It
was exciting...for maybe twenty minutes in 1996, but staled fast. I've
really had enough of the Clintons. Between Bill and Obama I feel like I've sat through four terms of Clinton, broken only by the slight headway I made under G.W. Bush.
Most of that was pretty standard GOP talking points until the racism peaked out at the end. It amuses me how much Republicans hate being tagged with that, but hey, with the company they keep...
Uh, the " 'real' black" thing didn't come from
our side, Holly. You want to holler at someone, go talk to the Dem's pal Al Sharpton, who said Obama wasn't "down wid' de
struggle". Or Barry's own veep Joe Biden, who called his boss "clean" and "articulate".--like, what, he expected Jimmie Walker from
Good Times to walk up in there? If Obama is such a good speaker, why does he have to have some aide explain what the hell he's going on about every other press conference (e.g. the "road and bridges" speech I referenced earlier)? Bush was a bit of a mushmouth at times, but, dammit, he was sincere. Despite what
you think, I
was happier under Bush. I held two managerial jobs, I took vacations with friends, my brother could at least be left alone at home without acting like a raving lunatic and trashing the house
too much. I felt more
secure.
You do realize that to run a successful home business that you'll have to work in excess of 60 hours a week, and the return you see on that is a huge gamble, right?
Yes, and I welcome that. It's better than having to sit before some pinhead behind a desk and listen to an inane laundry list of complaints from my coworkers about piddling little things I did weeks or months before and don't even
remember. That's what a 9-to-5 environment means to me. Now maybe
your day job is different. You've never worked in a newspaper office, I take it. There's something unsettling, almost creepy, about these people. They are really unbalanced. Their syrupy friendliness and overbright smiles mask something far deeper bubbling under the surface.
Take these two, "Mack" and "Lucy". In a surprising decision
by the higher-ups, Lucy was promoted over Mack, despite him having more experience and seniority. One day in the office they had a heated argument. Mack threw a screaming fit and later resigned from The Herald. He was allowed back, wrote a couple columns, but his newspaper career never recovered. Grown people, both well into their forties, flying into a kill rage over some trifling thing. The journalism lifestyle does something to people's minds. Even I stated to feel it after just months. Imagine being in it
twenty years or more.
Hideous.
I really need you to explain to me the many tentacled monster that is "the System" and what all it controls, because it is just starting to seem like a mythical boogieman you refer to when you don't have a more convenient group to blame.
It's shorthand for "T
his is jes' how we do things 'roun 'chere, boy. Been at it f'r years, an' it's workin' juuuuuuuuuust
fine. Don't question our ways, son. We kin be yer bes' friends in the world, or we kin make it real
hot f'r ya. Now that's a nice feller. Here's some more goodies fer ya." Maybe it was just a few real extremist whackos I got mixed up with back then, but the fact that they're
still out there and weren't locked up in
Greenleaf or run out of town on a rail tells me something about that climate. My whole thing with
Ashleigh was another symptom of this weirdness. Sure, she made me happy. Looking back, though, I think she was just a little
too perfect. Just six months after my firing, right about when I started trying to get my job back, she turns up? She says, does, and is all the right things.? Just "how things work"? Or was someone deliberately setting me up? The only people I know who would hate me enough to send an underage girl to seduce and ruin me worked for The Herald. I could even name names. But that got a little too uncomfortable for me to consider. Besides, I can't prove anything. So I simply began calling this strange, unsavory way of doing things at my old alma mater "The System"... nice, safe, nonspecific, vague.
So maybe my theory on same-sex relationships is a little out there. Big deal. Two years ago I was talking about starting
a lower-class rights movement. Next year it'll be something new. That's what I (should'a) got paid for as a newspaperman-- to be outrageous and put forth outrageous ideas.
Give it another ten or 15 years and it won't seem so wild.
Hey man, I was wondering if you could go into more detail on [Dale].
You understand it about as well as I do. The angry customer with the weed whacker was really just another in a list of problems...he was also sore at me for what happened with
the lawnmower kid, constantly peeved about my ideas to improve things (like raising the prices, putting in a candy case, and selling Melaleuca products at the counter), and he had a whole rambling list of complaints about how I dressed and how I never handled customers to his liking. He never protected me from anything; I actually think he wasn't really into dating a woman with three kids, didn't really like any of us, and especially resented having me installed in the store to look over his shoulder. I could have said
no, sure, but I knew I wasn't going to get what I wanted
flipping burgers like a chump. I figured if I has an important job and some money saved, my ex's dad would finally admit he had a daughter and let us be together. So maybe going in with a hidden agenda wasn't my best idea.
Would
this be a good example of your most recent work?
That excerpt's about three years old... I have more recent stuff
here and here.
I'd strongly recommend investing in a mid to high quality tablet if you haven't done so already.
I have money saved for a new computer, but I don't know what model I'm getting yet. I'll look into tablets.
As for your speechless strips, the idea flow is decent....I had a little difficulty with the underground cables one, but that was more due to it being low res and having some small text.
Imageshack started compressing the files and even deleted a few of mine. I finally gave up on them when they switched to a pay site. But if
you open the page and click the image, you can make it full-size.
The dingy look of ep. 801 was deliberate. It's intended to be an homage to old seventies cop dramas, and I used my photo edit program to "stain" those frames so they could stand out from the "real world" scenes with the girl, the baby, and the dogs. The baby was modeled after the one in the Tom and Jerry short "
Busy Buddies".
...t would do you worlds of good to step away from your comic for awhile. How long is up to you: a week, a month, a year or two, ten, it doesn't matter. Take however long you need to focus on other things...
I tried that three years ago when things got to be too much... it was only a four months hiatus, but somehow it set me close to two years behind on production. Between that and my computer problems I ended up with a backlog of uncolored pencil sketches that may take me another four months to ink, color, and convert to e-books. I can't wait to begin. 
That's my point--it's so convoluted that the only way to figure it out is to talk to her. Which I will. I think I've finally tracked down a major lead-- her Facebook account. Now we'll finally get some closure.
