most over-zealous lawyer would blanch at the idea of hauling me in for dropping the bomb-shell that part of the building may or may not "Face North".)

Now to answer a few questions:

Someone asked me if I made more money from the ads on my site, or GoComics. They wanted to know so they could send their precious clicks where they'd do me the most good.

The answer is that I won't know for sure which site makes me more money for a month or two, but I recommend viewing my strip through GoComics. Their archiving features are far superior to mine, and it wouldn't hurt me to demonstrate that people do actually read the strip.

Someone else asked if my book would be available in other countries.

The answer is that I don't know, but I'll find out as soon as I can.

Lastly, someone asked me if I've considered putting a tip jar on my site, for people who can't wait for the book and don't want a t-shirt or coffee mug.

I have considered it, but seriously, if you want to thank me for doing the strip, there are three things you can do. The firs two are the most important ones. The third is purely extra credit.

1. Keep reading.

2. Tell a friend if there's a strip you particularly like.

3. If you're really serious, please feel free to write an e-mail to your local alt-weekly paper and tell them you'd read their paper more often if you could find Basic Instructions in it.

Give a man a fish, he eats today. Get a man's comic running in your local fish-wrapper, and he eats at least once a week!