IT'S MOVING DAY

Geek Speaking of New Things

Looking for Geek Speak? Need the latest in what is happening with Ted and Wuffles? Want to see if I've posted a new strip based (albeit loosely) on my family life? I don't blame you. I'm a fan, too. But it's not here anymore. Oh no. Not here. It moved. In a long overdue upgrade to my comic hosting I am now posting Geek Speak on a fancy new website, on its own domain name. From this day forth you shall find Geek Speak Comics at this link: www.geekspeakcomic.com

I will still post here occasionally, but it will be reserved for posts that are more personal in nature, or when I want to post a gallery of recent sketches. 

I have enjoyed posting on Blogger. This is where I got my start, and in many ways it feels like home, but my needs have long since outgrown the ability of Blogger to meet them. It is a bittersweet thing to change, but it's also an exciting new phase, and a big step. I'm going to leave it there before I rewrite my high school commencement speech. 

Geek Speaking About Anxiety Views

Geek Speak: Definitely NOT a Therapy Dog

Ahhhhh...it feels good to post a comic strip again. You just never get tired of that fresh comic strip smell. Clearly Ted's brother is not making a new friend. Will they be freinemies, or will we enter comic strip thunderdome? Only time will tell. This strip is an example of one that changed considerably from the original script I wrote for it, to what I'm calling the finished strip above (there are things in it I could fix, but it's taken me too long to finish this as it is). The punch at the end was a lot longer, Francis saying "who's a pretty doggie..." is something that occurred to me as I was putting in the dialog and balloons. I think the result is better than my original design. Sometimes things work out that way. 

I will be doing one more of these strips, and then things will be changing. For most of my posts and all of my comic strips after the last one in this series, I'll be moving to a new location on the web. More details soon, but this is a much needed, and long overdue change. 

Page-views, I Has Them

My tens of followers have generated a lot of page views. I'm actually fairly impressed. I post with less regularity than Phil Jackson who posts the usually brilliant and often hilarious Sequential Art. Yet I still seem to get people landing on my page. This makes me happy.

The Anxiety Monster

In the last six months I have been to see doctors more than I have at any time in the last six years. It started back in April, with a feeling of having a racing heartbeat while waiting on a plane to fly home from Austin. While I was sitting there, feeling like my heart was hammering somewhere in the vicinity of my left eye it occurred to me that my phone comes with a health app, and that it might have a way for me to determine just how fast my heart was pounding. Sure enough the Samsung health app has a heart rate tracker, and I was able to measure my beats per minute. While I sat there on the tarmac waiting for my plane to be ready to taxi my beats per minute were coming in at 118. Thanks, Samsung.

I started to freak out. Was this normal? What should my beats per minute be while I'm just sitting doing nothing? Should I be worried? These questions were whirling through my head while I had the dangerous combination of time to kill and access to the Internet via a mobile device. One Google search and I found numerous articles on the ideal resting heart rate for an adult male in his late thirties, and numerous more on tachycardia (fast heart). Now certain there was something terribly wrong (thanks, Google) I checked my heart rate again (thanks again Samsung) and, big shock here, my heart rate had jumped up to over 120 beats per minute. That's roughly where it should be after moderate exercise. Now certain I was dying, it was time for the plane to take off. Mercifully, I was able to settle down enough to sleep for a good chunk of the flight.

When I got home the sense of something wrong didn't leave me. It gnawed at me, and one night sent me down a path that would have me visiting doctors every other week for the better part of four months. After work one night I was sitting with my kids and watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when I got that feeling of my heart pounding again, and I used my handy-dandy Samsung App to check my heart rate (...thanks...Samsung). Sure enough it was registering over 100 beats per minute. What's more, I had a tingly numb feeling between my shoulder blades. Certain this meant I was somewhere on the grim reaper's to-do list I kissed my wife, hugged my kids, and made my way to the emergency room. I would spend the next several hours there while they ran blood tests, an EKG, took X-rays and monitored me, all while listening to people who were in genuine crisis, and generally feeling crummy. My heart rate came back down to reasonable territory (80-ish beats per minute) while I was waiting to be seen behind a long queue of people in various states of fucked up.

Since that night in May I have been to see a cardiologist, my primary, a nurse-practitioner who works in my primary's office, my primary again, and am now seeing a physical therapist. I have been prescribed some really exotic drugs for GERD (acid reflux) and had an ultrasound that determined I have some infiltrating fat on my pancreas, but nothing to be alarmed about. Even so, I will occasionally find myself sitting at my desk at work feeling like my heart is pounding against my chest, which I continue to measure with the Samsung health app on my phone (fuck you, Samsung). I'll feel like my breath is coming just a little too short, and get to feeling amped up and distracted for no good reason.

People who know me well, or have known me for a long time, will probably not find this surprising in the least, but I have been forced to confront the idea that I have issues with anxiety. Even as I write this the notion feels fundamentally just so stupid. My job can be stressful, sure, but it's a mundane kind of stress. It's "so-and-so executive is asking pointed questions about something on a report that can be interpreted a certain way if you turn it upside down and squint" kind of stress. I'm not facing armed combatants, pulling people over who might shoot me, or saving lives. If I screw something up at work, children won't starve on the other side of the world. Even so, it gets to me.

When I stopped at some point to think about it, it occurred to me this is not an isolated event. Around the time my daughter was born I remember feeling like I was having chest pain. I went to urgent care to get checked out, then followed up with my primary. An EKG in both cases revealed nothing. Years before that, around my thirtieth birthday, was the same story. I felt like I was having chest pain so I made an appointment to see my doctor. On that occasion, too an EKG failed to turn anything up, but he referred me to a cardiologist just to be safe. They put me on a treadmill and checked out my heart and declared me, in these words, "ready for the marathon. See you again in fifteen years" Years before THAT, long before I had moved out of Greeley to live in Denver, never mind moving to California, I went to urgent care with "chest pain." On that occasion the doctor checked me out, then talked to me about anxiety, and wrote out a prescription for a very mild anti-anxiety medication, and left it up to me to fill it or not.

As you have probably guessed, I didn't fill it. I didn't like the idea of managing my emotional condition through chemistry. I still don't. Now, however, I'm thinking if I had filled that prescription, and taken the extra step of going to therapy, I might have saved myself a world of grief. While I can't think of specific examples from before college, I'm sure there must have been times that the people who cared about me wished they could have talked me back from standing on a figurative ledge. Times I was convinced the world was ending because I didn't get the right grade on a piece of homework, or I was particularly uptight about a test that I was sure would ruin my future, or, as was often the case, I was so tied up in knots over a girl I liked that I didn't act at all out of fear of humiliation.

Now, as I near forty, and I have stress factors in my life that I've never had before, and I have not dealt with the underlying condition, I find myself sometimes sitting at my desk wound up, jumping from one thing to another, terrified of letting anything go without my touching it every day lest I lose my job. In my mind unemployment raises the specter of family protective services coming to take my kids and place them into the nightmarish hellscape that is foster care. I get so amped up, in fact, that I often can't stay at my desk and focus, and I'm forced to get up and go walk until I can get my emotions under control and start to think clearly again.

After months of doctor's visits the only consensus we've arrived at is that I have an issue with anxiety. To let things go as they are is not sustainable. I have to face the anxiety monster and, if not overcome it, at least fight it to a standstill. To do that might mean giving in and accepting a prescription for anti-anxiety medications. For now I'm working on exercising, enjoying my hobbies, and finding ways to quiet my mind. Talking about it openly is one step. For those who read this far, thanks for hanging in there. 

Geek Speaking About Anxiety Views

Geek Speak: Definitely NOT a Therapy Dog

Ahhhhh...it feels good to post a comic strip again. You just never get tired of that fresh comic strip smell. Clearly Ted's brother is not making a new friend. Will they be freinemies, or will we enter comic strip thunderdome? Only time will tell. This strip is an example of one that changed considerably from the original script I wrote for it, to what I'm calling the finished strip above (there are things in it I could fix, but it's taken me too long to finish this as it is). The punch at the end was a lot longer, Francis saying "who's a pretty doggie..." is something that occurred to me as I was putting in the dialog and balloons. I think the result is better than my original design. Sometimes things work out that way. 

I will be doing one more of these strips, and then things will be changing. For most of my posts and all of my comic strips after the last one in this series, I'll be moving to a new location on the web. More details soon, but this is a much needed, and long overdue change. 

Page-views, I Has Them

My tens of followers have generated a lot of page views. I'm actually fairly impressed. I post with less regularity than Phil Jackson who posts the usually brilliant and often hilarious Sequential Art. Yet I still seem to get people landing on my page. This makes me happy.

The Anxiety Monster

In the last six months I have been to see doctors more than I have at any time in the last six years. It started back in April, with a feeling of having a racing heartbeat while waiting on a plane to fly home from Austin. While I was sitting there, feeling like my heart was hammering somewhere in the vicinity of my left eye it occurred to me that my phone comes with a health app, and that it might have a way for me to determine just how fast my heart was pounding. Sure enough the Samsung health app has a heart rate tracker, and I was able to measure my beats per minute. While I sat there on the tarmac waiting for my plane to be ready to taxi my beats per minute were coming in at 118. Thanks, Samsung.

I started to freak out. Was this normal? What should my beats per minute be while I'm just sitting doing nothing? Should I be worried? These questions were whirling through my head while I had the dangerous combination of time to kill and access to the Internet via a mobile device. One Google search and I found numerous articles on the ideal resting heart rate for an adult male in his late thirties, and numerous more on tachycardia (fast heart). Now certain there was something terribly wrong (thanks, Google) I checked my heart rate again (thanks again Samsung) and, big shock here, my heart rate had jumped up to over 120 beats per minute. That's roughly where it should be after moderate exercise. Now certain I was dying, it was time for the plane to take off. Mercifully, I was able to settle down enough to sleep for a good chunk of the flight.

When I got home the sense of something wrong didn't leave me. It gnawed at me, and one night sent me down a path that would have me visiting doctors every other week for the better part of four months. After work one night I was sitting with my kids and watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when I got that feeling of my heart pounding again, and I used my handy-dandy Samsung App to check my heart rate (...thanks...Samsung). Sure enough it was registering over 100 beats per minute. What's more, I had a tingly numb feeling between my shoulder blades. Certain this meant I was somewhere on the grim reaper's to-do list I kissed my wife, hugged my kids, and made my way to the emergency room. I would spend the next several hours there while they ran blood tests, an EKG, took X-rays and monitored me, all while listening to people who were in genuine crisis, and generally feeling crummy. My heart rate came back down to reasonable territory (80-ish beats per minute) while I was waiting to be seen behind a long queue of people in various states of fucked up.

Since that night in May I have been to see a cardiologist, my primary, a nurse-practitioner who works in my primary's office, my primary again, and am now seeing a physical therapist. I have been prescribed some really exotic drugs for GERD (acid reflux) and had an ultrasound that determined I have some infiltrating fat on my pancreas, but nothing to be alarmed about. Even so, I will occasionally find myself sitting at my desk at work feeling like my heart is pounding against my chest, which I continue to measure with the Samsung health app on my phone (fuck you, Samsung). I'll feel like my breath is coming just a little too short, and get to feeling amped up and distracted for no good reason.

People who know me well, or have known me for a long time, will probably not find this surprising in the least, but I have been forced to confront the idea that I have issues with anxiety. Even as I write this the notion feels fundamentally just so stupid. My job can be stressful, sure, but it's a mundane kind of stress. It's "so-and-so executive is asking pointed questions about something on a report that can be interpreted a certain way if you turn it upside down and squint" kind of stress. I'm not facing armed combatants, pulling people over who might shoot me, or saving lives. If I screw something up at work, children won't starve on the other side of the world. Even so, it gets to me.

When I stopped at some point to think about it, it occurred to me this is not an isolated event. Around the time my daughter was born I remember feeling like I was having chest pain. I went to urgent care to get checked out, then followed up with my primary. An EKG in both cases revealed nothing. Years before that, around my thirtieth birthday, was the same story. I felt like I was having chest pain so I made an appointment to see my doctor. On that occasion, too an EKG failed to turn anything up, but he referred me to a cardiologist just to be safe. They put me on a treadmill and checked out my heart and declared me, in these words, "ready for the marathon. See you again in fifteen years" Years before THAT, long before I had moved out of Greeley to live in Denver, never mind moving to California, I went to urgent care with "chest pain." On that occasion the doctor checked me out, then talked to me about anxiety, and wrote out a prescription for a very mild anti-anxiety medication, and left it up to me to fill it or not.

As you have probably guessed, I didn't fill it. I didn't like the idea of managing my emotional condition through chemistry. I still don't. Now, however, I'm thinking if I had filled that prescription, and taken the extra step of going to therapy, I might have saved myself a world of grief. While I can't think of specific examples from before college, I'm sure there must have been times that the people who cared about me wished they could have talked me back from standing on a figurative ledge. Times I was convinced the world was ending because I didn't get the right grade on a piece of homework, or I was particularly uptight about a test that I was sure would ruin my future, or, as was often the case, I was so tied up in knots over a girl I liked that I didn't act at all out of fear of humiliation.

Now, as I near forty, and I have stress factors in my life that I've never had before, and I have not dealt with the underlying condition, I find myself sometimes sitting at my desk wound up, jumping from one thing to another, terrified of letting anything go without my touching it every day lest I lose my job. In my mind unemployment raises the specter of family protective services coming to take my kids and place them into the nightmarish hellscape that is foster care. I get so amped up, in fact, that I often can't stay at my desk and focus, and I'm forced to get up and go walk until I can get my emotions under control and start to think clearly again.

After months of doctor's visits the only consensus we've arrived at is that I have an issue with anxiety. To let things go as they are is not sustainable. I have to face the anxiety monster and, if not overcome it, at least fight it to a standstill. To do that might mean giving in and accepting a prescription for anti-anxiety medications. For now I'm working on exercising, enjoying my hobbies, and finding ways to quiet my mind. Talking about it openly is one step. For those who read this far, thanks for hanging in there. 

Return of Normal Guy

Return of the Blog Post!

So, this post has been a long time in coming. I looked back at my most recent post to see just how lax I've been in trying to create content for my tens of readers, and I was a little taken aback by how much time has passed. It really doesn't feel like it's been since May, but it has. It's been a busy three months, while at the same time I feel as though I've really done very little at all. Either way, here are some of the highlights.

Doctors, doctors, everywhere, and not a thing to treat

Let's not be alarmest, but I have been to see doctors more in the last six months than the last six years combined. I have more visits coming up, unfortunately, but hopefully getting to the end of this semi-regularly occurring health freak-out. The outcome from all of this, so far there is nothing wrong with me. An ultrasound found a little infiltrating fat on my pancreas, but that's a benign condition, and there's been more than a little talk about GERD (acid reflux disease). Mostly the talk has been about managing my anxiety, but otherwise I'm in good health. Like I said, more on this in a later post. I will be providing a comic to go with it. 

Fathers day happened

Went out on Father's Day to see Captain America: Civil War and loved it. When I got home the family had made a bunch of cards and hidden them around the house for me to find. Later that night we had one of the three steak dinners I get each year. It was a great day. 

My wife and I turned sixteen all over again...

...just without all the teenage mutant ninja drama and other bullshit that goes with actually being sixteen. 

On July fifteenth my wife and I celebrated sixteen years of marriage. The time flies. It really does. I am lucky that for the last sixteen years (nineteen if you count the three years we dated) I have had someone very special with me on the out of control, full throttle, runaway train that is life. It is with Mildly Sensational that I do something really important, and that I might not do otherwise. It's with her that I can be still. It's with her that I slow down enough to actually make memories. She grounds me, even as she, and the family we've made, give me purpose. 

I am not always the best at staying still. Even if it looks like I'm being quiet and still, I'm thinking about things I need to be doing, that I want to be doing, that I should be doing and that will probably cause me grief at some point in the foreseeable future, and it goes on like that. It is with Mildly Sensational that I can let some of that go, that I can start to undo some of the knots I've tied myself into during the day. She brings me peace, and with her I'm truly home. 

Thank you, Mildly Sensational, for being my home. I love you.

Lots of Little Art Dumps

While I don't have a completed comic strip ready to share, that does not mean I haven't been busily toiling over my sketchbook, painstaking producing achingly beautiful works of art for you, my handfuls of readers (hi, Mom!). Or, if I'm being less dramatic, here are some of my drawings presented in smaller art dumps while I get some comics put together. 

Here's one that is fairly timely. Suicide Squad opened recently and re-introduced Harley to people who have been fans of the character for more than twenty years. While Margot Robbie looks great as Harley Quinn...she just isn't my Harley. Is it fair to her, or fair to what sounds like a great performance as a villain turned anti-hero in what otherwise sounds like a terrible movie? No. It's not fair to Ms. Robbie, but my Harley will always be Harley from Batman: the Animated Series. For the record, yes, I'm aware that, in the series, Harley wore a full body costume including the hat. I've drawn the full costume before. I took a bit of license drawing her this time. 

For the next nugget in my art dump, I bring you Shiro from the excellent Netflix series Voltron: Legendary Defender. The re-imagined Voltron manages to hit all the right nostalgia buttons, while turning in something that really improves on the original. Disagree with me? If you're nearing forty and reading this, go back and watch any cartoon from the eighties that you loved. I would be surprised if you made it through more than one or two episodes before you had to watch something else. They don't stand up, and, for the most part, they could all use an update. Voltron hits all the right notes blending action, comedy, and drama with genuine kid-level cartoon slapstick. Although I drew Shiro before anyone else, I think Hunk is my favorite character. The actor providing the voice nails it. 

I am, for the most part, an Image and Marvel comics fan. I never really got into DC characters, mostly because Marvel characters are all human, at some level. DC's roster of characters is a who's - who of insufferable Mary Sues. For the most part it turns me off to their comics. The exception to that appears to be Green Lantern. Don't get me wrong, Hal Jordan is an insufferable douche, but there's something really compelling about a character who goes out into the universe to defend innocent billions who will never know about his sacrifice, and his only weapon is the power of will channeled through a ring. I was on board with that, and then they introduced the blue lanterns and rings powered by HOPE, and I couldn't stay away. It was fun here to imagine Elsa as a blue lantern. Here is a character for whom hope would be a survival trait. She has to have hope to imagine a better tomorrow for herself and her kingdom. I'll be doing Anna as a star sapphire at some point. 

Lastly, I can't resist closing with a one-off joke comic. I drew this after doing a late night doodle of a Spider-Man cosplayer. I really like Spider-Man. It's not my favorite comic of all time (that distinction belongs to The Savage Dragon), but it's right up there. At almost forty, however, I think my days of jumping on the table in an ill-fitting Spidey mask and thwipping are almost over. If nothing else, it's something my kids could imitate, and we have a hard enough time telling them to stay off the coffee table as it is. 

Geek Speaking of Random Sketch Dumping

Geek Speak: Wuffles is one-eighth French poodle

It took me a long time to finish this comic. In the time between my last strip and this I have been to multiple birthdays for five-year-olds, a birthday for a thirty-nine year old (mine), and on a work trip to Austin, Texas. I have indeed been busy. In that time I have learned two things:

1. February to May is far too long to be away.
2. I really miss drawing comics

It's not as though my drawing hand has been lonely and neglected. It has been firmly wrapped around a hard wooden pencil and stroking away. It just hasn't been to produce comic strips. There was probably a better way to say that. Moving on. I think there may be one or two more strips in this run just to establish the relationship between Ted and Wuffles, then I'm going to do some one-offs, then maybe return to Sam, Mark, and Steve for a little bit before coming back to Ted and Wuffles. We'll see. For those who are following me, please know that I haven't given up. My focus has been elsewhere for a little bit, but I'm trying to get back in the swing of things now. 

Besides, if I don't keep posting comic strips, how am I supposed to get into Comic Con next year? Priorities. One must have priorities. 

Random Thoughts

Adult coloring books are awesome. By that I mean coloring books for grown ups not badly drawn sex acts for perverts to fill in with crayons. I bought one full of intricate animal and floral designs for my wife for Christmas, then recently bought two copies of the Doctor Who adult coloring book, so both of us could enjoy it. I may write more on this later, but for now, let's leave it at "coloring books for grown ups are awesome."

A Big Satisfying Sketch Dump

While I haven't been as dedicated to drawing comic strips as I would like, I have still been drawing. In fact I had to switch to a new sketchbook at some point between my last post and this. Here are a few of my favorites. 

The idea behind this one was to imagine what happens to Belle after the end of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It's hard to imagine that her desire for adventure just goes away after the end of the movie, and in 16th century France it's hard to imagine anyone more adventurous than the Musketeers. Since she is a Disney princess, would that technically make her a "Mouseketeer?" 

Sometime in mid-February I attended the excellent "Valley Drink and Draw" hosted by the one and only Gallery Girls. The theme of the evening was a tribute to the late David Bowie, and two models dressed as his most iconic characters, from Aladdin Sane to Ziggy Stardust. 

Some early character designs for a project I started working on with Runs Long Talking. I had to set this aside during March and April, partly because most of my drawing time was spent working on illustrations for a business presentation I gave in Austin. Now that I'm through the big business meeting and done with one or two other things I plan to get back to working on this. 

I drew this one because...well...who doesn't love BB-8? Seriously. Can you think of anyone?

Before February or March I had been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed II. There is something weirdly gratifying about playing a video game where a character can climbs to the top of tall buildings, leaps off, and survives by landing in hay bales, or carts full of flowers. It is a strangely liberating thing to do, and one reason why I come back to these games. 

Geek Speaking of Iron Brain Fortresses

Geek Speak: Too Funny

I was having trouble condensing this into three panels. After several fraught frustrating fruitless hours spent writing, deleting, re-writing, editing, scrapping, and weeping softly in a corner I gave up and just made it four panels. The difficulty there is in how to do it without making it tiny. On this one I did better than some previous attempts, but it's still not quite there. My apologies to your eyes, and give your optometrist a big hug from me.

When I originally thought of this exchange my intention was to go back to the scene of the ill-fated rescue of Wuffles' original owner. In that scene I imagined an ambulance and two paramedics with a stretch already covered in a black body bag talking about the best way to scrape the old woman off the wall. While they're talking she pulls one hand free from the bricks that were shattered by her impact. They stop talking. She pull the other hand free, pushes herself away from the wall, dusts herself off, tells the paramedics to close their mouths before flies get in there, then asks if anyone has seen her dog. The last panel would be some big dramatic special effects text saying something like "Thus Began the Amazing Adventures of The Iron Granny!" or something equally sophomoric.

It's been so long now since those original strips that going back and resurrecting granny doesn't feel like it works. So we'll leave her fate without the closure it deserves as we move on with the adventures of Ted, Wuffles, Frances (Captain Dum Dum), Sam, Mark, Steve, Cowboy, Hipster, Normal Guy and the rest.

Cognitive Retreats

Every so often, if I can find a space of time that isn't filled with work of one kind or another I like to close my eyes and try to clear my thoughts. At the very least I like to shut my eyes, empty my mind of whatever has been occupying it, and just let my mind wander over whatever just pops in there. The Stay Puff'd marshmallow man has yet to make an appearance, but I know it's juts a matter of time. In a riff on the most recent Sherlock Holmes I think of this as going to my "mind sanctuary." Everyone has one. I just gave mine a name. Because my inner thirteen year old is irresistible, apparently. 

My mind sanctuary has evolved over time. When I started trying to build a mental quiet place I painstakingly imagined a mountain forest next to a stream with a gentle waterfall. No pounding torrents of water, just a gentle fall producing a soothing, consistent sound of water pouring over rocks into more water. The effort of trying to maintain the image in my head, complete with smells, the feel of the wind, the sound of the water, and the movement of the trees, was way too much effort and really defeated the original purpose. Kind of like trying to find a quiet room to take a nap, then drowning out office noise by moving in a bunch of speakers, picking a metal station on Pandora and blasting it at a volume usually reserved for concert venues.

In the last couple of weeks I've gone the opposite direction. I've created a mental fortress of solitude that is a plain white floor, walls, and ceiling. It has worked wonders. It is substantially easier for me to fall asleep in my mind sanctuary, and when I get a moment to, for lack of a better word, meditate I find myself walking away feeling revitalized. Everyone should have their own version of a mental fortress of solitude they can retreat into for a few minutes. Seriously, try it, it costs nothing, and I'd bet my dear Aunt Suzy's pet badger that you feel better after. 

Geek Speaking of Geres of Snore

Geek Speak: Nowhere to Go, Man!

It occurred to me as I was writing this joke that I was probably writing something that would be understandable to most people in my generation, and certainly to anyone reading this who comes from my parent's generation. For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, there's this great scene in the where the drill instructor, played brilliantly by Louis Gossett Jr., is trying to force Richard Gere to quit, to wash out of Aviation Officer Candidate School. Gere is being put through a brutal series of physical exercises while Gossett berates and abuses him. The moment the strip refers to is the moment wherein Gere is doing a torturous number of sit ups while Gossett sprays him with a hose and tries to verbally abuse him into quitting. Gere's character breaks, and in a performance that can only be described as wrenching, he sobs, "I got nowhere else to go." When I think of great performances in film, my mind often goes to that moment. There is so much going on in that scene, that relationship is so complex, and the actors playing those parts are so amazing that I could watch it a dozen times and get something different from it each time.

Naturally my tribute to that moment of cinematic brilliance involves a talking dog a shirtless nerd.

Seriously, Louis Gossett, Jr. is something to behold in that film. He absolutely had earned it when the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor went to him, that and then some.

What Was I Planning to Do Later Again? 

All of us grew up listening to the adages and proverbs of our parents. One my parents were fond of was, "don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today." As I was mulling over what to write in this blog post I had some fun flipping that around, "don't do today, what you can put off until tomorrow." 

Procrastinators of the world unite...eventually!

It sounded like a cute idea for a random thought, but then I examined it, which (by the way) is an exercise you should avoid at all costs. Examination is the death of humor. Anyway, there's a kernel of wisdom in there; a little nugget of truth. Most of us have deadlines of one kind or another. In our day to day working lives there is some objective, some end point we have to reach. It can be stressful, and the natural response to stay as long as it takes to get the job done. The thing is, in most cases, not everything absolutely has to be done right this damn minute. When you've done all you can for a day what you really need to do, and I'm sure somewhere my dad's ghost is shaking his head at me, but what you really need to do is just walk away. Leave it for another day. It's surprising really. No matter how critical something might seem at 5:30PM Tuesday night, leave it. Go home. Have dinner. Play with your kids and get a good night's rest. When you get back to work in the morning, it will still be there, and you'll have the whole day to work on it. 

No one said it better than Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Finish each day, and be done with it. You have done what you could."

Geek Speaking of Showering Hard Drive Failures

Geek Speak: Downton Puppy

I gave myself a bit of a break...not a break from drawing the comic, but we'll get to that, a break from having to draw that fucking tutu. The idea of a dog in a tutu who communicates with a human is still funny to me, but I am really looking forward to the day that Wuffles takes the thing off.

To the guys out there, have you ever gone to the bathroom at work and had someone you work with take the next spot and start talking to you? I hate that. It's a bit of a pet peeve, really. When I'm in the bathroom I'm there to do one thing. I'm on a mission. Get in. Get done. Get out. I'm not there to discuss a project, talk about your weekend, or chat about how fucking amazing your new car is. Every so often I'll hear a guy doing his business in a stall next to me while talking on the phone. Seriously? Whatever it is you're talking about can't wait five goddamn minutes? Pro tip: don't call me if you're using the bathroom at the same time. I will hang up on you.

I have to imagine it's similarly awkward when someone's trying to talk with you while you're in the shower .You're trying to enjoy one of life's greatest little pleasures and someone outside is trying to get you to make decisions about something. Here's a decision. I'm going to finish my shower. It will take five minutes, another five for me to be presentable again. Go outside and wait for me. Play Angry Birds, just leave me the hell alone when I'm doing something in the bathroom.

The shower rule doesn't apply to spouses. In most cases if my wife starts a conversation with me while I'm in the shower my thought process is something along the lines of, "how do I get her in here with me."

There are exceptions to everything.

Taking a Break, a Computer Break, 'Cause my Computer Broke

So I did end up taking a longer break from the strip than I would have liked. Sorry about that. I'll lay out the whole calamitous saga here. 

Microsoft recently did something with Windows that is unprecedented in its history. Truly, they arrived at a new milestone. They offered a free upgrade to Windows 10 to people already running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Awesome. That's how it should be. If you already have the operating system you should be able to upgrade to the latest operating system without paying some bullshit arbitrary premium (I'm looking at you, Apple). Under most circumstances I'm a Microsoft skeptic. They've had a couple of big winners like Windows 7. It's great. It's stable. It make sense, and it doesn't get in its own way trying to do everything for you. Microsoft has also had some serious turkeys like Windows ME, Windows Vista, and Microsoft Bob (which wasn't very useful, but was kind of cute). 

Windows 10 was different. It had undergone a rigorous beta period. It was built out of the mistakes of Windows 8 (what do you mean you're doing away with the "start" button?). It was taking design cues from other modern operating systems that were starting to steal its lunch money. I signed up to be one of the first in line to get the update, and installed it as soon as it was available for me. 

I made a huge mistake.

Windows 10 gave me nothing but trouble after it was installed. The first sign of trouble was it wouldn't let me use my usual Microsoft account credentials. It would only accept one of my other Microsoft accounts, which I entered without thinking anything of it and without trying to force it to take the one I actually use. Clearly I had not done enough homework. OneDrive is heavily integrated into the Windows 10 experience, and using the wrong credentials meant I had to figure out a way to force Microsoft to sync OneDrive, and everything else in Windows 10 that's driven by your Microsoft Account, with the account I actually use. 

That was child's play. It gets better.

The next bit of Microsoft fuckery was when I tried to open one of my files to edit the contents only to be told that I didn't have permission. To be clear. Microsoft was not letting me save a file I created because it was in read-only mode and I didn't have permission to make changes. Thus began a quest to recover my lost permissions and thereby save my computer from an abrupt end after a short but exciting trip off the top of a tall building. There was nothing, and I mean nothing, even remotely helpful on any of Microsoft's resources. I eventually found the answer on a CNET forum buried under a bunch of bloated, Cheetos-fingered assholes geek-shaming people coming to the forum for solutions.

It was a seriously arcane process of sharing it with myself and then applying permissions across the whole folder.

Now that I was able to actually open and save my files it was time to get down to work and start drawing some cartoons right? That's what I thought, too. 

When I powered up Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to start the rendering work on the comic strip you see above, I discovered Microsoft had given me yet another gift-wrapped package of dogshit. The cross-hairs used to guide the brush on screen were offset by three or four pixels. You'd think that would be something you could learn to compensate for, right. Again, that's what I thought! No! You can't compensate for that shit! It's not consistent. The cross-hairs would be offset by a pixel or three going top to bottom, almost completely aligned when drawing down and to the left, and way the fuck out of whack when drawing down and to the right. You would have to constantly be adjusting for an offset of between three and up to something like eight or ten pixels. There may be some mathematical genius freak of nature who can do that on the fly. I am not a freak of nature. 

So I started looking for alternatives. I found a good one in a piece of software I had tried so long ago I'd almost forgotten about it. The open source drawing and painting program, Gimp. It got me limping along and I was making some progress when I got yet another little turd flavored treat. One night, after wrestling with Gimp and making slow, but discernible progress I went to turn off my computer only to have it go "click" and then shut off. 

"Huh," I thought tiredly, "that's weird." It had been a long day of pushing boulders up hills only to be nearly crushed as they overcame me and rolled downhill, forcing me to start all over again. As per my usual I probably already had a small glass of bourbon or two in me, and I was in no mood to be troubleshooting my home rig. 

The next day I got home and I went to power up my computer and it turned on, but loaded a black screen with white text bearing the words of my near-undoing "disc read error." That basically means your hard drive is in great shape to get you a few bucks at the nearest recycling center, and not much else. I tried a few different things but none of them worked. The hard drive was, as they say in the biz, kaput. 

To understand the true scope of what this means to me. Imagine you could turn your dreams and aspirations into a fluid; a pretty, pearlescent liquid substance that catches the light and throws the beauty of your best self in rainbows across the room. 

You put that in a glass pitcher so you can put it where it will catch the best light. 

Then you accidentally drop the pitcher. It breaks and you watch your dreams spread across the floor in an unrecoverable mess. 

That's kind of what it felt like.

At the top of the list of things at risk with a hard drive failure on this computer are thousands and thousands of photos of my kids taken by wife, pretty much starting with the day we brought our daughter home. 

Then there is every comic strip I have ever drawn, plus hundreds of other sketches and drawings. For the most part I have all of those in hard copy, so they're recoverable, even if it would be a huge undertaking. 

Then many, many things either I've written or my wife has written that we would never get back.

The story has a happy ending. After a few weeks I was able to buy a new hard drive and an adapter that would allow me to connect the old, defunct hard drive to the computer by USB. I installed the new hard drive and reinstalled good old, stable, dependable Windows 7. Then the moment of truth. I hooked up the adapter to the old hard drive and connected it by USB to the computer. I heard it spin, and Windows 7, good old Windows 7, picked it up as an external drive and I was able to find and recover everything. There was still some work to do to make sure I had permission to open the files, but once I'd given ownership to the new device everything was golden.

I even downloaded a trial version of Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. It will cost twenty five dollars a year to keep it, but it got me back to being productive again. 

Lesson learned. As soon as I get paid again I'm paying for backblaze.com to back up my files. 

I also discovered a couple of solid, free drawing programs, Gimp (technically I rediscovered Gimp, but whatever) and Krita. Both are seriously powerful with a wealth of features, and I'll continue to play around with them. 

So it hasn't all been bad. 

Oh and, hey, I'm back!

Geek Speaking of Upchucking Pink Ponies

Geek Speak: All Hail Upchuckus!

Ted probably would have been fine, but he stood up a little too fast striking that awesome big-damn-hero pose. Reality can be a harsh mistress. 

I promise this is the last strip that features Ted vomiting. In the next strip we get to see him in the shower! You think I'm kidding don't you? 

So the reason this didn't get posted for Friday the 7th is it was almost midnight on Thursday the 6th by the time that I finished the rendering work on the comic strip. By the time I'd started the post, added the text above, and started the review below it was well after midnight, and my ability to form sentences was in danger of being seriously compromised.

Webcomic Review: No Pink Ponies

Publisher: Appears on KeenSpot.com

Price: Free...it's a webcomic

Recommendation: Highly recommended
Author: Remy "Eisu" Mokhtar

I am really, really pleased to be able to recommend No Pink Ponies as a webcomic that is absolutely worth checking out. The other day I was browsing around Comic Rocket, because I'd read my regular comics and was looking for something different. No Pink Ponies showed up in my recommendations and I distinctly remember thinking, "what the hell, it costs me nothing but a few minutes of my life I'll never get back." It's illustrated by the same person who draws another comic I like, so I clicked the link. The next thing I knew a half hour had slipped by while I was happily unaware of its passing. 

The basic idea of the strip is that it is a slice of life, geek culture comic strip with a female protagonist at its center. She opens a comic book shop so she can be closer to the cute guy she likes. Shenanigans ensue. The comic succeeds on several levels, but nowhere is that success more apparent than in crafting a female lead with an authentic voice. Jess is delightfully nerdy, adorably neurotic, and charmingly engaging. There are two weaknesses in the writing. Mokhtar is Malaysian, and English is not his first language, so his dialog sometimes comes out a little wonky because the structure isn't quite right. That's a minor thing. The bigger sin is that he will introduce new characters, or new information about characters in a way that feels like he's going back and adding continuity that didn't exist before.

The artwork is in a manga-style and nicely done. It's stylized without being completely over the top. The line work is precise and the characters don't ever feel stiff or rigid. The characters are well designed and expressive, which helps to make them identifiable. If there's a weakness in the artwork it's that Mokhtar tends to leave the illustration with ink outlines and and only the the occasional colored accent, like a tie or a hat. Without some level of color or shading it leaves the strip feeling a little flat. Overall, that's a minor technical note, and it only applies to the regular black and white strips, not the full-color "Sunday" strips. Another of my favorite cartoonists, Keith Knight, doesn't draw arms on his characters unless he absolutely has to. We all have our quirks.

Mokhtar does something really interesting in No Pink Ponies that I don't think I've seen anywhere else. None of the male character have names. Ever. The strip has been running since February 2006, and he has never revealed the names of the male characters. This has the effect of placing even more emphasis on the female characters, and fixing the male characters into supporting and background roles. Even Jess' love interest, the guy she opens a comic book store as a pretext to get close to, hasn't been given a name. It's effective. You'd think that you'd miss having names for all of the characters, but the way the strip is written it doesn't matter. The reader accepts that the characters all know each others' names, and they speak to one another in the way friends do, without having to announce the name of the person they're speaking with at the start of every sentence.

I could continue to gush about this comic for another paragraph or two. It's characters are charming, grounded, and well established. The overall story is well orchestrated and written in such a way that you find yourself rooting for the main characters. When there is a payoff in the story it delivers in a really satisfying way. I strongly recommend you check it out. This is great reading in the morning when you need a laugh to get your day started, when you need a fun diversion in the middle of a busy day, or just to read for fun when you have a minute to sit and relax.

Geek Speaking of Regurgitating Comics

Geek Speak: Super Spew!

This, my friends, is why I don't ever have more than two consecutive drinks, three tops. One too many and I end up getting a serious return on my investment, and ROI isn't what you're trying to achieve when you're at a party or out with friends. 

I'm trying something new with Wuffle's tutu, even though we're getting close to when he'll be able to take it off. I've never been completely happy with the way it looked. The other night I was reading my daughter her bedtime story and she'd picked out Ladybug Girl and the Dress-Up Dilemma. In the book the main character wears a tutu with her ladybug costume. The artist draws the tutu really simply with some bold slashing lines. I may go back to trying to painstakingly draw out all of those ruffles, but I'll probably ultimately end up somewhere in between. 

Comic Con a Story with Some Pictures

Rather than belabor the events of Comic Con as I have in past years I think I'll wrap up it up with this post as a kind of show-and-tell with pictures taken over the weekend. 

If your goal at Comic Con is to take pictures of great costumes you could spend all day standing in one spot outside the doors to the exhibit floor and completely fill up the memory on whatever camera you're using. Instead of trying to take pictures of every cool costume I encountered I focused on getting fun moments.

Even Supergirl needs the occasional pick-me-up. I thought the idea of Supergirl sneaking a quick coffee break was too good to pass up. She seemed genuinely surprised when I told her I wanted a picture with the coffee. 

There's not really a particular moment I'm catching here. I had walked about ten steps past her when I realized she was dressed as Otto from The Simpsons, complete with bus. Props for creativity. This is a great example of what can be accomplished by thinking inside the box. 

There is a little story to go with this one. I had stopped by Nooligan's booth to chat and to see if he would give some feedback on my sketchbook. He did both, and then some. I really got more than I bargained for. He took a look at my sketchbook and just went off, which was great. He started out saying that he likes what I'm doing but I need to be way looser and less inhibited in my sketchbook. In a sense he was preaching to the converted. I've been thinking for a while now that my drawings need to be way more flowing and dynamic. Not satisfied with simply telling me to be looser and more scribbly he proceeded to open to the inside of the front cover of the sketchbook and show me what he meant. Then he asked what kind of pen I like and said, "here try this," and handed me one of his. I tried it, thought it was great, and told him as much. When I tried to hand it back he told me to keep it. He then did the same thing with another pen. I ended up buying a print of his I really like of Superboy playing fetch with Krypto, the Superdog, and walked away with the print and a lot to think about and to work on. 

Walked past a great, great Anna costume as I was on my way from one panel to another. I didn't ask her to pose at all, but I like what she did here. It's like "Anna, did you try to give the kingdom away to another princeling desperate for a throne of his own?" 

You have been a good boy...'nuff said. Also, my wedding ring is really shiny. 

At the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner Friday after the convention. All three of my dinner companions were checking the live feed from the Star Wars panel. While we were there someone sat down in the booth across from us and pulled out a sketchbook and started drawing while chatting with his friends. 

I was doing something not altogether different on the back of the placemat. 

After the Star Wars concert there was an EPIC fireworks show. Seriously, they did things with fireworks I thought could only be achieved with CGI animation and direction from Steven Spielberg. 

The problem with running into Harley is she's always trying to get you hammered. 

Waiting in line for the convention to open with literally thousands of my fellow geeks.

First stop, the pro lounge for a badly needed cup or two (or three) of free coffee. It wasn't outstanding coffee but, goddammit, it was free!

The new security company was really, really strict! Sadly, neither of these turned out to be Adam Savage. 

She knows her value. It's not well represented here, but every time I saw an Agent Carter costume I tried to get a picture to send my wife. On another note, I kind of love the lights in this one. 

In a stroke of pure dumb luck I happened to be the first person to the Baby Tattoo books booth on Friday morning. By first person to the booth of course I mean they were still setting up and were a little discombobulated when I walked up and started asking about a Brian Kesinger sketch cover on Darth Vader #1. He was only doing two books per day and I was the first person to ask for one that day. The only direction I gave was "I'd like a steampunk Vader." Beyond that I said Brian could go nuts. By the end of the day he wasn't quite done and asked if he could keep it until Saturday, which I was more than happy to let him do. He rewarded my patience with this. Brian really likes steampunk and I think he really likes drawing Vader, and it shows. When I picked it up he actually thanked me. Which was nice, but I'm pretty sure I got more out of the exchange. He produced one of those drawings where you get something new out of it every time you look at it. I couldn't be happier with it, and as soon as I can find some frames that fit it will be going up on my wall so I can look at it as I'm doing my own drawing. 

Geek Speaking of Booze Hound Conventions

Geek Speak: Booze Hound

Sometimes I struggle with what to call a strip when it's posted. In this case the name kind of suggested itself. I suppose I could also have called this "Dog Breath vs. Morning Breath: Dawn of Halitosis," but DC Comics has a lock on the rights to shitty titles.

In a way this strip explains how I feel about drinking to forget your problems. When you wake up in the morning the problems are still going to be there. You still have to deal with them, only now you get to do it with a hangover and feeling like you might puke if someone so much as says the word...well...puke. Sometimes having a drink after a hard day is ok, but hard drinking at the end of the day is a problem.

You might wake up to find a talking dog in your house.

Comic Con 2015

It's not possible after last weekend for me to sit at my keyboard to write a post and not talk about the San Diego Comic Con. Every year, and every convention I go to, whether it's Wonder Con or Comic Con I think, "this is it. This is the year I become jaded, and the feeling of belonging goes away and this stops making me happy." I'm happy to report that so far I've been disappointed in that regard. The feeling of being able to shed the person that I present to others in my day-to-day life and really get to be authentically myself has changed somewhat. It has diminished to a degree, but at the end of each day of convention I went back to the hotel tired, happy, and little lighter in the general region of my wallet. 

This year I drove down with a friend of Tea Leaf who we'll call Master Turtle. I'd met him a few times before, and we generally get along. We killed the time in the car by talking about everything from what he does for a living, which is way, way more interesting than what I do for a living, to marriage, to kids, to what he does for a living which is way, WAY more interesting than my job. 

We arrived in San Diego around 8:30, which means we made pretty good time. Pro-tip: if you only make use of them occasionally, you can use toll roads in California without an electronic pass. After using the toll road you have a week or so to pay the toll on the website www.thetollroads.com. It's worth it to knock twenty to thirty minutes off of the trip. To be honest, though, I might try taking the train to San Diego the next time I go to the convention. 

Through the magic of Tea Leaf and the arcane influence he exerts on the world we were able to find parking at PetCo Park, and we made our way into the convention. I would like to pause (or "paws") for a moment here to say that a sports arena called "PetCo Park" should have puppies on-site at all times, and you should be able to spend five bucks to get fifteen minutes of play time with them. 

At some point Master Turtle let me in on a secret, or not so much a secret as something that Comic Con makes available, but doesn't generally advertise. On the second floor of the convention center they have a room set aside as a "Pro Lounge" for professional badge holders. The lounge is set up with chairs and tables, it has outlets for charging devices, it has wi-fi, they offer a coffee and tea service, and it's even staffed with people to help you out. It's magical, and whenever I needed a break and to get off of my feet (or a free cup of coffee) I went to the lounge. Tea Leaf and Celluloid Girl, both hardcore con-goers, were also unaware of the lounge. This became the high point of my time at Comic Con as I had some great conversations, with some neat people. 

Master Turtle and I picked up our passes. One of the nice things about having a professional pass is there is almost never a line to pick up your pass, and you fly right through check in. From there we headed up to get in line with everyone else waiting to get into the convention. 

Here is an area where I think Comic-Con International fell a little short. The line to get into the convention was on the second floor and funneled everyone onto a single escalator. That's right, tens of thousands of people getting to the con floor by one escalator. I can understand why they did it. It means there isn't a crowd of people waiting at the doors to get in, so it eliminates that Black Friday crush of humanity surging toward a door and stomping anything, or anyone, in its path. It is a deliberate bottleneck. Still, the convention center is a huge place. It has a lot of ways to get down to the convention floor, and I feel like splitting things up would make for a smoother opening, better crowd control, and a safer situation overall. Lesson learned, next time I go to comic con I am getting my badge, then going out into the Gaslamp Quarter to find something to eat instead of waiting in line.

Master Turtle and I did eventually make it to the floor, where we immediately went our separate ways so we could make it to our first panels of the convention. Most of the panels I attended were specifically geared for people who draw comics, so the first panel I attended was "Drawing with Ed McGuinness." He talked a lot about the craft of getting into comics, but not too much about actually drawing. I take that back, he talked a lot about how he didn't like how the drawing of Superman he was working on, which had been requested by people in the audience who, admittedly, knew his work better than me. It's understandable, he's used to working on an elevated, angled surface, and in order to draw and talk at the same time he had to perch awkwardly on the back of a chair and draw on a digital overhead projector whose lamp was directly in his field of vision. Even so, most of us looking at the illustration of Superman he was apologizing for even as he created had a single collective thought, "screw you dude. I draw maybe half that well on my best day."

From there it was off to a workshop with cover artist Michael Cho, and graphic designer Chip Kidd. At the start of that panel the moderator had the privilege of presenting Kidd with a Comic Con International Inkpot Award for his contributions to comics. This is the second time I've seen this award presented. The first was to Bruce Timm. In both cases it was nearly without ceremony and a complete surprise to the recipient, which gives the presentation of the award a kind of authenticity that is really charming.

After the workshop with Cho and Kidd it was off to lunch. I was straight starving and needed sustenance. I hit the food trucks where I met up with Tea Leaf and Celluloid Girl for the first time at the convention. They spotted me because of the bright green Green Lantern shirt I was wearing, I spotted Celluloid Girl because of her awesome stripey hat.

After lunch it was off to more art instruction in the form of a painting and illustration panel with Jeffrey Watts and Erik Gist of the Watts Atelier. It was like a sixty minute infomercial for attending the Watts Atelier, interspersed with some really sound advice for improving figure illustration. I listened with half an ear and a bit while I drew the models. I'm linking to it here because, honestly, I like their approach and their philosophy on teaching art. Both of the panelists are the real deal. What they were able to do with paints in an hour represents a lifetime of learning, practice, teaching, and application.

From there I was off to the Terry Moore Panel. I could fill an entire blog post talking about Terry Moore. Instead I will just say this, I have tremendous respect and admiration for Moore as a person and a creator. Every time I'm lucky enough to hear him talk, or even to talk with him in person I feel like I leave with a lot of things to think about. He's also a very talented writer and illustrator whose books are worth picking up.

After that I ran to a panel on marker rendering presented by Mark Books. He and his wife were co-hosting the panel, which was good because he was invested in illustrating and rendering a drawing of Catwoman and Batman as he was talking. On that one I bailed early because it was six in the evening and time to go to dinner because, once again, I was straight starving. I'd also agreed to meet up with Master Turtle, Celluloid Girl, and Tea Leaf at the Old Spaghetti Factory.

We arrived at the Old Spaghetti Factory and were informed there was no soup available. Which seemed like an odd thing to take off the menu. The waiter then doubled down on the odd choices by offering Master Turtle a side salad to go with the chicken salad he'd ordered for dinner. Food ordered I dove into drawing a goofy little cartoon sketch while my companions dove into their phones to follow a live blog of the Star Wars panel that was going on at the same time. When J.J. Abrams announced that everyone attending the panel was going to be treated to a surprise concert featuring music from the Star Wars movies Tea Leaf all but wept. There were tears and consolation. Then we went for ice cream.

It is becoming something of a convention tradition to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory, and then go to Ghiardelli to get ice cream for dessert. They make a hot fudge sundae that can deservedly be called legendary, and is the thing I order whenever we go. In some ways I look forward to those two things as much as walking the floor, or learning how to draw from icons in the field of comic book illustration.

After ice cream I drove to the hotel, which wasn't really notable except for one thing. We could see Mexico from our room. That is not a Sarah Palin "I can see Russia from my house" kind of exaggeration. We could literally see Tijuana from our hotel. What did it look like? Honestly? It looked like any other big city at night, just a bunch of lights in the darkness. I have to imagine there were probably people looking back in our direction and thinking, "I can see America from here."

On a final note. I was a lot more selective with the pictures I took this year, and used the camera on my phone almost exclusively. Still, I got some fun images. I'll share those and my doodles in the next post.