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Showing posts with the label Miscellaneous

153. Et tu, Burritus?

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Mediocrity in comics is my safe zone. I’m pretty used to the space I’ve come to conquer in this medium. Right there with the guy who draws horny dolphins and the girl making fan fiction about Ted, the guy who dumped her right before prom... 20 years ago. I like the small amount of followers through the diverse mediums I’ve gathered after this year of comic drawing. It allows me to keep practicing new techniques and styles (this is my first potty humor post) without repercussions. It allows me to put things out here that are, well, less than refined. I love you and thank you for letting me experiment! It’s easy to do so, I have no brand to protect. Speaking of brands, this is the first comic that was bought by a brand! Yes, SLOOF, found me in instagram and paid me a few bucks for this comic! Thankfully they made a related product to what I was thinking! Extra panel: SLOOF Before last week, I had barely heard of SLOOF. But they are all over the place, with hundreds of affordabl

148. Leavers

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People leave. People stay. People come back. I respect their decision. Well, not every decision. There’s a few who seem to want to get away from themselves. Like a 90’s movie hacker they want to change their location rapidly so they are not traced. But they’re their own FBI.  The thing is, as many axioms proclaim, you can’t outrun your own dumb ass. If you are not happy where you currently have a social network, what makes you think you will find happiness in a new place? I only truly have faith in people who are content with themselves when making the choice to leave. Then it is about an adventure, not about placing your salvation into the not-within-you. In my life, of the people I know who said they wanted to leave: 3 out of 5 never left, but kept complaining. 1 out of 5 left and come back, with lessons learned. 1 out of 5 succeeded in finding a better life elsewhere. Unless you are a Venezuelan, in which case 4 out of 5 of us successfully left that decaying soil;

141. Venezuelanisms

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These are a collection of the colorful, and often savage, sayings of my people. For all I criticize my people sometimes , I have a lot of respect for their wordplay and creativity. Growing up in Venezuela was, for the most part, a great experience. The weather was nice, people were very hedonistic, and I had a very comfortable life. Perhaps a bit too comfortable, if I do say so myself. Which I just did. The first one is "Camaron que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente. [Shrimp that sleeps, the current takes.]" It is a cautionary tale about not being on top of things. Lest you be taken by the current. Thing is, a little bit of current hopping is not bad. What else is life, just constantly fighting against the tide? Nah, can't subscribe to that magazine. By the way, "Can't subscribe to that magazine" is copyrighted by Banal Hemorrhage productions. The second one is dark as hell. "Cria cuervos y te sacaran los ojos. [Raise crows and they'

139. Army Rejects

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Roxanne and I joined the Salvation Army once. We thought it would be fun to be ringing that bell and  get money for charity. And it was fun, initially. We didn’t know anything about the organization, so we started googling the organization. One of the most salient characteristics of this organization was their religious based tenets. This is how they feel about homosexuality, and this is AFTER finding themselves in hot water about the issue:    “The Bible teaches that God's intention for humankind is that society should be ordered on the basis of lifelong, legally sanctioned heterosexual unions. ... A disposition towards homosexuality is not in itself blameworthy nor is the disposition seen as rectifiable at will. ... Homosexual practice however, is, in the light of Scripture, clearly unacceptable. Such activity is chosen behaviour and is thus a matter of the will. It is therefore able to be directed or restrained in the same way heterosexual urges are controlled. Homosexua

138. Mother

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I don’t believe my mom set to destroy the patriarchy, I think the patriarchy was just an inconvenient hurdle on the way to her goals. But destroy the patriarchy she did. Over and over again. One of the first women petroleum engineers, the first to work on oil rigs, one of the first to not change her last name, the first to many, many things. I imagine the amount of paperwork that had to be changed because of her mere existence and it always makes me flash a wicked smile. The most amazing thing about her is how humble she is about all of this. Throngs of women have looked up to her for generations and all she’ll ever admit to is being a hard worker. There’s more to her, though. She’s always a steady snowball that simply knows how to move forward. I wish that certitude of hers had splashed down to me through her DNA strands. Alas, the only thing I’m certain of is that she has always and will always be my hero. My she-ro. Most people that meet her, remember her. And not just bec

134. Ok Hugger

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Trigger Warning for Some: Contains references to hugging.  I am an introvert, and I am a hugger. I don’t know why these things coexist in me, but they are not the only cacophonic elements of my psyche. Is it from my cultural upbringing in Venezuela? Is it in my genes? I don’t know, but  I love hugging the few people I can call friends in these strange times. I don’t hug everyone. I gauge the situation very carefully, often saying things like : “are you a hugger?” or watching for open armedness. Sometimes I am wrong (mostly with people bearing the XY chromosome). I can tell when I screw up, it feels like hugging a dead tree. Many times I never see the huggee ever again. I imagine that they decided to avoid me for the rest of their lives, lest they be held in in my (very arguably) comforting arms ever again. Sometimes, I turn non-huggers into huggers. Sometimes. Extra Panel: Leaving a wake of petrified people behind. 

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

114. Facing Issues

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When I am walking down my work’s hallway, I see lots of faces. Sometimes, out of the blue, my processes break and I let out a mess of a face in return. It’s like a Jim face  if Jim had diarrhea and was afraid people would notice. Where do we learn to do these faces? I sure as hell didn't plan to develop this response to another human being. I must have caught it from some other awkward nimrod. The people in my head are based slightly on Khaneman's 2 system theory . You can find out more in this earlier blog post.   Some days I love the slower, thoughtful #2 (blue) and some days you can’t but appreciate your instinctual, hurried #1 (red). The origins of these creatures can be seen in this popular post , as well. I often think about these two theoretical processes. Number one is the one who types posts in twitter and starts fights with Trump supporters and horrible people. Number 2 is the one who erases these posts before they are sent. Extra post: It’s contagio

113. Truth Bombs

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Having iron-clad thoughts written in stone is not as laudable as it seems. For some reason, people seem to idolize personalities with unwavering opinions. I feel it's a dangerous thing to celebrate. We should be ready to update our opinions with the introduction of new evidence. Like most Venezuelans that escaped that socialist dystopia , I was a libertarian when I came to the United States. I believed that all people needed to do was to work really hard and they could make it in a place like the USA. I have learned a lot since then. I have learned that we are definitely not all in equal footing. I came across evidence that hiring practices were racist against black sounding names ( This is a recent  meta-analysis);   redlining has deprived many communities from prosperity and even children are disciplined differently in school . Over time, African Americans also get longer prison sentences . All this paints a picture that is particularly harrowing for black males in th

112. Career Fairy

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I thought of this one while my mouth was agape and being toyed with. I don’t dislike my dentist, but he could learn a bit about human behavior from his dental hygienist. When I first started going to the dentist after a huge gap (in years, not in my teeth), I was a mess. I never flossed, my gums were very squirty and I brushed pretty unimpressively. Move forward a few years later and now I floss about 75% of the days, I use a cool electric brush and I take a lot better care of my dental health. All of this through the coaching and encouragement of my dental assistant. Throughout those years, my dentist has not seen a story of improvement. Just another guy he sees for 5 minutes and still is not great at oral health. I feel he could use some lessons from my dental assistant about behavior change. I see the same pattern in other professions. We are biased about what we do, so we expect others to be like us. Dentists see people who don’t give a crap about oral health. Doctors see

108. Forbidden Fruit

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First of all, let me be on the record stating how complicated I find that in English the word for the burning spiciness is 'hot'. So a dish can be cold and hot (Like Thai Larb) because it's served cold but it is spicy hot. Or hot and not hot, like  pizza margherita. It's a little screwy and you know it. 88% of my Facebook pag e readers seem to like-a the spice-a, so I bet my love of all things hot is in not lost on you lot. I find that my new found love for hot food is inspirational. I had spent my whole life avoiding that category of seasoning. I just didn't need it. When the love of my life introduced me to this, I felt for it instantly. Right now I think I eat even more hot food than her. It's not a competition, but I'm killing it. There's something about that burning, tasty, lingering feeling that comes with adding a few SHU to your meals. It has changed my life. How many other things like this are waiting in the periphery of you

106. Uplifting

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Esteemed readers, I am not an overly ambitious person. That makes me a rarity among many of my friends and family. It took me a long time to discover that it is perfectly OK to be just OK in the dimension of ambition. What I found to be true in my life, however, was that you can lack the classical ambition of things and status and yet have a yearning for making an impact. Currently I work with an organization that helps adults obtain the literacy skills that the system failed to grant. It fulfills me more than any promotion or more bundles of cash could. However, I’ve also discovered that I don't need to help assholes. Psychological research warns us against the rat race of the pursuit of happiness . The jollies you get from achieving your goals are short and fleeting. So if you are not enjoying the journey, it will be all for naught. So, dear reader, if you’ve read this far all I want is to share that little nugget. Make sure you are not focused on other people’s goals.

105. This Place Sucks

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Ahhh. The internet. The promise of the library of Alexandria, but the reality of the Library of Babel . Gen Xers saw this whole thing unfolding. We saw how it started as a place with great niche information, interesting message boards and slow loading porn. We saw it evolve into a place supported by ads, shaped by your biases and with fast loading porn. Today any idiot can have a webpage (what-what tens of thousands of hits right here, baby). Any idiot can write in the internet's pages. And every idiot does. I like to think about the messages that we put out there and try to make them sound like they came from a human mouth in a social setting. It's awful! You would just hear people saying stuff from their subconscious, consequences be damned. No real back and forth, just a bunch of people saying awful things about other people, other artists or other gamers. No one really comports themselves like this in a social setting. Except that one dude, but everybody hates him

100. Penetrating Humor

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When realizing that I was nearing 100 comics, I thought about doing something special. I wanted to aggrandize the situation and leave a gift for my present and future supporters. Paralysis ensued. We are prisoners of our own expectations sometimes, are we not? Fear of success is a true thing, as ridiculous and pompous as that sounds. We all know successful people who are prisoners to their own success, somehow less happy and less themselves as they were when seeking that success. We’ve all heard of the depression and loss many astronauts feel after their missions. How do you one-up those experiences? I am not here to tell you not to be ambitious, this world would be a sad place without it. I feel the problem is that some people see the world as a ladder instead of a spiral. If you climb to a rung you do not enjoy, going down seems like reversing. It’s not. It’s progressing. What IS dangerous to your health is advancing without happiness or joy just for fear of going back. The wor

95. Better Than Yesterday

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 A few years ago, I was in an improvement kick. I wanted to become a leader at work and be fit as a fiddle and aggressively meditate and all kinds of things. At one point I bit off more than I could chew and decided to slow down due to the anxiety it was generating. Improvement is great, but you have to make sure you are heading towards the things you want, not what society wants of you. Some of the things I was pursuing were not me. I find that what motivates me the most is looking into the rear-view mirror. It's not imagining a future that I don't know I will like. It's seeing how much you've changed in your journey. It's trends and bumps, not goal lines. The cool thing about this hobby is that I can see the absolute entirety of my progress. And I love all of my pieces (even if the world doesn't). For some reason I have no feelings of regret or shame when looking back; like some artists have expressed. I think these pieces are all an accurate representat

92. Never Google Your Doppleganger

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In my lifetime I have been told that I look exactly like some people that I would consider to be not perfect replicas of me. Maybe I have a better self esteem than I project, but I feel like I don’t look like “ The Critic ”; as was earnestly expressed by a girl on a (first and only) date. Other twinsies I’ve been professed to have: Steven Wright Tony Hale Stephen Miller (Aaaaargh) Dr. Katz I don’t know. Maybe I’m vain, but I always pictured me as more of a Luke-Perry-with-a-really-bad-hair-day type. It’s funny how I have a pretty sturdy love and acceptance of my own physique, and yet my self esteem about other things (like being a functional adult in this crazy world) is pretty dismal.

91. It was me all along

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As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, millennials get blamed for everything these days. Has it happened like this before? When we were young everyone blamed the older folks, but for some reason now everything is the younger folk’s fault. Personally I agree with the murder of many of these things. I’ve never understood the fascination with golf or college football. I don’t understand how they are still a thing, and a huge thing at that! Unless they change the rules to allow robots or mutants, I don’t see myself getting into them. Napkins are just useless in a world that contains paper towels. Debate me on this. I sincerely don’t understand why we must have both, so I’m OK with their demise. Diamonds are forever stupid. When did we decide that they were symbols of love and wealth? They have felt unnecessary and gaudy to me all my life. What an unnecessary reason to pillage the earth and the workers who unearth them. Chain restaurants and malls had their time in the sun.

89. Savoring Pitfalls

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I don't know if you, dear readers, do this. I do, and it's a terrible habit. I do it with book series, movie shows and video games. I wonder if it is part of a bigger tendency, of people waiting until best possible moment that never arrives. How many bottles of perfectly aged wine remain unopened at the end of one's life? Some of my unfinished projects as of this writing: Red Dead Redemption 2 Mad Men Malazan Books Dragon Quest XI Firefly (I have one episode left, it hurts too much) Community It hurts even to write these. I will update this list if I get to them! My fatal disease of Scrotal Malware was chosen by our friend Hayley. Thanks for giving me an agonizing death! 

86. Move over Robin and Nighthawk

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Based on a conversation about titmouse birds. But the birds are real! Learn about them here: Masked Booby Siamese Fireback Cock of the rock Letting your imagination run wild is not as wonderful as you might want. I spent all week imagining what a cock-on-the-rock would look like. This, my dear readers, is the more sanitized version.

84. Healthcare privacy act

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Note: Trying out a minimalist art style for quick ones. This is an exaggeration of true events. Although HIPAA  does protect your personal information in many ways, the logistics of Healthcare make it nigh impossible to completely be private. When I got my vasectomy, we had to drop some semen samples afterwards to make double sure we got snipped correctly. Well you have to go from ,erm, production of the sample to testing within 30 minutes. I live 10 minutes away from work, thankfully. I can't imagine how people who live further away do it? Well I can, but I don't want to. When I got to the line for the lab, the nurse was like... any semen samples??? And 4 of us had to be like... yes. 2 of them I recognized from work. So it is what is. I don't care that much, but complying with it is a logistical problem more often than not.