Motion For A Change Of Venue

WE FOUND MORE LIL’ WIL WHEATON PLUSHIES!!!

72 more, to be exact. GO HERE and get yours.

Someone must have gotten them wet and fed them after midnight, because when Explosm (who used to handle my merch) moved warehouses, they found another box of Lil’ Wils.

I know I’ve said this 3 or 4 times in the past, but this is really it. These are the last ones. The old warehouse is completely empty and no more will ever be made. I promise. They are still half price. Just $10 while they last!

EMERALD CITY COMICON IS AT THE END OF MARCH!

I will be at booth 110 with my con-wife David Willis. I will have old prints, new prints and THE SKETCH-A-MATIC! Come see me, and bring me booze and cookies as is our tradition. (There is a helpful map of various Hiveworks webcomics at ECCC here.)

One of the hardest things about working from home (and, trust me, I am NOT complaining about the fantastic privilege of being allowed to roll out of bed at 10am and work in my pajamas on the couch re-watching Fringe on Netflix) is KNOWING when you are AT WORK. When “the office” is your couch or your home desk, there’s this sort of constant feeling that if you’re awake, you should be working. Especially if you keep oddly and every fluctuating hours like I do. The days sort of blend in to each other and the concept of a weekend disappeared years ago. So there’s this general feeling that you are either A) ALWAYS at work of B) NEVER really at work, and it can lead to odd feelings of guilt when you aren’t working or to a lack of family time (eating dinner together, etc) when you are working.

The only reason I say this as a general experience as opposed to a singular weirdness experienced by only me, is that I’ve heard the same thing from dozens of other work-from-home creatives. For a lot of us, this feeling of a need for a separation of home and work life leads to moving the work portion of your day to a new location. This could be a coffee shop, or it could even mean getting your own office space. I know quite a few cartoonists that have to leave the dirty work of drawing butts and such at the ACTUAL office in order to maintain a reasonable semblance of a home life. Others have to completely unplug from the Internet for 5-6 hours at a time in order to stay productive. After 8ish years of this weird job, I am still in the “just sort of figuring it out as I go” phase. There are months at a time where I only want to work in my office from the hours of midnight to 6am. Then there are times when my sleep schedule syncs up with the mortal world’s and I want to work in the living room to be around my family.

I really like the idea of something like a Makerspace or a Hackspace where I could just be around other people who are trying to make something. I wouldn’t want to do it every day, but I know from experience that “creative energy” is a real thing (i.e. a fake thing our dumb lizard brains trick us into thinking is a real thing). Excitement is contagious and creative competition can be quite healthy. I do my funniest work when I’m pitching ideas back and forth with other creatives, trying to one-up each other or twist ideas into new directions. I wonder what that says about my 1000+ comics that I’ve written and drawn in total seclusion.

COMMENTERS: Do you find your productivity or creativity require a certain environment to get into gear? Do you ever need a change of scenery or sound…ery to do your best work?

Meowmicry (Tivo’s Perspective)

NEWS:
My new podcast Potter & Daughter is live now! You can download the first episode here or subscribe via RSS or iTunes. Fancy Patreon Patrons get each episode a week early!

It’s freaking cold! Use code 10offhoodies to get $10 off any and all hoodies in the HE store! Use it as many times as you like.

I mentioned in the comments to THIS COMIC how I thought it would be neat to see the same events from the cats’ perspectives. Then, I made good on that threat HERE. And now, yet again, I am your macabre host as we journey into the inner monologue of nature’s dumbest dumb butthole, the cat.

Tivo was our first cat. He was frisky and cute and insanely hyperactive, so we got him a friend – Replay. Instead of calming him down, this action irreparably broke his brain. Ever since introducing replay into our lives, Tivo has been paranoid, nervous, skittish and terrified of basically everything. Add to that the grumpiness and whininess that comes with being 10 years old (275 in cat years), and he’s basically just a musty bag of spite and complaints.

Tivo’s only desire and only pleasure in life is to be sitting on my wife. When this is possible, he is content and quiet. When wife-sitting is not a possibility he just sort of roams around the house, carrying his favorite scarf and cries through his clenched teeth. It’s an inconceivably pathetic display to behold. We’ve long assumed that his only hope for the future is to burrow into my wife’s ribcage and lie there, completely content, until he dies. Christ, what a dumbass.

COMMENTERS: What would your pets name you and the other members of your household?

Meowmicry (Replay’s Perspective)

It’s freaking cold! Use code 10offhoodies to get $10 off any and all hoodies in the HE store! Use it as many times as you like.

I mentioned in the comments to THIS COMIC how I thought it would be neat to see the same events from the cats’ perspectives. Now BEHOLD, for I have followed through with that threat.

Replay, our black and white fuzzy idiot, is the kind of cat who knows his bowl is full, and knows YOU know his bowl is full, yet refuses to eat out of it until you escort him over to it and everyone just goes right ahead and acknowledges that it is full. Christ, what an asshole.

COMMENTERS: Your pets are stupid. This is a given. In what specific ways are your pets stupid?

Meowmicry

It’s freaking cold! Use code 10offhoodies to get $10 off any and all hoodies in the HE store! Use it as many times as you like.

When my wife and I are speaking to each other, we are either A) Talking about our kid, B) Repeating something our kid said, C) Talking about our cats or D) Screaming whatever our cats are screaming, right back in their dumb, little, fuzzy, stupid idiot faces.

Our kid and our cats are basically our own, 2 person only, super-exclusive pop culture memes. What I mean to say, is we spend an awful lot of time conversing in references and memes to things that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ELSE in the world would understand. Being a people is weird.

COMMENTERS: Do you talk to your animals or mimic their behavior when you’re alone in ways that you WOULD NOT do in mixed company for fear of having to defend yourself in a committal trial?

Absence Makes The Cat Go Bonkers

Every single time I come home from traveling one of my cats has completely forgotten I ever existed, and the other is positive I am an undead replicant or possible a million alien bugs wearing a Joel suit. The apathetic one, Replay, briefly looks up from licking his own asshole, then gets right back to chowing down. The paranoid idiot one, Tivo, tears across the house as soon as he sees me, then takes refuge either under my bed or between my night stand and the wall. Two places that I, as a human with arms and legs, obviously have no way of ever infiltrating.

Tivo is your basic fuzzy dumbass. Just fuzzy as all get out, and as dumb as the day long. These are things that do not terrify Tivo: me sitting in a chair. Me walking through the room. These are things that ABSOLUTELY terrify Tivo: Me getting up from sitting in a chair, me walking through the room wearing sandals, me walking through the room holding something in my hands, me walking in the direction that he is also walking in, me doing a thing, a thing happening, me standing up and then a thing happens… you get the idea. His primary fears are me, things, happenings, and most other all of it.

Replay, the other one, couldn’t give two shits connected by a piece of string that he ate (A real thing that has happened in my house several times. We call them “poop-chucks.”) if I lived or died. The only thing that leads me to think he might prefer my death is that I get the distinct impression he wants to hollow out my chest cavity and take up residence in my rib cage. It’s hard to explain why I think this. Some cats, just give off that vibe, you know?

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