When I Say Pants, You Best Pants…

Update 09-03-14: GAH! Toronto Fan Expo was a ton of fun, but the preparation, time spent there, time traveling home and recovery have and ARE costing me greatly in terms of productivity. I am frantically trying to update/backdate new comics so there are 4 a week for every week. I’m doing my best. Luckily I don’t have much travel planned for the rest of the year.

The only real, honest reason to be your own boss and work from home (as I am and do) is to have the power to decide when to wear pants. Of course there’s the freedom, and the fulfillment and the loving the work and the blah blah blah, but primarily it’s the pants thing. It’s not so much deciding when actually to WEAR pants (because no sane, self actualized person would ever consciously decide to put on pants while not under duress), as much as it is deciding when and how often to perform activities that REQUIRE you to wear the pants. Got a bill that requires you to go somewhere and pay it in person? That’s a pants bill! Cancel that service immediately! Need to go to a store and buy a thing? No you don’t! You already have too much shit! Don’t create a pants problem where none exists. Trying to meet a potential mate who doesn’t already live in your house? Just die alone! Why prolong the inevitable, and why prolong the pants?

The typical career path of the self employed, creative type is slowly but surely whittling down “pants time” to the absolute minimum, with the ultimate goal being achieving a state of “Pants Zero.” It’s like Absolute Zero or Inbox Zero, but for pants. This is honestly the closest any self employed creative is ever going to get to the concept of retirement. We typically understand that we’re all going to die at our drawing desks, or keyboards, or pianos with a big grin on our faces. Working ever increasingly more and harder (not smarter) as one approaches death IS the plan. The only way to sweeten the already sweet lifetime of sweet toil is to make sure while the graph line of “time spent working / age” goes steeply from the bottom left to the top right, that the line for “time spent working / wearing pants” starts at the bottom left and declines sharply right off the page.

I am extremely lucky in that I am not wearing pants right now, and I am rarely called upon to do so. It’s like when you try and do the dishes and they somehow come out dirtier than before, then people eventually stop asking you to do the dishes. I have time and time again displayed my ineptitude at being a person who puts on pants to get the mail, or answer the door. Eventually people just stopped expecting it of me, and I move ever closer to my Pants Zero goal. I have maybe two pants days a week, and even then it’s usually only for 2-4 pant-hours at a time (a pants-hour is calculated as two time’s a regular hour, because of how shitty it makes you feel and how everything sucks twice as much when you’re wearing pants). Seriously, though. Fuck pants.

Calling all Whovians with holes in their ears! Just look at these Sonic Screwdriver earrings my wife made!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/200762224/doctor-who-inspired-sonic-screwdriver

Nth Class

Update 09-03-14: GAH! Toronto Fan Expo was a ton of fun, but the preparation, time spent there, time traveling home and recovery have and ARE costing me greatly in terms of productivity. I am frantically trying to update/backdate new comics so there are 4 a week for every week. I’m doing my best. Luckily I don’t have much travel planned for the rest of the year.

I have only experienced a full Planecouch once in my life. It was a rare and wonderful bit of magic. Upon realizing my good fortune, I actually raised all the armrests and laid down across all three seats. I was like a king in one of those big king chairs, except 50,000 feet in the sky and going like 300 miles an hour. It was some of the most baller shit I have ever been apart of. I almost had a second Planecouch once, but fate had crueler designs for me.

Calling all Whovians with holes in their ears! Just look at these Sonic Screwdriver earrings my wife made!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/200762224/doctor-who-inspired-sonic-screwdriver

If You See Something, Say Something

TORONTO FANCY BASTARDS! I will be with Cyanide & Happiness at FANExpo Canada, August 28-31 at booth 456! I’ll have lots of shirts and prints and we’ll be doing sketches all weekend. We’ll also be hosting the 3rd annual Toronto Banana Bar Crawl! I hope to see you there! MORE INFO HERE!

Cartoonists are an odd lot. You put a pen in our hand and it just starts drawing dicks. It’s a reflex. To tell a cartoonist NOT to draw a dozen dicks on a table cloth at a nice restaurant is like telling them not to exhale. Our bodies just DO that. So there’s the physiological side of this issue and there’s also the sociological imperative. As this comic mentions, I… WE are from THE INTERNET, so we are not bound by the traditional and outdated “Do not draw a hundred dicks on everything” based system of values. We are evolved. Much like the anthropomorphic dicks I might draw, who they THEMSELVES have their own dicks. See? That kind of forward penis thinking doesn’t come from being confined by societal norms! It comes from the unadulterated freedom an Internet cartoonist has to express their-self through FREE EXPRESSION. The kind of expression where a humanoid dick can be depicted with any number of additional dicks! Dicks for arms? Sure! Dicks for eyes? YOU BET! An ever repeating fractal dick where the dick’s dick ought to be? THIS IS AMERICA, GOD DAMMIT! DRAW DAT DICK!

Calling all Whovians with holes in their ears! Just look at these Sonic Screwdriver earrings my wife made!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/200762224/doctor-who-inspired-sonic-screwdriver

Where Wings Take Dream

This is basically a true story. I am not an easy sleeper. I can pretty much only sleep in my bed, in my house and even then it’s pretty hit or miss. Sleeping at night is a learned skill for me, and I learned it using certain tools. Replace those tools with a fold out couch in Denver or an air mattress in Seattle and all the learning just fades away. I did, however, manage to sleep in an airport just once. I can’t remember which convention I was coming home from, but I know I hadn’t slept in at least 2 days. I had to quickly lay claim to a spot and devise a plan that would A) wake me up on time) and B) alert me if any of my stuff was moved. I think I had 2 suitcases and a backpack, so I held the backpack like a baby and tied the suitcases to my feet using a luggage strap. I put my phone, with the alarm set as loud as it would go, in my pocket, my glasses in my suitcase and my headphones in my ears. I rolled over and proceeded to drool and twitch while unconscious for a solid 45 minutes. My only real hope was that I would look just crazy enough that no one would think to bother me. I suppose it worked, because I awoke unrefreshed and unmolested. Airport Terminal sleep is anything but restful. At that point it was just necessary for survival. It was the sleep equivalent of eating your own leg to survive. Considering the cost and quality of airport sandwiches, that might have also been a necessary tactic.

COMMENTERS: Where’s the oddest place you’ve ever slept, or the most inappropriate/unfortunate thing you’ve ever slept through?

Calling all Whovians with holes in their ears! Just look at these Sonic Screwdriver earrings my wife made!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/200762224/doctor-who-inspired-sonic-screwdriver

The Show Is Over, Say Goodbye

David is my con-wife, and thus it is my responsibility to take care of him. I make sure he gets where he needs to be, that he’s well fed and that he stays hydrated during the day. Any free food or snacks or luxuries of any kind that I am afforded via fans or acquaintances, I do my best to share with him. In return he doesn’t put up too much of a fight when I convince him that any free booze “WE” were given by fans was actually meant for “ME” and I am “PROBABLY” going to “SHARE” it with him. He also repays me in how he falls asleep very quickly at night and lays there, mostly silent, while I stare at the ceiling wishing I could sleep in any bed other than my own. That is, unless I try to watch TV or keep the lights on past his bedtime. Then he gets VERRRRY cranky.

The pants difficulties depicted above actually happened to David and his MARITAL wife as we all were leaving Seattle this year. I’d like to take credit, but, “The more you pull it, the longer it gets!” is an actual thing David, an actual adult human, exclaimed in an airport as his MARITAL wife pawed and grasped at his crotchital region. At that moment, the muse spoke to me, and I wrote down everything he said. It was poetry in pants problems.

COMMENTERS: Do you have a con-wife, or a work-spouse, or a consummate travel partner or any other kind of oddly intimate, but non-sexual relationship that seems to only activate in a certain place or while performing a certain activity?