Tag Archives: computers

Death of the Cool


True confession time; this may shock you, coming from someone who has collected toys and used computers since grade school, but I have never, ever been thought of as “cool”. When I was a young man, I might have fantasized about being a “cool guy”, but the reality never clicked. I’m more of an awkward misfit, or a borderline “nerd”. It doesn’t bother me. I accept who I am, and my place in society.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Worst Of All

Why Literally None Of It Matters

Possibly the greatest blessing of my childhood is that I was bullied almost non-stop for its duration.

How could that be a blessing? It prepared me for a lifelong career on the Internet, that’s how.

If you expect other people to make fun of you, regardless of what you say, you’ll do fine on the web. Because they will. No matter who you are.

How about a riddle?

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Worst Of All

Uncle Owen’s Cabin

Deep cleansing breaths.

Some people are fans of something because the person that created it paid them attention.

I’m kind of curt about the fact that I don’t take suggestions from the audience. I don’t mean to be rude, but here’s the issue. If I take a suggestion, I am now beholden to the one who made it.

Not only that, I’ll have set a precedent, wherein that person will peruse my work in perpetuity, hoping for another use of the suggestion. It’s a kind of writer/audience codependency, and it’s unhealthy for either party.

It’s common practice in digital culture. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Worst Of All

Windows of America

In college, I split-majored, in both graphic design and illustration. I’m a cartoonist, but when I graduated high school, that wasn’t a common part of art-school curriculum. In illustration, I learned the most important aspect of rendering; figure studies. After all, there will never come a time when human anatomical knowledge is unnecessary. The skill to draw any part of the body you inhabit will never hold you back.

However, I was naive in my choice of studies. I was so eager to learn all that I could, I didn’t grasp that graphic design requires the left (analytical) side of the brain, and illustration (creative) requires the right. For a green teen, it was too much; I burned out and then dropped out. I couldn’t jockey back and forth across the hippocampus day after day. While trying to ink the sewer grate for the cover of the second Mike The Pod Comix, I had a psychotic episode and hurled my sketchbook down the dorm hallway.

The sewer grate, folks. The sewer grate. (1991)

The sewer grate, folks. The sewer grate. (1991)

If none of this makes sense to you, then hello, normal person.  Continue reading

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions