After a surfeit of punishing insomnia that kept me awake until four in the morning last night, I had the most amazing dream. I sat at my drawing table and suddenly, without effort, I was inking a page of my own comic art, based on a brilliant new idea I’d conceived.
Want to hear a funny story? It’s true, too. I used to be “pro-choice”, up until not that long ago. I was pretty outspoken about it back in high school. Why do you think that was?
Real quick; the title phrase comes from a Belgian documentary called Empire of Dust. I assume you haven’t seen it, because no matter how fervently I recommend it, and no matter how much I know the person to whom I’m recommending it would appreciate it, literally no one ever watches it.
Remora front dorsal fins have evolved to enable them to adhere by suction to smooth surfaces, and they spend most of their lives clinging to a host animal such as a whale, turtle, shark or ray. It is probably a mutualistic arrangement as the remora can move around on the host, removing ectoparasites and loose flakes of skin, while benefiting from the protection provided by the host and the constant flow of water across its gills. Although it was initially believed that remoras fed off particulate matter from the host’s meals, this has been shown to be false; in reality, their diets are composed primarily of host feces.
Wikipedia, trustworthy only for anything apolitical
Matty Boy Anderson at a Trump rally in Atlanta, early 2016. “IDIFTL,” said Anderson, who has received over fifty emails a day from Donald Trump since then.
As a professional cartoonist with underground roots for over three decades, Matthew “Matty Boy” Anderson has been struggling to stay afloat in our current timeline. With censorship openly enforced by government and tech companies, multi-millionaire celebrities endorsing fascism towards their detractors, and “Redditors” eager to surrender freedom for unnecessary conveniences, how can any legitimate artist continue to make a living?
How do you do, fellow humans? Did you have a good Thanksgiving?
I tell you what- let’s pretend that we all did, for a few moments. I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I have a feeling that the vast majority of you out there have had dental surgery that was more enjoyable than Thanksgiving 2021. The conversation was probably more stimulating, too.
“Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ‘t!” -William Shakespeare, The Tempest
For the past twenty years, I’ve tried to get over it. I’ve tried to make sense of it.
I have now passed the half-way mark on my least productive year in a decade. Even when I was practically homeless and actually starving a ways back, I was producing more work than I have this year. I know what the problem is.
Pictured: The serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know who should go fuck themselves.
In case you missed it, Bands I Useta Like (the comic strip, not the site you are currently reading) is over. I am forced to accept that a printed periodical outlet for the strip I have drawn for the past twenty-three years no longer exists. This is the theme of the 2020’s; forced acceptance and submission. Historically, I do well with neither.
So, in the spirit of the current times, I am accepting my own flaws and shortcomings as personal advantages, and forcing them on the rest of society and the world. As a pipe-tooting sailor once said, I am what I am.
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