I'm a Survivor

True Story:


You have to wonder about a company that seriously considers asking its workforce who they would eat first in the case of desertion. You have to wonder about it even more when this company considers this question to be part of "team-building". Personally, I'm not too thrilled that 140 of my coworkers now know that in case of a dire emergency, I would eat coworker Keith. This doesn't make them trust me more, and knowing who they would eat doesn't make me like THEM any better.

Where back at headquarters, so I'm back on a M-F schedule and working 8:30-5. I'm still working on adjusting my schedule.

This comic clearly depicts 4 of my coworkers. I don't think the women will be too unhappy with their portrayal. I think they're sorta cute, and they always are impeccably dressed. The managers however??? My dad thinks I drew one of them kinda girly. Ah well. There's only so much that facial hair can do. You all know that drawing males is not my strong suit. Plus, their clothes are always so boring.

I'm home for the holidays! Hurray!

Upside-Down World

The thing about working in hospitals, is that you're constantly being exposed to all sorts of nasty things. MRSA, Meningitis, TB, not to mention just about every cold and flu making the yearly rounds. So I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised last April, when I first started working in the hospitals and found myself getting ridiculously sick on a weekly basis.

Things have stabilized since, and for the most part, I'm fairly healthy. I take precautions when working (like washing my hands frequently, not touching patients or really ANYTHING, and keeping away from rooms with warning signs on them). But even the most careful person can't avoid a cold when every one of her coworkers has managed to catch it.

And that's where I find myself today; Sore throat, dry cough, woozy, droopy, blah, and feeling like I'm under 66 feet of water (that's two whole atmospheres of pressure!). I'm not imagining my coworkers are hagfish or hairbrushes yet, but I feel the time is close at hand.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life

It's official. Today, the people in my position in Northern California are all becoming hourly employees, and therefore, legally "exempt". And all the joys that go with that.



There are a lot of whispers about what this all means for us. Let me enumerate:

Pros
1) Paid commute time! (we were already getting paid for mileage)
2) Shift differential! (not so great for the night shift, which is only apparently getting about 30 cents more per hour than the evening shift)
3) Extra pay for working on national holidays!
4) No more responding to Payroll emails!

Cons
1) Only 30 minute lunches (No more going out for lunch).
2) No combining breaks.
3) We must clock in and out. We've got only 3 phones in our command center and there's as many as 30 of us on duty at a time.
4) No more leaving early if there's nothing to do.
5) No more taking lunches together and the first lunch of evening shift must be taken at 4:20pm.
6) All time worked and commuting time must be signed off by at least 3 people.
7) PTO requests (even PTO that's already been okayed) has to be submitted through a faxed form to several parties who all have to agree it's alright for you to go missing for a day or two.

Seems to me, there's a lot more down than up, but then, I'm a pessimist. On the other hand, it's looking like I'll be getting paid a good bit more, based just on commuting times. Of course, just 12 days from today, we go back to Emeryville, and we don't get paid commuting time OR mileage. Lest you think my company actually LIKES hemorrhaging money.

Bending the Rules

Now that we've been at this hospital for over 3 weeks, there is REALLY nothing to do there. I mean, it's ridiculously slow. Naturally, being an intelligent individual, I am endlessly searching for something to keep me occupied. Unfortunately, nothing is allowed by our "managers". damn. Now we're at a really really small hospital in Manteca. There are more of us than there are nurses! So we get thrown off the floor because we're crowding them.

Twist of irony: I drew this at work two weeks ago, and I am posting this update from work now. MUAHAHAHAH! I'm subverting the system!

Ameritastic!

On Nov. 4th, I wasSO ready to vote. And after the terrible, terrible disappointment of last time (I mean to say, I believe I threw a chair at someone when I found out Kerry had given up on the election), I was SO ready to have it go well. I have thought long and hard about all the regional measures on the ballot, though I'm only voting YES on one of them. I had also looked up the regional candidates and their stances, particularly on abortion, environmental proposals, and education. This was a great Election. I'm psyched for January!!

Replacement Pests

Point of Fact; I have traded the roaches, not for ants (which are actually one of my greatest fears), but for Earwigs, which are relatively harmless (according to wikipedia), but altogether still rather too gruesome for me to allow crawling around my home.

Still, given the choice between one or the other, I'll take the earwigs. Maybe the spiders will take care of them.

Man, I hate ants.

My Unfortunate Guests

I am extremely sad that my PhotoShop hasn't resurrected itself. It'd been months since I made a comic, but I drew this one today. You'll be disgusted to know that this shoddy workmanship is all I can cobble together using a strange combination of MS Paint, Powerpoint, and ComicLife. I also frittered away $1.80 utilizing the scanner at Fedex-Kinko's to bring this to you, so I hope you guys enjoy it! You'd better!

My work provides me with corporate housing which varies widely in condition. When I lived in Sacramento, the housing was really pretty nice, with access to a pool (necessary. It was damn hot out there) and it was pretty clean. My housing in Modesto is not exactly nice. In fact, it's plain dirty, and when I first moved in, I was not aware of my cirtterly pests. I found one of them galavanting in my sauce pan and I just about had a heart attack. I resolved then and there to take care of it.

You're SUPPOSED to be HELPING

I wish I could say that this hadn't really happened at work, but unfortunately, it sort of has.


I like the color palette for this one!

A Sudden Rush

The generalities of work:

It could be better.
It could be worse.
Overall, I'm just happy I'm getting a paycheck. On the other hand, an 8 hour shift with nurses who are constantly stressed out and don't really want you around... well, they could be paying me more to deal with that sort of thing.



For the uninitiated, my job involves teaching the nurses at a local hospital how to use the new computer system the health-care company just set up there. They have to use the system for EVERYTHING. "Go-live" was on February 9th, that was the first day all the people in the hospital were required to use the program. No more paper.

CAPTION CONTEST!

I know what I wanted to caption this particular comic, but I figured it'd be more amusing to everyone to let you guys try and come up with something witty, sharp and intelligent.



So leave a comment with your guesses as to what my shoulder angel and devil are telling me and what (if anything) I'm saying to them. Or you can caption the scene itself. It's up to you.

Study, Study, PANIC

One would assume that if one was in a training class for four months and the average time required to pass the training exam was approximately one month, that one would be quite over-prepared by that time.

The day I drew this, we found ourselves in the awkward position of being trained in the SAME. EXACT. CLASS. as we were in the month before. Same topics being covered. Same doctors teaching us. They didn't recognize us at all. It was as incredibly mind-numbing as it was the first time.



Then, one of the head honchos came in at the end and quizzed us (this happened last time, too, so it wasn't much of a shock). But he decided to act offended that we didn't know how to do anything in departments aside from our own (if "Lisa" works in the emergency department, why on earth would she care to know how jerky a surgeon is going to be when she doesn't know where he should click to learn his schedule. "Tanya" wouldn't be interacting with surgeons anyway!).

In any case, all the doctors started freaking out that we didn't know anything and "Go-Live" is in just 9 days, and our exam is in 2. It's a little late to question your teaching methods, no?

Awfully Glad to be Unhappy

2 Months in to work, it was not going too fantastically. I'd come home very depressed when my shift ends at midnight. And one night's conversation with one of my 'managers' didn't much help. The way things are done at this company really frustrates me sometimes.



I'm trying to let it go though. This was drawn on my last day of work before my "weekend". It'd been 7 days straight, where I'd been doing day shifts, alternating with evening shifts, and it's hard to adjust. I was tired and cranky.

Mmmm, Winter!

I got off the plane (oh, it felt sooo good to get off the plane)and it was dark out and I could see my breath! I love cold weather! But I especially love cold weather at night. Everything is so crisp and quiet. It's so good to be back where there is real winter. I'm looking forward to spending thanksgiving with my family and I hope it snows while I'm here.

When It Rains, It Pours

This is perhaps the busiest looking comic I've ever drawn. And there's not a ton of movement either, it's mostly facial expressions. So I apologize. It was necessary.



This sort of actually happened. Right after I accepted a job with my current employer, I got a call from Kelly Sciences. Of course, I didn't reject them outright. I waited to hear how much they would pay me (not very well), before declining their offer. I guess it's true that as soon as you're employed, everyone else wants a piece of you.

So that's it. This was my official announcement. I'm staying on the west coast. I have a job, and I'm here to stay. I miss my east coast friends already but hopefully, we'll have plenty of opportunities to visit one another. Now I have to settle in and really make some friends in the area. I don't know how the next 3-5 years are gonna go. I can only hope for the best. Tally ho!

DO NOT WANT

This is how my I felt during my Job Search in October. I was so over finding a job. I'm not even going to talk about it anymore. I had just renewed my NJ car insurance (exorbitant!), and I miss some of my east-coast peepz (I'm a tiny white girl... I'm not sure I can use the phrase "peepz" but... eh. what the hell). Really, I was ready to resign myself to hoboism and crawl into my crappy cardboard box on Vine. Making friends? Also apparently overrated.

But hey, look at me, I can be an optimist too!: Plus side - I have some version of all the clothes drawn above, including that super sassy suit in the first frame, although it's got pants, not a skirt. I'm such a fashion plate, I amaze even myself.

EDIT: And as always, events did not occur as shown. This is just a reflection of how I feel.

My New Muse

Since returning to California I've been reunited with some friends I met back in August and also made some truly awesome new friends.



Skedaddle the chinchilla belongs to one of my old-new friends, but I didn't meet Skee 'til October of last year. He's adorable and clearly my new muse. He just hops all over the place, explorin' and being unbearably cute. I often cannot contain my *squees of glee. Until October, I'd never seen a chinchilla in person before, so this was an unexpected and welcome surprise. So soft and fuzzy.

I'm now making plans to have a chinchilla someday when I retire.

So generic question to OKC land out there, what's your favorite kind of pet and why? Do you think you'd want a different kind of pet when you're older or do you think your preferences will stay the same?

Random

I've got nothing to put here.

The Ice-Weather Cometh!

The nights are getting colder (some nights it's as low as the 40's, though by day we're still in the 70-80 range)! It reminds me of my times in Massachusetts and right about now is when I would start breaking out my autumnal clothing and remarking on the relative nudity of the UMass campus:


It's true. I always felt like a bit of a prude, comparatively, when I was on that campus. On the other hand, I have no desire to catch a cold or pneumonia or anything. I remember reading an editorial article in the UMass Collegian about the signs of spring. It was basically some guy, lauding the beginning of "skirt weather". I had an intense urge to send in a nasty letter-to-the-editor about how such articles encourage unsafe behavior (dressing scantily has it's drawbacks, you know), and blatant chauvinism. But then again, there's some 10,000 coeds on the campus, and they're gonna dress however they like, regardless of what one incensed Smithie writes in their newspaper. On the other hand, there's another 10,000 male undergrads all kinda hopin' for booty shorts and skirt weather.

I officially own all the clothes I'm wearing in the drawing , which is pretty awesome (This includes the octopus hat, which is one of my most prized possessions and knitted especially for me by a friend). I never used to be so fashionable!

My profuse apologies to any UMass coeds who may happen up on this entry and feel objectified.

The Joys of Living in the NorthEast

This comic was drawn after I had returned home, once again to NJ. I finished this comic on the plane (tight quarters for a tablet, let me tell you). Some of you might recognize an old visual pun that has been done before. Oh, not by me. Snow falling in one big WHUMP has totally been done before, and much better by the guy who draws "Bone". I remember back when it was running in the Disney Adventure magazine. Ahhhh, comic love! So, yeah, it was still summer in Jersey (and HOT), but soon, it would be fall, and maybe I would take a quick jaunt up to Massachusetts for a romp in the snow when the season comes. Nothing better than a New England winter to lift one's spirits! Fall is still my favoritest season. Everything smells great in the fall.

P.S. I spent like 5 minutes making that stupid leaf stamp and it didn't even work out the way it was supposed to. GRAH Oh, and discuss!: Your favorite season and why!

How do you fit 5 people onto a bed?

This is how:


July 4, 2004
Too tired to stay awake for all of GATACCA. Alas

Bye Bye Berkeley

This was drawn the day before I left California. Man, I was excited to be going back to New Jersey.


After the high quality of the last 3 strips, this one ends up looking like crap, hm? That's what I get for composing a strip at 11 at night.

This strip is not to say that I don't like California. It's a nice enough state. But something tells me you guys are nuts for living in a place where half the signs of the apocalypse can occur in a single day. Maybe I'll be back if I get a job here! But I had just gotten word that I'd been rejected from the job I really wanted at UC Berkeley. Suck.

The Prom Dress Poisoning

"I'ma smack you up, B*otch!"

My Boxwarming Party

This didn't come off as funny as it seemed in my head. But maybe that's because this comic took me a whole 2 weeks to get together. I'm a loser. This was the last day before I left California to go back to Jersey. It was starting to grow on me. Just a little.

Cue Futuristic Music!

If I really don't want to live in a box in California, I'd better be making a small fortune and not eating (so as not to waste resources).

It's apparently really hard to find a nice place for less than 700k.

I don't live on the street, It's an *Avenue*

Truth is, Berkeley is a lot like Northampton, MA, where I went to college. Except bigger. Lots bigger. Which means more of EVERYTHING. Also, everything is like 20x more intense.



No child has actually pointed out my depressingly bland wardrobe yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time. The kids here are snappy dressers, which is both intimidating and inspiring. Also, beards still freak me out, so this is one of the frightening situations I'm working on avoiding. If a hobo with that much facial hair approaches me, forget change, I'm throwing him a razor.

I'm proud of the quality of this comic. But don't expect this kind of quality every time... I had an abundance of leisure time today. The style is a little different too, and I think I like it.

See at Sea the Seal and Sea Lions?

Having spent a Sunday in San Francisco proper, I hope the natives can forgive me, but I find the majority of what I saw of the city (particularly the residential portions) quite unattractive. That being said, I loved the bay, and the Aquarium of the Bay was interesting. Next week, we have plans to head out to Monterey and see the Monterey Aquarium.

Interesting notes from the Aquarium. When we went to buy tickets, the guy behind the counter charged us for one adult, one child. The Aquarium's policies charge child fare for ages 3-11. Eleven! *facepalm. I don't look eleven. 16, maybe. But not 11.

Despite all this, the aquarium was fun, though not even in my top 3 aquarium experiences. Afterwards, we walked along the pier and saw the sea lions lounging on the docks, which was pretty awesome.



You'll often see cartoons and such with a sea lion and they call it a seal. My background in marine science leads me to staunchly defend the difference between the two. This is one of those little things that makes me think that I could probably never be an educator. Or a parent. I get too depressed and frustrated by general idiocy. Also, children are sticky. I have always maintained this. It's incredibly true.

Another Day at the Lab

It's true. Chemists can't keep ANYTHING alive. It's their mission in life to kill everything, whether they know it or not.

Incredibly Vague Harry Potter Spoilers

I'm well aware that most people here probably don't give a damn about HP. I'm ok with that. I'm just gonna take a moment to reflect. I'll be quick, I promise.

I just finished book 7. I have to say I didn't like the ending much. But aside from that, I feel really sorry for Ginny.
Poor Ginny.



Why does everyone treat Ginny like she's nothing? I'd be furious if I were her. J.K. Rowling spent 6 books setting her up; oh, she's a great flier, oh she casts powerful hexes, oh Slughorn thinks she's amazing. And then at the end of the 7th book, nothing. Waste, waste, waste.

Oh, The Geek

I used to get requests in my mailbox to do memes and it'd been a week since I did a comic. To be honest, I don't much care for memes. But then the LOLCat thing came to town and I was hooked. So I decided I might as well do everything all at once. So I memed all last night. My friend Meherbaba requested a comic, so I scraped one together. And in record time too, if you don't count all the stuff at the bottom (I don't want to give away the ending now)...



Yes indeed, this is one big GIF file. And yes indeed, I had to position and tweak every Chewie down there. Frustrating as heck. I really wanted Spock. Or in absence of Spock, Yoda. But apparently, Yoda's not as big a thing in sprite designer world as Chewie. Anyway, he resembles a hamster at least slightly... so it sorta works. Sorta.

ALSO: Obviously, this pegs me to the entire world that I'm a geek. I'm cool with that. And now you know my favorite Star Trek movie (and it really shouldn't surpise those who have read my profile, because, yes, it has whales). However, this is a plea to everyone to not badger me with IMed or emailed requests to know my favorite captain or favorite episode, or favorite doctor or whatever. You're not gonna get a response. Maybe I'll even block you. That kind of stuff is just not that important You're welcome to message me, send me a note, leave a comment, whatever you like, as long as you're not asking me more of the same. And of course, I love it when you enjoy what I've created. But there's a limit to the fanboyish squeeing I'll stand for in a conversation. It gets annoying after awhile.

Fun/weird fact I probably should not admit to: I have a TNG style doctor's uniform in my closet. And also a Starfleet Coroner's Badge (But I swear it's not mine, the badge, I mean).

To see the full versions of the Macros and Chewie icons I made, you can click on the following links:
Whalz
Pwnd
Chewie

They could totally beat you up if they wanted to

I did in fact get a chance to try Kangaroo meat when I was in Australia, both the jerkied kind and steak. The truth of the matter is, kangaroo is just not nearly as tasty as beef. My theory is that they use so much of their bodies hopping, there's just not much fat on them.

But they ARE super cute. And they're so... hoppy! I noticed a lot of animals in Australia hop. It's sort of a theme for them. They get extra awesome points for it, I guess.

Australia is for Sheep Lovers

Despite the popular convention that the country with the largest number of sheep is New Zealand, in fact, Australia has about 50 Million more sheep than NZ. This means that there's about 5 sheep for each Australian man, woman and child (the ratio is greater in NZ, but they have a far smaller human population). I was thrilled at the overwhelming availability of lamb on menus no matter where we happened to go. Of course it was still pretty expensive, but EVERYTHING was expensive. My mother and I could hardly have a meat-based meal without spending more than $100 AUS. And, of course, we ate extremely well.

But that many sheep clearly have some sort of power. That's a lot of methane. That's a lot of beady eyes, glaring you down (hypothetically) as you ponder a menu. That's a lot of wool. That's a lot of Baaahing.

The Glitter Paradox

No matter how much you clean, no matter how often or how deeply, if you spill glitter ONCE, it will be there forever. This happened back in 2004, and I STILL find glitter all over the house from the event.

Prepping for Takeoff

Taken from June 2007 when I was preparing to go to Australia:

"Despite the fact that I've had a terribly stressful month, I can't seem to stop myself from doing things I oughtn't. Take the following example:


With my incredibly ridiculous bipolarism when it comes to cleanliness of a given room, I find that my house is now also in somewhat of bipolar state, wherein some rooms there is not a speck of dirt to be found, and some rooms (like the TV room) are covered in foodstuffs, dust, clothing and other assorted items. At times, I find it distressing, and then I realize I was kidding myself if I really thought that I would ever become something of a Mary Poppins. Man, it would be so cool to snap your fingers and have your clothes fly up into your arms, folded and ready to be put away.

In reality though, the past week, I've just been keeping myself as busy as possible. This has included: A total wipedown of the porch, following by a hosing of the porch and then a mopping of the porch; A rearranging of the pantry to accommodate another house's worth of food; Grocery shopping; Cleaning the kitchen; Sweeping up the basement whose previous state would have you believe that the floor was just bare dirt down there; Backwashing the fish pond, testing it for ammonia, pH level and salt, purchasing and adding bacteria to the pond; Putting away boxes and clothing; Putting away books which had traveled with me; And listening to more Top 40's music than could ever be considered healthy (side note: I'm intrigued by Puff Daddy/P.Diddy/Sean Puffy Combs/Puffy/Fluffy or whatever the hell he's calling himself now. The man says hardly a word in his own songs, has other singers back him up, and yet, he gets all the credit... if only I could adapt the same mechanism to my own uses)

Needless to say, I'm quite exhausted and find other rooms in a state of panicky mess. Where is Mary Poppins when you need her?"

ROUS: Rodent Of Unusual Size

Every summer, my dog bites herself furless. She resembles nothing more than a large dock-tailed rat. Oatmeal baths do nothing. Poor sweetheart.

Crazy Theater People

When I was a sophomore in College, I took a set design class. As part of our final, we had a role-playing meeting with our professor who pretended to be the director of our play, "The Glass Menagerie". The student who had to go first was totally blind-sided because she just wasn't ready for our prof to say. "I see BLACK". Really, what's that all about!? Theater People are nuts.

She's a Siamese, I think

This one is kinda crappy quality, I feel, plus the flow isn't very good, but I just don't care. I'm tired.

The Unfortunate Seasons of being a Girl

Remarkably true...


I rather fear I'm currently stuck in the latter.

Post-Graduation

But then again, it felt that way after every set of finals. True Story

A Hairy Situation

When finals are over in the spring and it becomes senior week there's just a little longer until seniors become an officially graduated student. I didn't have much planned for that week except packing up nearly all my earthly posessions to move on to the next stage of my life and hanging out downtown. Which brings me to today's topic: fears.



A lot of people have realistic fears. I think it's ok to be afraid of spiders, scorpions, snakes, dogs, even clowns. All those things have a certifiable way to hurt you (you're probably wondering about the clowns. Exhibit A: enormous shoes. they could step on you. Exhibit B: they can fit a lot into a tiny tiny car. They can be hiding anywhere). I have a ridiculous fear. Amongst my normal fears of ants, falling out of tall buildings, and sudden suffocation, I also have an intense fear of facial hair. Thankfully, we live in a time when the majority of men and women roaming the streets don't feel the need to grow a handlebar mustache or whatever. Thank goodness it's not the 1800's. I'd never escape.

But for the 4 years, I've lived in Northampton, home of possibly the largest hippie/hobo population on the east coast. The streets teem with people all claiming to be homeless. I know for a fact that some of those people are faking it. You may take this to be a harsh criticism, but it's true... in NoHo, some people panhandle for fun, just to see if they can.

But it's really difficult to walk down Main Street without seeing someone whose facial hair has gotten entirely out of control and may in fact be plotting to take over the earth. The fear I have of facial hair isn't exactly debilitating, but it affects how I see people. I stay away from folks sporting beards. Long sideburns freak me out. I will cross the street to stay away from someone with a beard down to their stomach. Mustaches will make me run the other way. So you can imagine my chagrin when a few of my friends decided that for the entirety of April, they wouldn't shave. I had hoped that once May rolled around, the nightmare would be over and things would go back to normal. Ha. When my friend decided to only shave part of the growth and turned the mess into muttonchops, I thought I would cry. But I'm getting used to it. I can eat dinner at the same table as him now.

I just can't actually look at him.

Delicious Pressed Wood. It's the Sauce that really adds the flavor

And this is what results when an artistic person ponders Sweden.

Awhoba?

This is what results when you force an artistic person to watch scientific videos about paramecia

Call me Sneezy. On the Other Hand, Don't

Waking up at 4 in the morning really sucks.



At first I thought I was sick. But then, I realized that coinciding with patterns typical of making my life miserable, My allergies tend to manifest themselves most strenuously at ungodly hours. This has been the case for the past 7 years. But I always tend to forget until springtime rolls around again and tree-sex is in the air. I like to think the trees lurking outside my window are cackling as they watch me sneezing in the dark. It wouldn't be so bad if I could go back to sleep and really really sleep. But I have to get up at 6:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's hard to get back to sleep. But hooray! I've figured it out. I'll take a claritin before bed and Those trees outside will be cackling no longer! Now it is my turn to laugh maniacally!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAH!

What's in a Name

In the interest of keeping a sort of stability in our fish pond, my mom and I frequent the local fish pond store and keep our pond stocked at 13. We have cats in our neighborhood. And raccoons. And osprey. And cranes. And even though we cover our pond with deer netting, even that's not always enough to keep tenacious critters away. So every now and then we go on down to the pond store and get a brand new fish. This is like, the highlight of my summer, every year. Being in a locale surrounded by hundreds of beautiful, multi-colored fish? Sign me up!



Yes, I ALWAYS come home this excited. I have a fantastic record for naming things.

One step PAST crazy

Midterms were always just an overwhelming time and professors suck. Most of all that Art Professor.



If you look hard, you'll notice my Art class was the one with the secondary project (the bastard).

Worth Waiting For?

This comic took a ridiculous amount of time to make. Most likely because every computer I've worked on in the past week has been remarkably finicky. As you can see, work was often a little hectic when I was working in the college computer labs, and our new director had stepped things up a little, so the majority of us were running around like crazy. With clip boards and name badges. Nothing makes me feel more official than a useless piece of pressed wood with useless pieces of paper attached to it.

It was also spring semester midterms time, so many of the people around me were in a semi-dream-like state, which required poking and loud noises to shake them out of it. I, myself am prone to such hallucinations as sleep and watching tv. These things simply do not exist.



Sometimes, we all just want to be appreciated for all the running around we do.

This comic features much smaller lines because everything was scanned in originally at 150dpi and then had to be copied over and shrunk down. I'm not sure I care for the style but at least it's done. I was having so much trouble with the tablet and the Photoshop program at work that I actually did half the comic in Macromedia Flash before I gave up and resolved to figure out what the hell was wrong with the tablet driver.

I still have no answers. But this seems to be a common theme, so I'm not going to panic about it.

It's Taunting me!

Truth be told, although I complain a lot, I really love my college and I really love snow. I just want to be able to play.



The true downfall of an education in the great white Northeast is that they're prepared for pretty much anything. When my friends who attended schools in New York and New Jersey were celebrating a snow day, I was left trudging to class in a foot of snow. Wonderful fun. Also fun: walking headlong into driving freezing rain. And slipping on icy stairs and falling on your butt. Oh, and getting snow down your shirt.

In fact, we didn't get that much snow. But even when we did, the comic shows what basically happens.

I hope the Old Ones eat you AND your bad art

Back in senior year, the spring semester classes had started and I was alternating between disappointed and enthralled at some of the ideas that count as "education" these days. I loved my class that I (unfortunately) had to commute to another campus to get to (also unfortunate was that was at 8am which meant I was waking up on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6am).

But all my other classes seemed to have just a little too much reading and discussion... as though my professors made lesson plans and realized they only had enough material to last maybe 2 weeks. "How shall we fluff up these dismal lesson plans? A-ha! Reading! Lots of reading! And class discussions! I'm a genius!" Of course, a genius would recognize that a class of 60 students doesn't really yield ideal discussion.

My Art class was 3 hours from 1-4pm and unfortunately it was 2.5 hours of the prof lecturing on our reading (there's only 7 of us) and the final half hour was used for giving examples of things we were supposed to experience through the readings. Very dull. Particularly for a room with no windows (it was in the basement). And poorly planned (considering we had a project due in the middle of the second week and the prof hadn't introduced us to any of the technology we were supposed to use, and had mentioned we were to work on it solely outside of class).

Still, the prof is otherwise a nice guy, just socially awkward and not used to the competitive nature of the folks at my school. But really, today's comic will give you a little taste of how I usually felt in that art class.



The Cthulhu Lolita dress is designed by deviantART's Carnet-atelier. I DID however make a wearable version which I've worn to work on Halloween and to a few conventions.

For those of you who've never even heard of Cthulhu, click here for a link to the Wikipedia article.

I just realized how wordy this post is. I apologize. But it's great if you manage to get through it. Good luck.

Get it? It's a PUN

Planes on a Snake:


Sorry if this entry didn't immediately grab you and throttle you out of your daily stupor. My train of thought is easily diverted these days.

The First Thing that Came to Mind

The thing I loved most about being at college is that for reasons unknown, professors allow you to handle expensive equipment and don't automatically expect you to break it. Reason number two for my love of a life of academia is probably that you're allowed to study some pretty arcane things. I once knew a fellow who is said to have graduated from Hampshire with a major in Oregano of all things. Why oregano? I have no idea. I can't imagine that it was a particularly interesting course of study, but, power to you if you can make it work. 'Course, you're probably not going to be good for much once you graduate, but who among liberal arts students is? I know that I, for one, will be completely useless.

But the topic at hand today is the Scanning Electron Microscope which I took a 5-day class to learn and ever-after shall be able to use said Super-Expensive-Machine (or SEM for short). Aside from the fact that I generally felt that I had no idea what I was doing, I was having a blast. For those not in the know, the SEM is basically a megamicroscope which can see at higher magnifications because it uses electrons, not light to observe specimens.

Friggin' Awesome.

Anyway, I vowed to master this fine piece of mechanical wonderousness and use it for my own EEEEeeevil purposes.



And by evil, I mean looking at tiny, tiny, fish corpses.

Sweet sweet commercialism

Staying up to ungodly hours has all sorts of bizarre effects on my imagination. Flashback to January 1st, just a few days ago. Here in the US, television for the first day of the new year consists of talk show hosts, lots and lots of commercials for gyms and weight-loss products, and football. Football may in fact be my least favorite sport, the day in question being the game day for some inane college teams to face off in the hideously warm California weather. This is a tradition commonly referred to as the Rose Bowl and is accompanied by a parade with a panoply of floats all (apparently) composed of flowers and various plant parts.

And of course, marching bands from high schools across the nation. Forgetting football for the moment, we can focus on the fact that the majority of these floats have some sort of hydraulics and carry some bizarre mixture of reality tv celebrities and small children dying of various diseases. Ah commercialism. The Rose Bowl Parade may be the main source of income of U.S. flower growers, sellers, and distributers, since we're looking at floats about 40 feet long and created entirely from poppy petals or wheat grass strands.

Anyway, having stayed up way past midnight the night prior tends to leave one in a less than top mental condition to remember whatever happened just minutes before. Take this wonderful example!:



Yes, George Lucas was the Parade's Grand Marshall or whatever, and some genius had decided to organize a marching company of storm troopers headed by a Darth Vader Marching conductor. I see marketability! Children's toys! Delicious money forth-coming! That's about all I remember from the entire parade now, though. I'll let you draw your own conclusions