Posts

217. Coverup

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One of the biggest ironies of the world is that to keep safe the things we love we have to hide their beauty from the world. Ferraris live under tarps, fine jewelry in old wooden boxes and our phones on cases or with nasty screen protectors. I'm sure that's why my wife buys me hideous shirts, to keep me safe from predators. Just kidding, I'm just checking up t see if she still reads my blog. Growing up in Venezuela I learned at an early age to hide any wealth. "They'll kill you for your shoes!", I often heard. And they sure did sometimes. My interest in shiny things has never been vast, even after I emigrated. It's telling that I have the ugliest car and shoes in the team of 27 I work with, and I'm the manager! The only time I see the special edition colors of my phones are 30 minutes after I buy them and 1 week before I trade them. Extra Panel: Padme with a Case  

216. Identity Theft

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Before the fated year of our lord 2020, we had built a life of our own. We had made things, signed off on things, cleared our schedules of things to make space for other things, organized things, arranged things, got recognized for things. Dammit we did the things! We had a life. We were actually pretty proud of our lives.  All agency has been lost since then. All we are known for in our town is this pair of dog-forsaken animals. They're not even that well-made. Our first vet told us that they are "structurally off". One of them is a biter and a blepper. The other is a serial licker and has a literal hole in her head.  That's our current legacy in our hood.  And this is a true story, as we were walking out of a musical event in downtown Kalamazoo, we overheard a kid calling us the Chihuahua People.  Our reaction in real life was more like this:

215. Midterm Madness

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I pity the people the GOP pander to. If their messaging is about being anti-woke, who are they trying to appeal to, the asleep? They’re anti-Antifa, are they Profa? Would they call Hitler their daddy and ask to be spanked? Think of the dumbed down messaging they throw around: "build the wall", "make America great again", "all lives matter". These are slogans for scared, simple people who can't handle nuance.  They think so little of their constituents that they truly believe all they have to do is put a guy like Herschel Walker on the ticket. Republicans are not dumb, however. They have successfully sold anti-immigration to religious immigrants. There's humans in my sphere that have been both illegal immigrants and pro-Trump. Republicans make this happen by aligning with quick-bite issues du jour .  Having trouble with the multiple pronouns and terms emerging out of the LGBQT community? "Join us, we don't even try!" Worried that books

214. Party Animals

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Before 2020 we were normal people. We never even considered having a small dog, let alone two. As the coronavirus raged, we found ourselves in a narrowing corridor that led to the acquisition of the weirdest, most undogly of beings. I still don't understand their place in the universe, which works out well because I don't understand my place in the universe. One time, as a youngster, my friends and I were inexplicably burdened with the care of a peer who had ingested copious amounts of LSD. Those harrowing hours are the closest I've ever been to what my current life is right now. These beings oscillate between trying to murder your face and being the most adorable things I've ever held.  They go berserker mode on animals 10x their size. They drop down and ask for belly rubs, posing like hairy French girls. These are unknowable beings.  We have less friends now that we did before COVID. Is it because of COVID or our monsters? Social distancing or simply avoiding the '

213. Auto-Correcto

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Generally, people think a bit highly of you when they learn you are bilingual. It's great that they do, but how can I break it to them that I was mostly motivated to be able to play old Sierra and LucasArts computer adventure games? It was of no choice of my own that my mom enrolled me in a bilingual private school. I did nothing to achieve this, so I hope my very public idiocy demystifies bilingualism.  The one good thing about being bilingual is that it gives me a nice excuse when I screw up nouns. Names, places or things have never been my forte, so I constantly use the wrong pronouns, names and directions. I can always blame it on the fact that I have to have 2 copies of everything in my brain, one in Spanish and one in English. Little do they know that I screwed up names in Spanish as well! Swipe opened a very new way of being wrong, something I was not looking for.

212. Love Languages

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  Today, my wife and I have been married for 5 years. What connected a liberal girl from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and a weird guy from Venezuela? Hell if we know. But it works. While the relationship is fantastic and easy, the cohabitation has been a journey. This whole blog has been a way for me to process the changes I've had to go through to become a passable adult. My tenth comic (good luck deciphering it) was all about this being my biggest challenge in adulthood. I had to learn to leave the sponge out of the sink  and apologize correctly. I had to learn that socks in the floor were in no way cute.  Our wedding changed my life for the better, full stop.  Change doesn't always feel like a good thing, but I love the man I am today more than the man I was 5 years ago. I just wish I could keep marrying her every 5 years to jolt even more change in my life! My wife's love language is behavior (usually with a sponge and broom), my love language is actual language.

211. Projectionist

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Psychological projection, in its most basic sense is putting out in others what is deep inside you. So in a way, it's like flinging poop. You are flinging poop on other people all the time.  They don't want you to fling poop on them. You may not know you're flinging poop on them, but you sure are. We all are. We all do it, but it's not all bad. Projecting can be seen as being in the same spectrum as commiserating or empathizing. But then, you meet conservatives. The people being the most adamant against homosexuality, nudity and non-missionary sex have shown very often to be closeted themselves. They rage against their own machine.  All these super religious people who don't believe people can be good without religion? They're saying a whole lot more about themselves than about people in general.  What about abortion, why are so many white old men so verbally against terminating pregnancies? What are they hiding with this ridiculous resolve? Do they have an inna