Sometimes I write something in a comment somewhere that I'd like to review later. Either it strikes me as decent enough of that I'd like to share it with my friends, or it strikes me as being on the edge of very good or very bad, and later refinement might be useful.

( I figured I'd save this one here. )

This is a little confusing, but bear with me.

A little over ten years ago, I composed Fenmere's Second Law and started using it as an email signature as a reminder to both myself and my readers not to take life (or my words) too seriously:

Irony is lost on the tired; if you're not laughing, go take a nap.

It's very '90s, I know. That's when I wrote it. I'm still very bad at following its advice myself.

A couple years later I wrote Fenmere's First Law, which is:

Never, for any reason whatsoever, discourage anyone from making a webcomic, ever.

It's not pertinent to our discussion, except that I think of it as an example of a good law. It's easy to follow. It has a corollary, too, which is to never make fun of someone for quitting a webcomic. But that's for another day.

Well, finally, after all this time, I've settled on Fenmere's Third Law. It's trite, and a quip, and about damn time:

Truisms are fun to say, but annoying to hear.

I think I can get some mileage out of it if I never recite or write it again.

Playing devil's advocate in a class discussion is useful. Done right, and lightly, it can bring a discussion to a new level.

Unfortunately, when someone is being particularly passionate and emotional about something, I get this strong "morally righteous" urge to tear their argument apart, even if I agree with them!

But what makes it deliciously funny is when I find that I'm playing devil's advocate with another devil's advocate.

Again, unfortunately, I'm usually the only one to find it funny.


I have this weird ability, or disability, to distance myself from certain things emotionally. I still get emotional, angry even, but it's fleeting and it's about what I perceive at the time as the truth. I get angry that it looks like someone isn't seeing something that is important.

I often find that I'm making a bad assumption when I do that. But I'm having a really hard time training myself not to react in that way.

Part of it is that there are a lot of people in this world that are astoundingly ignorant. And they tend to use a certain kind of language that is kind of a flag for their ignorance.

It's kind of a wake-up call, though, when someone reacts to what I'm saying or writing as if I'm the ignorant one.

In fact, it's totally flabbergasting!

I'm not stupid! I'm really not! I just act like I am sometimes.

Anger and fear. Every time they trip me up, it reminds me that I shouldn't fault other people for the same thing.

It's one of the reasons our justice system is supposed to punish the act, not the intent.

You can measure an act.

But sometimes an act doesn't measure intent, it measures clumsiness.

I love people who disagree me on the internet these days. Most of them haven't been insulting me, or outright denying my arguments, and even if they did they generally have been helping me to test and articulate my thoughts! It's nice, if time consuming.

An interesting* discussion on that editorial cartoon from earlier in the week, and whether or not it's racist.


* I am, admittedly, most of the conversation at this point. I'd like others to chime in, perhaps. Reasonably, if you will, with brilliantly insightful new perspectives. I think I may have reach the limit of my points.

edit: It started to get heated, but I think we disengaged appropriately in time.

This is such a damn fun conversation! But now I've got to go govern my own B.S.

See you all down at the Drop!

Sorry, never mind the B.S. Please do attend if you are interested in comics in Bellingham, but I will not be there today. Events and this morning's headache have conspired against me.

As a responsible blogger and friend, and a fellow business owner, I must make amends. If you are a shop owner, manager or employee, I apologize to you.

In yesterday's post about earworms, I heavily implied that I was angry at and laying blame upon the people who run my favorite coffee shop for playing music that annoyed me. I cannot be angry at them, and never once did feel that way. The post was very poorly worded in the heat of the moment, though I did my best to hide the identity of the business. After all, all businesses play Christmas music this time of year.

The background music is always tertiary to the more pressing concerns of providing good service quickly, and should be. And I find the whole thing is certainly worthy of chronicling carefully in a comic, but I'm going to save it for next year as it'll fit better in my series then, and the season's almost over anyway.

However, even this morning as I felt yesterday afternoon I do find myself unreasonably angry at the Chrismas music itself, at the people who wrote it, at the people who performed it, and at the top 5 radio station that played it. I'm mostly appalled at the concept of a radio station (internet or otherwise) with such a limited selection.

As to the music itself: This was some of the nicest Christmas music I'd ever heard. I wouldn't at all mind hearing it Christmas morning. I think part of the reason that it was OK was that it was sacred, basically. They were carols.

Most sacred Christmas music is focused on retelling the stories around the holiday and expressing the jubilation and joy that is supposed to be represented by it. It's hard to be annoyed at that. It's a purpose that deserves respect, as it would be expected of any holiday or religious music from anywhere.

Now, I don't consider myself to belong to any religion at all, really, but it's the secular stuff that's the worst. Almost all of it seems to be written as propaganda. If you're not good, Santa won't come. If you don't celebrate, you're an ass. Or it reflects the writer's (and therefor the singer's) own shallow values.

Humorous Christmas music, that makes fun of these things, usually tends to be a blast and a relief the first time I hear it. But almost all humorous music tends to have an extremely short shelf life with me. It gets boring and insidious fast. Partly because it often has the same terrible tune as the thing that it is parodying, and partly because the lyrics contain imagery that I really don't want in my head.

But whatever the content of the songs, either by virtue of being repeated to us every year since we are born or by the very nature of the tunes themselves, Christmas songs all seem to be earworms, capable of getting stuck in the head for days on end. And that is really what I'm angry about.

And I'm angry because there is nothing reasonable I can do to stop it. All I can do is lock myself up in my own room and play music that I like.

Let me be angry. It's natural. It usually tends to go away by Christmas Eve, anyway.

I never thought I'd see the day when a man who can say this would be elected to a national office:

As I said before, in my own public policy, I'm very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.

Now, that's different [from] a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it's perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values that inform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.

The whole interview is bringing me to tears of joy. It's by Cathleen Falsani.

It remains to be seen what he'll actually do once he takes office, and some of his apparent planning seems worrisome, but as a representative of this type of thought, I'm glad he made it.

Here are the givens as I see them:

With the looming economic disaster unfolding and a historical election in sight, my community is undeniably on the verge of dramatic change and possible a difficult trial or two.

Prior to all this coming to a head, I've been reading up on all sorts of ideas for heading off disaster. This is, in part, because it seems to be a favorite passtime in my community to talk about looming disasters and how to try to prevent them! (Global warming, nuclear war, economic depression, etc.)

It hasn't, up until now, generally occupied our daily lives, but it has been there in our fiction, our political discussions, and in some of our nightmares. We do have many distractions, otherwise, including the struggle to make a living with what we've currently got.

A lot of this discussion is also about how to improve our abilities to survive in the world as it is! You know, to gain a little more slack, at least, to discuss future problems and/or to simply entertain ourselves and relax.

Finally, I seem to be better at being an artist and a writer and a daydreamer than I am at most other things I attempt to accomplish.

Therefor I postulate:

Since I am better at being an artist and a writer and a daydreamer than I am at most other things I attempt to accomplish, I should probably contribute to the discussions in that manner. In fact, as a student of cartooning, I may be able to help translate the discussions into something people not normally used to participating in the discussions can understand.

In other words, artwork that would probably be of most use right now might be stuff that conveys solutions to the problems we perceive.

I'm skipping a bunch of logic there. It's easier to write comics that present problems from different angles, and lead people to solutions, inviting the reader to donate some of their own cognitive power to the problems. But sometimes, I'm witness to some really good ideas presented by other people, and I think these ideas should be spread about more. I can do that, too. Either way, the effect is the same, if I'm good enough at doing it.

I already do this with HFR.

The next trick is marketing. Harmless Free Radicals only reaches a certain number of people. I want to improve the number of people my work reaches. In fact, I want my work to be able to speak to what my community largely considers the opposition. People with money.

I have some thoughts on how to do that, but they are half formed and I need the time to work on them.

Unfortunately, I'm out of time for today. Gotta go work!

Over the past eight or so years, I've had a lot of lofty ideas for what I could do with my art. I'm not particularly high on the rendering skill scale, and my concepts are plebeian at best. Yes, my work can be impressive at times, but honestly my discipline sucks and there are other artists out there that knock off stuff in their sleep that make my masterpieces look like scribbles. But that's not the point. It's just the groundwork. Where I stand.

I've made a post like this twice before, I'm sure of it.

I have an idea. I've had this idea on and off for about nine years, actually, maybe a bit more. I've never actually achieved the goal of this idea, or I would be making a living off my art by now. So I've always felt like a failure at attempting it.

But I don't think it's fully formed yet, either, so that mitigates the failure. I can't really succeed at it until all the pieces come together and it can run. I might never succeed at it, and instead pass the germ of the idea on to someone else, who'll make it work.

But looking back at my eight year and counting run of comics, I can see it at work. I've been doing it, subconsciously, by continuing to do something that I thought I loved at one point.

And now I can build on it.

Keep in mind, I know I'm definitely reinventing the wheel here. So much so that this idea will seem like nothing to you if I mention it. Nothing at all. But the idea is to manufacture the wheel using contemporary materials, instead of stuff from a century ago.

I'm being obtuse, because I'm telling you how I'm thinking, and not what I'm thinking about. That will be the next post. You know, to keep things clean.

Apparently, there were too many footnotes to include in his latest work of fiction that Neal Stephenson put them all here:

http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/acknow.htm

What. A. Nerd.

Occasionally (like once every five or so years), I'll dream that I'm a girl or a woman. Three of those dreams involved looking into a mirror and seeing myself as such, and my reaction to it. Almost always, the change of gender is part of the dream. Once, it was one of those really embarrassing dreams where you've gone to school in your underwear, only on top of that, I found myself sitting on a bench telling one of my old friends why I had gotten the operation.

Usually these dreams are weird, enlightening or kind of fun, though one was disturbing to the extreme and I only tell it when I'm expected to tell something embarrassing. It doesn't go in print. I do sort of feel like I'm expected be socially embarrassed about these dreams, but they're just dreams. I'm ultimately comfortable with where they are coming from, and more and more with how I present myself to the world (which is to say, honestly). Anyway, most of my friends would probably be just as amused and interested in them as I am. But as you can tell by my extra long introduction, I'm not really sure about that.

People really do like to read between the lines of all sorts of things and ascribe motives to people that are often completely opposite of the truth. They do this for politics, sex, and just about every other minute social interaction in between. And frankly, I'm really tired of it.

However, when I dream something very clearly, with amazingly strong visual detail, I often take that as a challenge to remember it and draw it. I can usually get pretty close, I think. As an artist, I've got to share this! Also, this whole train of thought as spawned an idea for a story.

Anyway, last night I dreamt that I had shaved the evening before, and when I got up in the morning, I saw this in the mirror:



I have to say, I was nonplussed. In both the traditional and in my sense of the word. While I've been curious what it would be like to pass as a girl, that image represents one of the phenotypes I find least sexy to me (pretty, but not my type or what I admire). Also, I was still clearly a guy and definitely married to the extremely sexy woman I call my wife. I thought this new situation would cause problems, but Julie didn't seem to care or even notice. Which kind of made me feel worse. But I also somehow knew this would happen, hence that expression.

Anyway, thinking about how and why my brain came up with this situation and visualized it so strongly got me to thinking about dreams and their apparent purposes.

( story idea behind a cut )

I tend to agree with q13_exe on this. Specifically, this point of his is important:

'It is my honest opinion that, if you are staunchly and unapologetically certain you "Know how things work" and that everyone else is an idiot, you look like a fool.'

But what is interesting to me is that while I'm reading his article and writing this post, I'm hearing a radio host talk about how people seem to be looking up and fact checking the details of the whole bail out deal instead of just sticking to their convictions. Normally, this talk show host tends to fail in precisely the way q13_exe describes, but I think she's doing it because that's the formula of the show.

I think that even though on the media and in the comment forums you'll find arrogant dickheads, the pervasiveness and power of the internet also amplifies the intelligent. At least enough that an otherwise oblivious radio host has noticed it. On the other hand, she might have been mentioning it just to make the listeners feel good.

Anyway, do go and read what he has to say about conviction.

I only really have to add to it this tempered thought: It's OK to be who you are and to have opinions and conviction, it's just also smart to allow a doubt, admit that doubt and to listen to what others have to say.

Or rather, it's important to realize that this isn't about correct behavior, but rather smarter methods of thinking and more effective ways of communicating.

Most people seem to take pleasure in feeling superior to someone. I'm not like that, which pleases me because it makes me feel superior.

- Vlad Taltos in Steven Brust's Jhegaala

If you had enough money and the inclination to put $5,000 down on a drawing, what would you look for in that drawing?

Would it have to be a particular size?

What media would make it worth that much?

What kind of subject matter?

Which artist, in the history of art, could command that much respect from you?


Me? Just about any one of the Masters of just about any school of art, including Anime (Osamu Tesuka, man!), could probably get me to spend that much on a drawing, if I had the money and the inclination. I might, in fact, be more inclined to spend that money on a living artist, to make sure he or she got the money, rather than a collector. Especially if it was a commissioned portrait of my wife and I. I'm not sure if size matters much to me. But since I wouldn't spend $5K on something I didn't plan to show off, movie poster sized paper would probably make more sense.


Note: Saying that you wouldn't spend $5K on art means that you don't understand the question.

KGMI, our local news station, writes most of the commercials that they play as a service to their advertisers. Although that horrible Industrial Credit Union commercial I complained about last week may have been written by ICU, because they like to do things themselves (as I know from dealing with them for the Indy).

Well, the number of woefully sexist commercials on KGMI seems to be increasing. It's not like they're deliberately sexist, exactly, unless they are. They come off like those out of date Sunday comics, falling on cliches that are extremely out of date, like the wife asking the husband for cash and the checkbook.

Ugh.

Of course, the advertising industry is extremely sexist to begin with, marketing most everything primarily to women, particularly if the product is a luxury or clothing. Apparently women are the only creatures on the planet who like to treat themselves to indulgences and understand the meaning of the word "pamper." But, I suppose sadly I am used to those kinds of commercials. But waking up the old fashioned cliches really puts me in a bad mood.

That's the thing, when you start to emphasize traditional or specific sex roles it's not just unfair to one of the sexes. It's unfair to both. Like taking it to the extreme (where once it did lay), I'm the one who's supposed to be The Keeper of The Checkbook. And if I'm not because my wife just happens to be better at handling money than I am, am I then less of a man? In the old days, that would have been the case.

These are old lessons. Everyone on my friends list probably all understands. This post is for my conscience, and for Google, and hopefully for KGMI to get its butt out of the 50's.

The lesson for the new era of advertising is that I like to go to the spa, too, if I can afford it. A massage and a steam bath go a long way toward making better artwork. And since I'm home all day and doing the chores, I'm interested in the latest conveniences. And my wife is buying me an awesome skirt for my birthday.

I admit it, I'm a kept man.

Visual art (and by extension, business itself -- because visual art is a business) is a form of sorcery.

I've been re-reading the Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook, and this thought has been in my head before. So it makes sense that it pops up again. And as it ain't new to me, it ain't new to the world, either.

I'm not going to link to any references here, because I'm just spouting what's in my head. Please refute me if I deserve it!

In the Black Company the link to a sorcerer's or wizard's powers is through their true name, the name they were given at birth. But the way Cook describes it, I get the impression that it isn't the name itself that has the power, but the act of hiding it. Through some of the better known rules of magic, such as sympathy and simulacra and whatnot, the sorcerer's link to the dark powers is represented and powered by that first trick they ever pulled on the world, eradicating their old identity.

It's just slight of hand and showmanship.

In art (and by extension, business itself -- because all skills are forms of art and business often uses visual to sell itself), you sell a piece by impressing people and there are two different ways to do that. You can either perform an amazing feat. Or you can convince people that they've seen magic.

And you know what I mean when I say "magic." Please don't make me explain it.

In the past, the amazing feat alone was enough to convince people that they had seen magic. Old masters would push themselves harder and harder to outdo their mentors and contemporaries and to impress even the emissaries of God themselves with how well they could bend light and color to recreate the glories that inspired the world. But it was gruelingly hard work that took lifetimes to develop.

The era of modern art took that all apart. It started innocent enough, with the search for new tools and new standards by which to judge beauty. And as my art history teachers loved to point out, there were riots in the streets! Though the internet says they were small ones (google Fauvists). But anyway, it devolved. Within a century, the message was that it wasn't the amazing slight of hand that was the key to fame, but rather you could replace it entirely with showmanship. And now to back it up, we have technology that outshines the greatest masters in rendering abilities, allowing anyone to create an amazing work of art. Occasionally.

My understanding is that when Andy Warhol spoke about everyone getting their 15 minutes of fame, it wasn't a truism that everyone gets theirs due to some plan of God's. He meant that, replication and printing technologies and T.V. and the destruction of the schools of classical art, the world had become the kind of place where someone with a good idea could get their fifteen minutes. But that it would probably only be fifteen minutes, because there are so many people with good ideas or funny jokes out there. See YouTube.

Still the artists and the magicians who seem to get the most respect (not the most fame, the most respect) are the ones that have a healthy balance between what I want to call the Craft and the Show. The Show is important, it's what gets people to pay attention to the Craft. Hell, it can be a Craft all to itself. And an important one! But one reason that visual art doesn't get a whole lot of respect to begin with, ever, is because it's product is almost all Show. It seems kind of frivolous and a diversion and not work, but in the end we all know how important it is so we do spend some money on it. But the more actual Craft you can work into it, and the more good you can do for people who invest in it, the more your work is respected.

My favorite coffee shop, they're Show is in the way the place is painted. And in the name, which is a Victorian euphemism for opium. And in their ads, which say something along the lines of "Our coffee can beat up your coffee." And in the weight of the awards on their walls. And in their service, which is quick and spunky. And in their constant bragging about doing the business of coffee right. It is a Show that is also a Craft, because it gets across a message that is good and admirable and inspiring.

But it is also backed up with a fuck-ton of work to create an actual Craft that deserves that respect. Their coffee can kick anything's ass. And the communities that call the Black Drop home are equally true and strong and cultivated just as carefully as everything else in the shop. And someone walking in there becomes not only a beneficiary of all this, they become a contributor. And they can pull out a piece of financial paperwork and show you how your contribution has made the lives of central American coffee growers better (maybe I'm pushing it here, but it's true).

There are a number of magicians in this world, that people seem to admire even if stage magic isn't their thing.

There are the David Copperfield's, who go for the sentimentality in the Show. They play up the importance of their magic and how it all relates to the heavier things in life and makes life easier and better. And you know they're performing some kind of trick, and you sit and watch and try to find where they pulled the wool over your eyes and see if you could figure out how to do it yourself. And in the end they surprise you with their skill anyway and pull a god damned tear out of your eye, and even though you know the tear is fake and manipulated you appreciate it anyway, fuckit. I still hate his style, but I have to respect him. Jody Bergsma falls into this category to me, and I'll tell you why some other time.

Then there are the Penn & Tellers, who's Show is about sardonically explaining how other magicians do their tricks, then explaining how they do their own tricks. And then do something astounding anyway! I respect magicians like this and love them as well! They are of a style that is more for our times, perhaps.

And then there's Dan the Magic Man, who shows up at you kid's birthday party and does tricks you've seen before, a couple that you could probably do yourself and a couple that he clumsily gives away. But the best trick he pulls is that he keeps thirty-some eight year olds absolutely riveted for 45 minutes while still entertaining the adults. And then maybe he does a single trick that doesn't make any sense, and you believe in magic for a second despite it all. Sometimes it's the bill.

But no matter what the style, I must admit that I'm enamored with the idea that maybe it doesn't matter what I'm saying exactly when I'm typing all this shit, as long as at the end of the day I've figured out how to take a pencil and a piece of paper and used it to make your life worth more.

I wouldn't dare claim to be capable of doing that. You just have to please tell me when I've achieved it, because I'm gonna keep trying.

From a guy named Lee Bryant, quoted in gapingvoidtest

The big social challenges of our time - climate change, the future of energy, healthcare in the developing world and so on - are unlikely to be solved without constructive engagement with large corporations. But democratic engagement with business should not become a conversation between lobbyists and governments that results in weak targets, voluntary guidelines or other half-hearted measures that do not fundamentally change business behaviour; it should be a wider conversation with society as a whole. As well as shining lights on businesses' mistakes and misdeeds, we need to really help them engage in what are often quite difficult conversations that they need to have with external stakeholders and public opinion. That way, we can apply our energies to solving real problems rather than throwing or deflecting brickbats.

When businesses are truly made of people, rather than impersonal monoliths, these conversations will be a lot more real and a lot more likely to result in positive outcomes for all concerned.

So, instead of fighting the "evil corporations" how about getting our activist groups to "love" them? A lot of large companies are co-opting environmentalist messages, so...

Whatever. It's a tough bill. Way too easy to visualize the wrong thing with a suggestion like this. It takes some courage and quick, careful thinking to do it right.

Still, I'm pretty much behind the idea, because so far everything else ain't working.

Mindy & Drew are married!

What a great little wedding that was.


I had some really interesting thoughts going through my head during the ceremony. I mean, as I usually do, but this time they were so different from past weddings I realized that my own current romantic situation really colors the emotions I have at weddings. It's something I'd already guessed, but yesterday was the strongest evidence yet that my personal perspective seems to be more important to the color of my emotions than anything else.

Anyway, I kind of felt like I was at a christening of a boat, or the opening of building, or the breaking of ground. Work is gonna get started and I've got another set of friends who've joined the same company I'm working for to take on this new project. I've felt that way before with one other wedding, because the officiant was so good at getting that across. But that idea has always been overshadowed by the fact that I was single and completely without romantic prospects.

After a year of fantastic marriage, I'm definitely more than a little biased now.

It strikes me that as the future wears on, other people's weddings will be opportunities for me to face how Julie and I are doing.

I have to say, for the sake of my unmarried and uninterested friends, while I am proud to be a good example of what marriage can be and part of the "institution" of it, you guys keep up the good work too, hear? We need those different perspectives.