I’ve felt guilt over neglecting this site lately, like I was flaking out on a project.
There’s that idea that comes with so many other things – sometimes quite healthily – that a person should finish the things they start or that they shouldn’t jump around from thing to thing very often. There is certainly a bucket of wisdom there across several categories, but it doesn’t apply so categorically to creative work. Finding your creative footing is a progression, not a last stand.

LOLZIES!!1@! awoke in me the desire to write comedy of one kind or another, and, despite the intermittent release schedule, it taught me creative discipline. I also learned what kinds of things NOT to do with my personal creative work: try to make money from it. There were points along the way where I drew up varied plans to sell product, but it was too tempting to serve the marketability of the work rather than the work of the work, which, at the time, and as is still the case, is the main point for me.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy making my living writing comedy, or that trying to earn a living with your creative thing is dishonest. I’m saying I like my day job pretty well. I work from home, rarely have to travel and my coworkers are a total gas; we get along famously. I have more of life’s boxes checked than I deserve to have checked, so I have neither the desire nor the need to pursue some replacement career. What I do desire is to make something worth making and put it where people who will enjoy it can get at it.

So, this project has served its purpose. Aside from my two small children and sweet wife, all of whom would enjoy my having one less distraction, there are some other things that need my attention right now.

To the handful of you who have enjoyed this site from the beginning and offered your encouragement along the way, thank you, it has meant a great deal to me.

I’ll still be smearing my esoterica on Twitter, occasionally writing “funny” stories and generally scrapbooking the absurd things I find at my personal site and making the odd video here and there, so you can stay tuned (read: humor me) at those locations if you like.

Thank you.

Charlie

Unless you’ve just not been paying attention, you’ve seen this whole Susan Boyle thing. She is a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent. She is from a very small town. She is sassy and sweet and endearing and has a gorgeous voice. She also happens to not be the prettiest lady you’ve ever seen, which seems to be a relevant and noteworthy contrast to her voice according to every human on Earth. I think that’s why people cry when they watch her her sing. Because I guess it’s refreshing when homely nobodies prove they have actual value.

She announces at the beginning that she aspires to greatness as a singer. The audience laughs like it’s a punch line, then laughs-off their cynical laughter with more laugher, only now spiced conservatively with guilt. “HAHA! We were soulless planet-scabs just now. OH WELL, RIGHT?!”

Nice one, humanity.

My ire got all the way up yesterday morning when I flipped on the TODAY show to see Amy and Lester (two beautiful people) jawing on about it and marveling and copping some refreshed hope in people. Horse hockey. All the commentary about it and all the hubbub, for me, is amounting to the whole world saying, “For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much.”, or, as in the comic above, some more racially insensitive remark.

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I would like to thank Sabrina over at reportercaps.com for use of the image of Amy and Lester. I found it in a Google image search for their names. I don’t have a DVR anymore (And yes, that TV you see is still our only TV. We expect a call from the Smithsonian any day now.) so I can’t capture the screens and I wasn’t fast enough with my camera to catch it myself. Sabrina’s site, an admittedly odd niche of super news fans sharing daily screen-captures of their favorite reporters and anchors saying the news, had just the kind of image I needed, and she graciously allowed me to use it, even after I straight-up asked her, “This isn’t some weird news fetish site is it? My mom reads my comic, you know.”

I’ve got some nerve, huh?

A special thanks to Radthanael for consulting on this joke.

I said “ironic youth dollar” because I can just see some over-youthed TV spot with this song, now ironic to them, as the track and people in big cough drop suits fighting people in grotesquely realistic sore throat suits. Advertising has gone in the direction of Sureal Literalism lately.

It’s been a while, I know. I had to take a detour from the Emo Haircut story line. Due to my setting some ambitious production goals, I have gotten bogged down a little. I will finish the EH story soon.

A special thanks to the Precocious Little Deuce for guest-starring in this week’s comic. You can see more of her work here.
Thanks for reading.

Nathanael “Radthanael” May helped out with the lighting for my shots on this comic. He has been staying at our house the last two days. We don’t get to see each other often, so we made a checklist of all the things we wanted to accomplish. We made a video about that. We are pretty proud of it.