This is a webcomic. It doesn’t involve any rockets… yet. Remember to

Embrace the Ridiculous!

(Savannah knows what the other motto is. And why it’s so important that THIS one supplants it.)

9/7/09

Based on a real life event, and by that I mean: I actually got a phone call from Porky Pig. He told me he really appreciated that I got that he was supposed to be trying to say “The End” at the end of those cartoons. Everyone I know (admittedly, all Ohioans) always had it as B-de-B-de-B-de B-da-de B-da That’s All Folks! (Hey, not only did I not say I was the sharpest crayon in the box, I CERTAINLY didn’t think I hung out with any.)

You should have seen the first pass at this; I had human legs on him. CREEPY.

8/29/09

Hi there Deborah Kay. I’m writing this from Jackson Hole Wyoming, where I have just been to Old Faithful. It turns out it’s pronounced “guy-zur”. I was hoping I could get certified as an old, faithful geezer too… maybe get some protection from the government.

Yellowstone is amazing, worth every moment of acrophobia (not that many, not at ALL like the Grand Canyon), but there are large sections of it that are still recovering from the big fire in 1988. Dead tree trunks everywhere. It looks like the surface of the moon… well, if someone went up and planted a bunch of trees on the moon, forgetting that they need air too. And then they all died… okay, it’s not like the surface of the moon at all. Just forget I said that.

8/28/09

More fun with pen and ink. I used to do elaborate shading schemes with ballpoint in classes and study halls. I kinda seem to have lost my touch…

Ah well. This brings me to an important point: Buttery. When I say, “Buttery,” all solo like that, I’m referring to people who can’t distinguish between things that they think are “just like”. Some people, lobster and toast are exactly the same flavor… buttery. You think I’m exaggerating, I can see it on your faces.

☺

The thing is, while most of us can distinguish between toast and lobster, we seem to have issues with storylines and music and virtually everything else. Any idea you put forth, someone is sure to say, “That’s just like _____,” (Springsteen or Melville or some video I saw on You Tube) and usually the only resemblance is that it contains saxophones or takes place on a boat or has teens jumping around and singing badly, and of course that it was generated by bipedal carbon based lifeforms.

You might, if you’re listening closely to what I might mean (an ill-advised exercise but some people can’t resist), be wondering right now how exactly I got from my loss of creative shading skills to my ideas about butter. It’s simple, really… sometimes I look at this and say “This kind of sucks.” But I keep doing it anyway. Anyone who wishes to join me in this behavior, feel free. A country full of armchair critics isn’t going to be all that much fun.

Also 8/16/09

I have been bothered for some time by the Dairy Queen floating lips… the voice was okay, the jokes were funny enough, not so funny they should get their own sitcom but enough to be non-annoying in a commercial, but there was something I couldn’t figure. And then it hit me. This is a guy’s voice. And there’s lipstick.

Well, I got to wondering where they found this guy, and as I’m sure occurred to y’all IMMEDIATELY, I found this:

Aha! So THAT guy’s still working. Good for him.

Well, this all led me to mention it to Savannah, who suggested we do a Dairy Queen commercial to “The Time Warp”.

<Riff:> It’s astounding, ice cream’s melting

People come in the door

<Magenta:> So listen closely, try to take all their orders

<Riff:> I’ve got to make some more

I remember eating a corn dog, drinking my shake back when

The nachos would hit me, and the food would be flying

<Choir:> Let’s go to DQ again, Let’s go to DQ again

<Magenta:> It’s so creamy, it makes you want to be me

Just so you see what it’s all about

In another location at the self service station

Trying to decide, with nuts… or without?

<Riff:> With an order of French fries, you’re not such a bad guy

A burger could really be your friend

<Magenta:> You could slop on some ketchup

<Riff:> Or other stuff you might retch up

<Choir:> Let’s go to DQ again

<Inspector:> Condiments on the left, <Choir:> napkins and straws on the right

<Inspector:> Put some sprinkles on this <Choir:> and take a great big bite

A little cherry slush that’s going straight to your brain

Let’s go to DQ again

<Columbia:> Well I was walking down the street just having a flurry

When a good humored man told me “Don’t worry”

He said “Be happy! Let me be your boss!”

Then he gave me maraschinos and some chocolate sauce

And a uniform and he told me to change

And I was working for DQ again

<Choir:> Let’s go to DQ again, let’s go to DQ again

<Inspector:> Condiments on the left, <Choir:> napkins and straws on the right

<Inspector:> Put some cheese on your chips <Choir:> and take a great big bite

A little cherry slush that’s going straight to your brain

Let’s go to DQ again

8/16/09

The first of what will probably end up being a series of Haley and Joe cartoons. I need to develop the characters visually…

It has been an interesting week of driving toward a goal… when I had a minute to myself I mostly spent it on sitting down and saying “ow”. It’s getting better, though; I’ve taken most of the weekend off and gone to the Salt Lake City Parade Of Homes. Every house I go into has like three master suites and eighteen bedrooms, and all I can think is “plenty of room for your sisterwives”. An opinion I keep to myself.

☺

8/04/09

Sara’s kind of “attuned”. I always like putting something out as an impression and asking, “Does that mean anything to you?” Well, everything means something… I mean “I’m seeing red shoes…” “WOW! My mom had red shoes once! It must be my mom….” On the other hand, people who say “No,” flat and cold, like they think this is all bullshit, and people who in fact ARE flat and cold and think this is all bullshit. Everything means something, except maybe that symbol that was supposed to make us think of The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince And Now Known Just As Prince (TAFKATAFKANKJAP to his fans.)

It took me the longest time to abandon the interconnectedness of all things. I suppose it’s all those songs: “I am he as you are he and you are me and we are all together.” Butterfly Effect indeed; most events make tiny ripples in fate and then wink out, as if they never happened. Reality is made of jello, you have to put a lot of force into something to get it to go anywhere much.

7/29/09

I hear the Vatican is working on a deal with Sprint that's just like this.Satellite, schmatellite, I always say. ANGELS. There's the moneymaker.

I know it’s not really related, but it occurred to me the other day that you could do a pretty good cost saving measure on that afterlife thing if you closed down hell and just had purgatory. Then, for the people who belong in hell, you could just keep telling them “Your time is almost up… yep, you’ll probably be getting out tomorrow” and they’d keep seeing other people who came in after them getting out first. It’d be a lot like Chili’s, only without all the jalapeños. Where do all the demons go when they get laid off? We’d need to find them something… idle hands are… well, you know.

7/22/09

I don't actually own the world, but I have it registered as my intellectual property.

Jeffy always did have direction issues.

I’ve never exactly figured out what was so desirable about owning the world. I’d like to check the catalog and do some comparison shopping. Did anyone ever bother to talk to Victor Von Doom?

7/18/09

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s beer.

This calls to mind my favorite joke: Two racehorses are complaining about their lives. “Every morning, up at the crack of dawn, run UP the track, run DOWN the track, run UP again…” The second horse says, “Yeah, and that little guy with the whip, jeez, where do they find these people? It SUCKS to be a racehorse.” A passing dog says, “What are YOU pampered prettyboys bitching about? It could be worse, you could be a draft horse pulling a wagon up and down the street fifteen hours a day till you die.” And the one horse looks at the other and says, “Wow, look at that! A talking dog!”

Joe saw the commercial for G Force, about the secret agent guinea pigs, and had credibility issues. “How would they know about James Bond?” Not that they could talk, or drive, or do TaeKwonDo. I think it’s David Blaine and Criss Angel; they’ve gotten us accustomed to the suspension of disbelief.

Oh, hey, have I ever gone onto my soapbox about CamelNotation? Back when you could only have one word names in the computer world (because the space was an operator, if you put a space in it the computer read it as “End Of Title” and would treat the rest as “some other instruction”) there were two basic solutions; well, three. One was to separate everything with an underscore: Underscore_Replaces_Spacebar. I think that one’s still winning, certainly in the email names on Yahoo. Death_by_design. A second, my favorite, was called Camel Notation, where each new word starts with a capital. ForeverBlowingBubbles. For one thing, it saves you from having to indicate “underscore” all the time when you’re spelling it on the phone for Malaysian Call Center girls who are booking your airline tickets/doctor appointments/federal taxes etc. (Of course, it makes you have to say “AllOneWord”, which is where the soapbox comes in: If everyone uses Camel Notation, we can just assume “all one word” unless they tell us otherwise.) Camel Notation’s main drawback is if the words you’re using ordinarily contain a lot of capitals anyway. USANow. NPRFAQLine. At that point it starts to resemble option three:

Justjamthemalltogether. This is like vanity plates; you can read them many ways, some of them comical. There’s a go-kart track here in Salt Lake City called M², and the owner’s vanity plate is MSQUARED. Only in traffic, you might think you’re behind Ms Quared. Or Ms Qua, who’s Red. This is especially comical with penisland.com. Pen Island would definitely benefit from Camel Notation. (They sell pens. Although I bet with the requests they’re getting from the Contact Us button, they’re considering branching out.)

But I digress. You knew that about me, right?

☺

7/17/09

This idea is from Savannah’s boyfriend Mike… a source of good ideas in general, which he ought to consider drawing himself.

☺

On account of he’s actually pretty good at it.

My work here: I’m delighted with the typing hands. Not so much with the right elbow (her right, not yours). Little victories, little defeats.

7/15/09

Note: "Unless you own a hotel or something." Need I even mention that I WANT BONUS POINTS?

Save the Polo Bears. I’m just saying.

It’s good to see the girls back in action.

I based the concept of the Colorado Two guys on Grabit and Hyde, cartoon villains in an off cartoon from someone. I remember them as kind of primitive claymation guys, but when I was a child and they didn’t have claymation down very well. Gumby was about it… so maybe it was George Pal. Did you ever see the one he did with the Screwball Army? A CLASSIC. His slam at the Nazis… It has a section at the beginning where a delivery boy rides up on a Vespa and delivers a singing telegram:

GREETINNNNNNNNNGS! We beg to inforrrrrrm you… (rubato) We’re getting mad (pause) We’re also weary/ (tempo kicks in) So now, we’re going to fight/ we’ll kill you parasites/ this is a de-ehehehclaraaaaaation of WAR!” Then he holds out his hand and says, “That’ll be a dollar ninety eight. CO-LLECT.” The screwball army is seriously cramping the style of two young Dutch lovers, and eventually the army is done in by the rain; they’re metal, they rust. And all live happily ever after, wooden shoes and all.

Anyway, maybe it was George, maybe not, but Grabit and Hyde came on and they did a song:

”We’re Grabit and Hyde, we’re Grabit and Hyde,

We steal and we rob and we ____”

Now here I have an issue of memory. Because the word I remember is “rape”. Only, seriously, they didn’t make a cartoon for kids that said “we steal and we rob and we rape”… did they? Nah… So, from the tune I know it’s a one syllable word here, that starts with r… reek? Rake?

It might have been “rape”. Cartoon guys are notoriously inconsiderate, they think children don’t ask questions. CHILDREN ASK QUESTIONS. One of those Follow The Bouncing Ball cartoons had a song in it full of cheesy puns and jokes; a peanut lay on the railroad track, his heart was all a flutter, along came a train at 95, toot toot! Peanut butter. That one didn’t bother me. THIS one did:
A man lay by the sewer and by the sewer he died, and to this day the people say that it was sewercide.

That one caused me to force my mom to explain suicide to me. THAT bothered me.

: |

The only other thing I remember clearly about Grabit and Hyde is when they’re about to be captured, and Hyde says “Come on, Grabit! I think we better hide!”

I also based these guys on Butch and Sundance, only they’re Mullet McGillicuddy and the Sundog Kid. (The kid’s the skinny one.) Mullet doesn’t have a mullet anymore, he’s going bald, but you know how nicknames are.