Banal Hemorrhage

Smartphones and social media are a double edged sword for me. Without them I'd be a lot more disconnected from the world at large but with them I am more connected with the world at large. Would I be more sociable without them? If we somehow un-invented them, like in Neil Gaiman's short story "And Weep, Like Alexander'", would I be a more sociable guy or not? I lost my phone to the waters of a foreign country recently and I experienced first hand what the world is like without one, and it's not pretty. How did we know which restaurant had better ratings? How were we able to know who that guy was in that episode of Seinfeld? What the nearest fuel source is? I lived through those dark times and I can't even remember! As a bonus for being patient, here's another take on my miserable experience.  

  I thought I was being fancy. Whenever you see a rich bachelor in a movie, they consistently have satin sheets. I've been trained to associate satin with luxury. Because I felt like a fancy person, I bought satin sheets last week. Boy are these things smooth! What they don't tell you is that they may be TOO smooth. I feel like a bar of soap in a crisco disco. It's a veritable sleep and slide in our bed now, with dogs, cats, pillows and humans just sliding all night every night. We're getting used to it but it's been feeling a bit rough, which is an ironic feeling for satin sheets.  Luxury items are funny.  Congratulations on that fancy Italian car for which you will need to hunt for repair parts the rest of your life! Good job on acquiring Downton Abbey, and I hope you can find a good footman in this job market. I know two people who have pool maintenance businesses and the only thing they have in common is that they don't own pools.  Sometimes what you covet w

I undulate between having faith in people and being ashamed of being people. It’s a constant back and forth. Hey, look at this person that is giving her meager savings to help others! Oh crap look at what a cesspool of abuse the Boy Scout organization turned out to be! It’s back and forth all day, every day.  You wouldn’t think I had any faith in humanity if you've been reading my comics, but I’m a closeted optimist. Every time I see or read about an evil group, I learn of a good individual. In general it’s always throngs of people who allow evil, but individuals who exemplify humanity at it’s best. I’ll take a tree over the forest when it comes to humanity.  These times, all we hear about are the indefensible things that groups do: High level collusion between the government and the idiot parade that stormed the Capitol, Purdue suppressing and inventing clinical data, Facebook knowingly contributing to the crassification of everything. We forget that there are individuals showing

  I've recently had a First Day. It's pretty wild how these things can go. I definitely learn best when when I'm thrown in a pool with sharks, but sometimes these experiences can be veritable nightmares. Thinking back on all the "Karen" and "Wild Anti-Masker" videos that stream through social media, I keep thinking that it's very likely that some of those happened in someone's first day in the job. It's traumatizing! It's the people in charge who have to make this a smooth on-ramp. And as a recently minted person in charge, I am aware of the hardships. In healthcare, everything changes by the hour, so standard training is relevant for maybe a day after it's made. Training and onboarding has to be seen as a process and we are often behind.  In my family, I have one particular member who is sort of a male Karen. Let's call him Karlos. Karlos complains about fork tines not being symmetrical, regardless of the situation he's in. I

I’ve talked in the past about this. For whatever reason I was raised to try and fix things first and my wife to understand and empathize first. Is it a gender role thing?  I certainly don’t feel this is because of our genetics, my wife could take me down wrestling easily. I don't want her to discover a sleeper hold though, I'm afraid she would overuse it. She’s been working out since I met her and she has a major gunshow. Why would genes limit her from using hammers and stuff? These expectations, these roles we play, are endemic and in my case, crossed geopolitical boundaries. One of my coworkers, a millennial, told me once that “a man needs to always have a project and tools.” It was the first time I was like ‘dang it perhaps I should’ve been a woman then.’ I have noticed these expectations glacially disintegrating, and I’m for it. I wish there was a way to accelerate this the way we have accelerated the destruction of our known world. But why am I so prone to fixing things ev

I have an unsurprising confession to make. I am a nuisance. Sometimes I get into a movie so much that nothing can break my interest. Other times, I am a talker. I talk to my wife during movies. You’re free to unsubscribe from my feed now that you know. Sometimes, when a movie is too tense, awkward or tedious, I cut the stress with a well placed fart, or even worse, an attempt at a witticism. I’m no Mystery Science Theater, either, so these comments are not gold. Sometimes I just want to know more. Right then and there, for some reason. My wife is not always at the same frequency I am, so sometimes, my dialogues or rhetorical questions are not welcomed. She finds subtle ways to hint that she needs to be all-in, sans interruptions. A gentle shush, a cold shoulder, served divorce papers; all little nudges to make me conform. Most of the time I pick up on these little trifles, because marriage is growth. Extra panel: Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have Roxanne get curious abou

Last fall, we had a problem with our cats. There was an absolute stench in my basement and we couldn’t pinpoint it. We then made a huge mistake and probed deeper. We bought a black light flashlight and discovered what true horror looks like. We can’t tell if it was cat urine, or blood or ectoplasm, but the light shone bright EVERYWHERE.   Sometimes when you have a problem, you seek out the root cause and control for it. Sometimes you use a shotgun to solve it. That’s what we opted for. We bought a carpet cleaner, changed the litter and scrubbed everything the cats owned. My flamethrower idea wasn’t disregarded as quickly as usual. Things seem better now, but we can’t tell what exactly worked. Or perhaps we have COVID and can’t tell. That’s the problem with shotgun solutions, you never know what bullet hit the problem in its stupid face. Extra panel: My theory on how the cats got pee up the walls.