Banal Hemorrhage

Our dogs ain’t right. We love them, they have managed to enrich our lives in new wonderful ways and we would take *tiny* bullets for them. However…  If there’s peace to be disrupted, they’ll be there. They start their walks with excited barking, which grow into curious barking and evolve into a zen-like frolicky barking. They bark at other dogs, pedestrians, bicycles, squirrels, things that look like squirrels, and their own barks.  They posture and tense their leashes with murder in their eyes. We found out that if we unleash them, their bravado goes from 11 to 1. So at least we now know they’re only acting as annoying, aggressive assholes. “Just an act” we tell our neighbors, which doesn’t seem to help any. I know we are those people now. I’ve never been those people before.  The only thing they do better than publicly shaming us is their snuggling. These are world class snugglers. Like thousands-of-years-of-developing-physical-bonds-as-a-survival-instinct world class. Everything f

When I lived in Venezuela, we used to say that United States citizens “Lived to Work instead of Working to Live.” After almost 20 years here in the USA, that stereotype rings true; specially for boomers. Labor is Jesus for so many of the people in this country. It seems that no matter if your job is actually saving people in the emergency room  or selling subscriptions for the National Enquirer, people in the United States give their all to their job. They spend their earnings on pools they don’t have time to swim in and call it good with a one week curated vacation a year. It’s always resorts and cruises with these folks, a formulaic approach to life. Hard work plus cruise = live, laugh, love. For the last few months I’ve been running a COVID vaccine clinic. 11 hours a day 5 days a week, with the occasional weekend. This is the main reason why I haven’t been able to draw and write. It’s the most I’ve ever worked in my life for such as sustained time. It’s easy, though, when you believ

Greetings, readers! It is 2021. We have evicted the worst tenant of the White House, we are vaccinating millions of people a week and everything is getting better! Except me. I’m still a lousy husband.  I’ve been a bit worse, since I’ve been working on a vaccination clinic in my town. It’s the hardest, most stressful task I’ve ever done. And I can’t have enough of it. Unlike many of my previous roles, what I am accomplishing is immediately observable: Shots in Arms. It’s way better than my typical reward of “someone may eventually use this knowledge to on occasion do something potentially useful.”  This makes me understand doctors and nurses a bit more. It’s hard to not be a workaholic when what you do is help people stay healthy. It also makes me understand burnout more. I’ve worked 3 weeks with two and a half days off. And I’m itching to go back tomorrow. This is unsustainable, and it will change soon, but I can see why it’s hard to stop. As for my marriage, it will be fine. We are l

Bathrooms are the Water Temple of social anxiety. That’s a Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (1998) reference and trust me it’s very, very funny. On point though, public bathrooms, locker rooms, and other  loci of excreta have always been challenging locations when my social anxiety is at its highest. I don’t want to learn about others in these quarters, I feel no need to reach out to anything but my self. One time, as a new employee, I went to the bathroom adjacent to where I was being onboarded. The CEO came bounding in, loudly announcing himself and patting other urinators on the back. He then proceeded to let go of his liquid waste hands-free while holding a power pose and whistling. It dawned on me that that’s probably why he was the CEO. He had conquered the bathroom. Surely the people who hired him could tell this is a person who can pee while loudly talking about the weather! “He’s going places”, they must've said to themselves!  Extra panel:  Listen, I know it’s a shitt

I have often been scolded for recycling sweet nothings on others. And yet, I have the slimmest of hopes that I’m not alone here. A hope that maybe there’s other male idiots (even female idiots!) out there who make this vapid generalization error. And we can laugh together. Otherwise this comic will simply hammer down the fact that I’m a subhuman absent-minded foolboy. Of course there is only one true love in my life! But there’s so many cute things things around me that it’s hard to reserve terms. All I can say is that my wife is the only cute Roxanne that I have in my periphery, so I’ll never use her sweet nothings on another Roxanne! This I can almost swear. Rox: I love you mi bebecita linda! Extra Panel: So, the elephant in the room is a PS5 (get it? because it’s large). The reason I haven’t been drawing as frequently as before is not anxiety. It’s not increased booze intake. Sure, both of those things are around, but the main culprit is that I am loving my time with my PS5. I playe

Things have been... weird. We finally beat the worst president we’ve ever had. He’s out. More than 80 million people hate him. His autocratic style was transparent and against what the United States stands for, regardless of if you are a Democrat or a Republican. A weight is lifted for immigrants, LGBQT, liberals and the environment. And yet... tens of millions of people voted for him. Many have moved on since, but at least half (the same half that put credence to Q Anon) believe that the election was systematically rigged and that it will be turned back to Trump. Let me be clear, these people are idiots or monsters. These are the worst of our society. People keep telling me that many of them are ignorant, as if that excuses their dangerous wants. At this point what they want, based on slim evidence, is to overthrow the election in swing states. They want to have the legislatures (many Republican due to gerrymandering) elect their own electors.  The gulf between what they want and the

Public policies work. They have always worked. The number of adult smokers has plummeted since restrictions were put in place . Many of us are too dumb to realize how good this is for us and society in general. I was definitely (and likely still am) one of the dumb ones. A snowflake if you will, like a Republican refusing to accept the 2020 election.  “But what about my rights?”, I voiced to no one in particular when indoor smoking was banned. Why would it be their business what I did with my body? Well it turns out there’s many reasons why.  First of all, these decisions rarely affect just one person. My smoking caused second had smoke, litter and probably a litany of regrets when waking up next to my stinky pack-a-day ass.  Second of all, we are not great at seeing 20 years down the line. Public policy tries to bridge that gap. I may not care that I will be a wheezing, smoke-spewing, leathery sack of crap when I’m 70, but the healthcare system sure will. Lastly & ultimately I am