1. Northern Vacations

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This is it. The first comic in ProCreate, the tool I used from then on. In all it's glory. Look at the circle hands, the broken lines, the unnatural proportions. Gosh, I miss the beauty in absolute mediocrity.

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124. Casa/home

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ENGLISH VERSION BELOW

“No Podemos Regresar a Casa”
Cuando decimos eso, casi siempre queremos decir que tú o el lugar donde crecistes han cambiado muchísimo. En el caso de Venezuela, nuestra casa literalmente no existe. Yo se que no se compara con lugares como Siria, pero es impresionante como todo un país fue eliminado por las terribles decisiones gubernamentales.
Desde que abandoné  (todavía se siente como que la abandone) a mi Caracas en el 2003, se ha convertido en uno de los países más pobres en la región y el crimen se ha vuelto insoportable. La última vez que fui fue en el 2011 y no la pude reconocer, a mi Venezuela. Todos estaban cuidadosos, estresados y asustados. Mi corazón siempre piensa en los que se quedaron atrás.
Cuando veo fotos de mi valle, el valle de la ciudad de Caracas, yo y miles de mis compatriotas soltamos un suspiro grande. Yo la tome por sentado por 25 años, pero nuestra preciosa cordillera es una de las maravillas del planeta.
Este comic fue inspirado cuan…
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123. Betrayal

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My wife and I are bird watching. This is as weird for me to write as it is for some of you to read. I have personally not been a fan of these winged beasts throughout my life. A goose once bit my 4 year old weewee and I decided all animals in the Aves class deserved my scorn; a very human reaction on my part.

Nonetheless, my wife has hung a bird feeder and I built a perch for my cats. I thought they'd enjoy the entertainment. The jury is out. They keep slamming the window to scare the birds away. At first, this primitive strategy worked. However, and this is why I'm starting to love birds, the modern dinosaurs have started to realize that a window pane provides ample defense. They are definitely more ballsy (cloacaful?) now. They just mock my feline girls nowadays.

My wife is amazing at recognizing the birds. My skills are a little short at the moment. I just see two types, brown ugly birds and colorful birds. We also get this type:


My wife promises me that it is not a bird, …
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125. Conventional Titles

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Recently, I was hanging out in the job market. It's a market I hadn't visited in 16 years. It looks and feels like a lot has changed!

One of the most interesting things is that people seem to be able to make up their own job titles with no repercussions: you can be a sensei, master, guru (basically anything Bruce Lee would have been called)  expert, commander, chief and many more!

I don't know exactly the amount of self esteem one needs to unironically and seriously call themselves something as superlative as a "thought leader", I only know it's at least twice as much as I currently have.

I actually don't have a problem with being called any of that, it's just that calling yourself those things seems a bit presumptuous. I've been called a guru before, but I would never, ever, call me that. In my profession, one of the biggest tenets is to "lead with humility". You quickly become an oxymoron if you title yourself a guru.

There's no p…
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122. Sight Seeing

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These last few eternities we have been in an Alaskan cruise ship. My wife and I aren't exactly cruise folk. We like to make our plans and build our own adventures with as little people around us as possible when on vacation. We are definitely not minglers at the promenade kind of people.

That said, this trip has been magical. Seeing whales and bears and cracking glaciers has been a unique experience when combined to the absolute decadence of a cruise ship. Want to have three lunches composed of desserts? It’s OK, in this lumbering, luxury liner. Two dinners, one of New York pizza and the other of Malaysian fare? You absolutely can in this bloated floating city.  At least my wife has gone to the gym thrice in this geriatric grand ship.

Me, I’ve been failing at the one thing I thought I could do: Drink my 15 drinks a day provided by my drink package. My record is 12. Today is our last day and I hope I can do it! Edit: I got 13 and a Perrier ☹️

We saw whales. Lots of whales. From the cr…
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121. Paper Towels

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I love thee, paper towels. Most men that I’ve ever met love paper towels. These absorbent tapestries of angelic white are definitely a better invention than sliced bread. I have not been able to properly communicate to my wife how important paper towels have been in my life. All the errors they have been able to undo. Cat vomit from 5 different pets have posed no trouble for my bleached, thick friends. I’ve been able to harmelssly evict countless bugs with these corrugated beauties. Cooking misshaps? Not here! Mystery blood from a rowdy party? Not in my house!

Never mind the weird side glances I get from my wife when I use a fresh paper towel sheet to pick up a dirty paper towel sheet. How many other tools let you do that ad-infinitum? She doesn’t believe in the miracle anti-bacterial goodness of a simple sheet of paper. Once, when I cleaned pre-used kitty litter that I spilled in the kitchen, she didn’t believe that a quick wipe with my pick-a-size banners of pulcritude would be eno…
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120. Open Minded

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Hey folks! You can try this at home! Start broadcasting that you need a change in life, that you are willing to try something new. You will start receiving an advice avalanche from people you know (and some you don’t). The amount of life improvement nuggets that exist in the universe of humans seems
absolutely infinite. 

We are all culpable of this. I remember when I first tried meditation for anxiety. I couldn’t help myself telling people to try it! Meditation, or more specifically the perceiving of oneself without emotional engagement, worked for me during hard times. The thing is, it is not for everyone. Not everyone needs to meditate.

Terry Pratchett’s quote has always stayed with me: “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”. In it’s most benign interpretation we have people really trying to help, from their limited focus. In one of the more pernicious interpretations we have cult leaders and their t…
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117. The Layoff Episode

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Last week, my department got laid off, along with dozens of others around my organization.

In my  job as an internal consultant, I made use of my talents to help the people I cared the most about: the employees (from front line to leaders). It was in the direct help to employees that I derived the most work satisfaction. I will definitely be mourning the loss of the opportunity to help my co-workers for a long time to come.

I am unsure what I will pursue. At this moment, many roads seem viable that I hadn't seen before. I am both strengthened and overwhelmed at the choices. I really want to be in a position in which I can continue to help workers achieve better outcomes for their customers and themselves.

Extra Panel:

The Psychology of it All

It had been telegraphed to us that we would lose our jobs, so I had time to build up to it emotionally. Or so I thought! The mixture of shame, disappointment and anger that comes after a moment like this is not possible to prepare for. I alw…
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118. Shortcuts

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I'm not going to lie. I loved drawing this one. I’m on the second week of forced unemployment and being able to draw this one was a great release of tension and anxiety. This comic combines some of my favorite things. It is about  clever shortcuts, diversity and the one game that changed everything for me: Super Mario Bros. for the NES.

I can barely remember what I had for breakfast (and I made it myself), but I remember the day my mom bought me the NES and this game like it was yesterday. Seeing the box art for the first time, with its blown up pixel art, was an indelible memory. My brother said that the graphics looked like shit, because it was so blown up. When we were finally able to hook it up at home, all kinds of people came by to marvel at the graphics. I remember everything from the first goomba to the first time (after lots of tries) that we lowered the flag in world 1-1. It was a good time to be alive and young. Video games have always been there for me when the world …
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119. The Choice Patient

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The choice patient is a Republican talking point. Most people in the United States already have no options in their insurance as it is done through their employer. If you have a public option that will pay for your main healthcare needs, only a portion of Americans would need to supplement it with  something else. And this is the United States of America so there will always be VIP options, I have no doubt.

We need to go to Universal Healthcare. On that the Democrats mostly agree (Biden's 97% promise falls short to most others). They disagree in how to get there. You heard on the democratic debate one of the main rifts: Should we have a federally managed, exclusive public option or should there be a space for private insurance? I am not intelligent enough to know what will be best in our current economic and political climate but hear me out. An exclusive single payer system is very rare in large countries.

France, Spain, Germany and Canada have a role for private insurance. Ther…
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