Adventures of the Smart Patrol

I will not be checking my personal email or any of my personal social media accounts while at work. This means that webcomics will be read before or after work, too.

Also, my cellphone is set to vibrate during work hours. But I check it’s messages every hour or so.

So, if you need to inform me of something while I’m at work, a text message or phone call will work (you can find the number on my own business’ home page if you don’t already have it).

But I won’t answer.

If you want to get a hold of me directly, such as for a family emergency, call Superfeet and ask for me: www.SuperFeet.com

But I will return phone calls, emails and txts when I get off of work, so that is the preferred method of contact for most everything.

Thank you!

I wish I could better describe how my first full day of work went, but I’m still processing all of it. It was awesome, though.

I love my coworkers and my bosses, so far. The office dynamic feels really healthy right now, and continues to remind me of working at the Indy.

I’m working at an absent coworker’s station while they continue to set up mine. She has two monitors, which I hope very much I get to have, too. It really helps to keep the proofing process paperless!

And right after being briefed on my first two projects, a rush job fell into my lap pretty much first thing this morning! Which only served to make me feel right at home, like it’s production day at the paper (only with fewer obnoxious sales reps and a somewhat later deadline). More importantly, I was able to tackle it right away with professional diligence and disciplined procedure. Barring unforeseen circumstances, it’ll be done tomorrow.

And the Marketing Team (which I’m a member of) took me out to lunch at Oishii.

I’m headed to my new job in about forty minutes. Gotta have coffee and breakfast and pack my lunch. Also probably a good idea to put my pants on.

I haven’t had a day job in a year and a half. This one is the first full time job I’ve had since before the dawn of the millennium. I don’t know how much time I’ll have for my own art. I don’t really feel the need for it these days, so I don’t expect it to be much of a shock. But I also suspect I’ll have more time and motivation for my own work than I expect.

I am working on one last Ten Dollar Dragon and a couple book covers, so you’ll see those eventually at least! Hopefully within the next couple weeks. But we’ll see.

As for comics, as I said, I’ve still got the itch to write them!

Several hours ago, a significant portion of humanity rallied together to celebrate the successful completion of another orbit around our Sun. The New Year is typically a time of anticipation, and of rumination. It is both an excuse for celebration, and an excuse to wipe the slate clean of a year's mistakes. That we need a yearly reminder for such things shows how small-minded humans are, 365.25 days being far too long for most of us to hold a resolution. And who can blame us? Life is a blizzard of side-tracks and distractions; only the strongest of will—or richest of pocket—manage to see their plans through to completion. Take what you will from this sad fact.

On the television images are broadcast of humanity in celebration, but in celebration of what? That the candle which we have burning at both ends still has a bit of wax and wick left? This orgiastic display of happiness and hope seems downright perverse considering what humanity is facing. It is true that troubles have always dogged humanity, but it is this very stasis that is conjuring a much more frightening world. Issues of scarcity, poverty, illness, and environmental decay—unnervingly faithful companions to Man—are grown to a terrifying proportion thanks to the technological shrinking of our planet. Resources are consumed at break-neck pace with no solid contingency plan to protect ourselves.

What I find even more disturbing is an active effort from the Powers that would like to perpetually remain That Be to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the minds of the people, to create an opaque, impenetrable cloud of mistrust against those whose expertise may very well spare humanity from unneeded suffering.

It's a package deal. Those in higher positions come down to the masses like Moses from Sinai, commandments in arms. It is declared to all, “Toil no longer, weep no longer! Place your trust in the higher power. We will take care of your life, your worries, your troubles.” And the masses bend to this declaration willingly, eagerly prostrate, wishing for a life of ease and safety. The corporations make gestures of gathering the people into their arms to carry them through life, the Big Brother we always wished we could have. The embrace sounds warm and inviting, but how long will such bliss last? Can it even be considered bliss when we are in reality toiling on our own feet, yet being told we are held and cared for?

It's a bald-faced lie, but the fantasy is too seductive to reject. Here in the United States we are being marched away from the very ideals that made our country a beautifully unique phenomenon. We have been told that these material goods we should so passionately seek are all that matter, that the deprivation of these toys, even for a single day, is blasphemous. We hold shadows and dust in our hands, thinking this ephemeral handful is more precious than gold. In exchange for this transient vapor, we throw our entire lives away by willfully being yoked to the plow for perpetuity. Like a drug, we take hits from the toys we barely manage to acquire, making our toilsome existence bearable, believing fervently in a collective Western delusion that our parents, Democracy and Capitalism, are unerring guide stars, with strict obedience being the only patriotism allowed.

With constant exposure to entertainment, the messages conveyed in art and song become diluted. We take important messages as entertainment, and when the lights go up in the theater, the experience that has washed over us for the past few hours is washed out of us; we only root for the underdog when all is dark and no one can see us. There is no safe harbor, even on the long and empty highways that connect cities, billboards scattered throughout the desolation to remind us who is in charge. Even our very language is twisted and collapsed to vacuous hyperbole. Walk any grocery store aisle and see the devastation marketing has wrought: “ALL-NEW”, “GENUINE”, “VALUE-PRICED”, “ECONOMIC”, “FORMULATED”, “ORIGINAL”, “EXTRA-STRENGTH”—a dense tangle of doublespeak allowed only by the graces of vagaries and legal not-promises. Corporations have discovered the payoff in flooding consumers in a tsunami of information, leaving the individual breathless and wanting for a flotation device. Such devices are tossed out readily for a price, but they barely keep us afloat. The future promised to us after the end of the second World War never materialized. The things that were meant to set us free have instead shackled us, bound us to a life of servitude. The price for a easy, disposable lifestyle is tremendous.

And we are more than happy to live as such. After all, we're on the good side, right? This is the way it's supposed to be…isn't it?

We are past the point of no return. The coming storm will shake the foundations of Western civilization to its very core. Perhaps this is why many hide in the hypocrisies of the age, but it is questionable whether most are aware of where we are headed. Maybe there is an inkling, but it seems most would rather not think about it. I can understand such reasoning completely; if there is nothing we can do about it, then why worry? Live life as one is able! Enjoy the short term! But I cannot shake the feeling that we can still do something about it. I am struck with a most ambivalent feeling, on the one hand believing that humanity can rise to the challenge and overcome its own selfishness and greed to create our finest hour, but on the other hand believing that Man is still very much tied to animal instincts, and will face much pain, near-oblivion or extinction itself.

Do we deserve this?

On a street near my University sits a church of unknown denomination whose neon cross burns brightly at night. Below this technoreligious display is a marquee whose sayings come and go at regular intervals. Driving by one day I read this message: “Evil thrives when good men do nothing.” It is a saying that most if not all would agree with, but which most if not all would fail to uphold. To lead a principled life is antithetical to the entire enterprise the Western world is constructed upon. It's a global game of don't-get-caught in which all of us are sinners. The virtue of honesty is poison in this take-what-you-can-get feeding frenzy: we are told to lie in job interviews, business decisions, to the public, even to our very spouses and children. If we play by the rules, we are “safe”, just so long as we don't speak the truth about ourselves or others, just so long as we don't get caught.

What is my price for honesty? What sacrifices do I miss by loosing or holding my tongue? Pondering this question is my resolution this year. I'm not sure I will come to peace with this issue, at least not in this year, but I feel I would do a great disservice to my species by not considering it.

I didn’t do a terribly good job of staying away from the computer in the last couple of weeks, but I did get to a lot of the things I’d hoped to get done. So, in many ways, I’m in a better place today than I was two weeks ago.

One of the key things is that I start the new year with a job! I’m not going to be writing much about my job here, at least until I get a feel for the place. But I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’m now a full time, salaried graphic designer for SuperFeet Worldwide, Inc. So long as my drug test passes, that is (which I really see no reason it shouldn’t).

I’ve already filled out a lot of the paperwork, and on Monday I’m scheduled to take over two new projects which they say I get to “own.” I feel ready to tackle it all right now.

Ten years ago I had graduated from Whatcom Community College with a transfer degree and was living with my grandmother and providing general tech support and computer tutoring services to a number of her friends. When my primary client Joyce Pyle died of pneumonia I cast about for other work and ended up delivering pizza for three months at Moonlight Pizza, right next door to Trek Video. And then, when Moonlight Pizza went out of business, I walked over next door and started pushing videos. And that’s when Harmless Free Radicals started.

HFR has been such a huge part of my life for the past ten years that my new year is actually July 31st, the date I published the first comic.

Working on the comic lead to me being hired by Boundary Bay Brewery & Bistro to do their graphics. And there I did everything, including the beer labels you’ll see on the shelves today.

While I worked for Boundary I graduated from Western Washington University with a Bachelor’s degree in drawing. Shortly after that, I moved on from Boundary to pursue running my own business, Grass Dog Studio. That has been a terribly rocky road, almost completely unsuccessful, but almost completely worth it.

Somewhere in there I helped to start The Bellingham School of Comics.

Again, the comic (through the B.S.) eventually led me to be hired by another fine Bellingham establishment, The Whatcom Independent Newspaper, for whom I again designed everything, including a rework of the entire paper, and in which my comic was published. I won three awards from the Washington Press Association for my comics.

Unfortunately, the Indy closed their doors on June 12th, 2008, my brother’s birthday. And I’ve been self employed ever since. Until, officially, yesterday.

That’s ten years of my career. It’s really hard to avoid a lot of other crazy and awesome things cramming themselves in there as well.

I’m married, now, for instance, and a bit of a local celebrity in Bellingham (though not nearly as much as, say, Brent Cole of What’s Up!). I’ve made numerous great friends and actually finished some fine projects. I’ve bought people Christmas and birthday presents, which is new to me. I got my wife into a band, and now do the graphic design for them. I have nephews and a niece! Well, more than that if you count my cousin’s children. I’ve been in numerous plays, including Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, and Fear and Misery in the Third Reich (which was fucking intense). And I learned how to program in PHP and MySQL all by myself.

And I lost track of some of my best friends from my childhood. I don’t even know if they’re still alive or not. There is some reason to doubt with one of them.

And my grandmother died not long ago, the one whom I lived with for six years at the beginning of the decade.

Right about the time that my grandfather, her husband, died, I had a dream that my life would take a huge change around my 35th birthday. I hope it doesn’t. At least not in the wording that the dream put it. I don’t really believe in prophetic dreams, but that one was ominous and hard to ignore.

Part of my plan to roll with the blow, or to at least take some wisdom from the thought of that dream, was to drop Harmless Free Radicals on my 35th birthday. That’s the birthday coming up.

I am pretty much the same person I was ten years ago, with just a lot more things under my belt. I’m just as creative and driven as I once was, and just as flaky about pretty much the same things I was flaky about then. I’m working on the same kinds of things, too. But I have a better support network and now a better job. And I have someone to start building a family with.

I can’t really make any predictions about what I’ll do with my comics or what I’ll be driven to do, but I really don’t think I’m going to end up giving up my comic. It might be the healthy thing to do if I were pursuing a career in writing and cartooning. It would be good to work on other projects. But I seem to be happiest when working for other people, supporting other businesses, and keeping my story telling on the side.

And I do still feel this strong urge to bring the characters I’ve lived with for the past ten years further to life!

But I’m definitely ready for a big change. I’m hoping that this change will be the one I’m currently striving for. When it happens, you’ll know what it is.

At this point, readers of this journal and my comic know not to expect much of me. I’ve effectively been on hiatus for the past six months. And I think that’s going to continue. But at some point down the road, I bet I’ll feel the need to scribble out another comic, and you’ll see more work of that kind from me.

After all, I have stories to finish, and my brain hasn’t been able to leave them alone for more than a day since the Indy shut its doors.

But, for now, my new job gets my attention.

Happy New Year!

I'm so damn tired of being the guy that puts himself out on the line, only to be passed over, or left hanging. I've played that role for as long as I can remember. I'm sick of chasing girls who only occasionally turn to acknowledge my existence. I'm done chasing. It's too much work, time, and effort that's never worth it in the end.

I'm not sure of it's just the ones I'm attracted to, or if I'm just destined to be the puppy dog who can't stop chasing cars. But this pup's growing up.

(This hasn't always been the case in every relationship I've had though. For example, when I was with Jamie or with Sophia it was pretty mutual from the start if I remember right and those were really great most of the time)

I suppose I'm just sick of blindly playing the guessing game that comes with trying to get someone to date me. I'm sick of trying to read the mixed signals and getting all worked up at night trying piece together in my head how someone feels about me.

Honestly, if some one really wants to be with me, they'll let me know, they'll make it clear, and they'll find a way to make it work. I don't why I never realized this sooner... Well I guess this is growing up.

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
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• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
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Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!