Banal Hemorrhage

One of the biggest issues that I brought into this marriage was a broken belief system. It went something like this: “She married me with all my flaws and issues, so therefore I am all good to go as long as death do us part.” I even made sure she knew exactly how flawed I was before getting married. She survived the gauntlet that I crafted for her, mostly me just being a little too much me.  No one was as surprised as me that she went through with the wedding. My wife adopts a growth mindset to marriage. She sees marriage as an opportunity to change and improve each other. And you know what? Like with everything, except in the pronunciation of “jewelry” and “realtor,” she is absolutely right.  No other force in this planet has made me want to change as much as this pale yooper*. Back in Venezuela I was known to finish every argument with “I am what I am.” Long gone are those times. Since being graced by her companionship, I’ve volunteered, learned to draw, exercised, reached out to pe

This month has been difficult for my psyche. I’m not alone, I know, so I won’t dwell on it. It has been hard to stay alert and continue drawing silly things with all the doom scrolling units left to complete. When this happens it is counterintuitive, because drawing is one of the few ways I can find relaxation these days So for the time being, here’s a collection of a few doodles I’ve been able to finish during my few awake and free hours.

This is what I came up with for comictober’s prompt of  “Twist.” I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved Bill Murray’s urban myths. There’s always stories of him showing up at people’s parties, trolling strangers and generally being a cool human being. It’s one of the few celebrity stories that interest me.  As an extra panel, I’ll give you the other comictober drawings I’ve made up. October in the United States is drama-dense as it is already; so I don’t know if I will be able to continue making ‘near’ daily drawings, but it was great fun.  Here’s for the prompt: werewolf Here’s for the prompt: seasonal Here’s for the prompt: black cat

Besides falling leaves, our dogs are afraid of: Their shadows Doors Stairs Petting Toys Raindrops Leashes Things that our dogs are not afraid of: Huge dogs Feral cats Burly men in the shadows Cars barreling towards them Obviously we have our work cut out for us. These guys are the least befitting of donning the crown of evolution out of any other dog I’ve ever met. Admittedly, in just five months they have burrowed so deep in our lives that I have no doubt we would take a bullet for them. So maybe that’s how they evolved.  They transform whoever adopts them into soft, malleable, unrecognizable pieces of putty. Extra Panel: This is what I imagine when I hear about dog therapists. Here’s an extra: A video of Conan who, we are convinced, learned to dog by watching YouTube tutorials. 

Well, by now most of you know the drill. Information has changed and we are all a bit screwed because of it. Our choices change our news in ways that have never happened before. The news are bottled up and served as a product to people. You are drinking Coke and your neighbor is drinking Mr. Pibb; a bizarre, dubious and objectively wrong choice. I know I can't claim to be right, I mostly jest. I am extremely biased when it comes to immigration, women's choice and LGBQT rights. I will favor those over stock market increases and regulation reductions, even though I am an avid stock market investor. I click on articles that show how immigrants are less prone to commit crimes, while my neighbor may click on articles talking about the hive of scum and villainy that files up to ask for asylum. Just like rashes, the amount of biased news you get grows the more you pick them. If you still are not clear how this works, there's an accessible documentary on Netflix: The Social Dilemma

Have I been nauseating enough about our Coronapups? I’m gonna go with no.  We’ve had our  dobergoblins  (Conan and Xena) for the last four months and all I can say is that they’ve changed us. Roxanne and I look at each other and wince at what we have become.   There’s not an hour of the day in which these dogs aren’t an extension of our bodies. Furry, needy, whiny extensions. And what do we do with this dependent behavior? We encourage the hell out of it. Over the last month we’ve done incredibly disgusting things like:  Bought them little tiny sweaters  Put them in pouches attached to our sweaters Smuggled them into restaurants Handcrafted some masks for them Hiked with them on our backpack Only one of those is a lie. We are so screwed. Extra Panel:  They are our world. 

The inescapable irony of this is that I do the same thing. I make many of you read through my oodles of disparate, manic, poorly construed sentences to get to the mostly anticlimactic event of the “extra panel”. I’m well aware of this human tendency to bloviate once they get handed a microphone. If life was fair, you’d be hearing the Oscar music right now prompting me to shut up.  I was depressed last week. (This is the quality humor content you get when you subscribe to my blog!). I’m okay as of the writing of this post.  I just came from a heavenly vacation with my wife and I feel much better. I-drank-a-bottle-of-champagne-floating-in-a-lake levels of better. The thing that triggered this latest depression is heavy, noisy and grotesque. I’m talking, of course, of Trump. If you're a supporter, please skip ahead, I know you have a knack for selective blindness. I was affected by his post-GOP-convention bump and how his supporters seem to not understand why I am distraught by Trump.