Don’t you just hate circular logic? You can’t get a job unless you have experience, and of course how do you get experience without a job? You can’t get a promotion unless you’re assigned higher level work, which you won’t be at your current level, and any thing you do is at your current level by definition. Tix works her ass off playing organ at church but her pay seems not to at all related to how well she does the job, but to little check boxes on a piece of paper. One of my pet peeves is people who conveniently use little check boxes and heirarchical power structures as an excuse to avoid doing what is right and just. Who is taking bets on whether the Marjean the accounts lady has even been to a service that Tix played for? You will see this theme pop up again with different twists in this comic because I really have a bug up my butt about it. The huge irony is that churches are always ranting about exploitation of the poor and powerless. My fluorescent white ass! Maybe they should read and heed the book of Deuteronomy.

So you can’t bring yourself to get one of those gushy Hallmark cards for your mom this Mother’s Day. Maybe the black eye her wacko boyfriend gave you while she watched Twilight in the other room hasn’t quite healed yet. Maybe you have to deliver the mother’s day greeting to her in residential rehab. Or maybe you’re in the grips of teen-aged angst and you’ve been reading too much adolescent psychology and you’re sure all those parenting books she diligently followed have damaged you forever. Maybe you’re nearly forty and you still haven’t cut the umbilical cord and you resent the hell out of it. Maybe your mom is perfectly fine and you’re just too full of shit to realize it. Whatever. THIS CARD IS FOR YOU. Just cut it out and give it to her. Oh hell, that’s too much work, isn’t it? Just send her the URL. (Gag written by Pulitzer nominee Jo King.)

I was just thinking about CISPA and the TSA and Monsanto, and how government & big corporations invade our privacy. What if Google got so precise it could automatically put a red pin on an eyesore milkweed and a really embarrassing comment bubble that says “weed me.” One pin…. meh, but my front yard would have so many red pins it wouldn’t even look like a Google Map. I mean…. what would some random person in China think if they zoomed in and saw that? There is NO PRIVACY anywhere! One of these days that Google plane is going to fly over when I’m enjoying the sun in a secluded dip in the roof… drinking beer and drawing comics in my birthday suit. What’s it gonna do then, put a pin that says “Cover up?” or just automatically blast it all over the netz? OK, enough speculating. Guess I better go out and pull that mo-fu milkweed up, before the technology actually happens.

I first conceived this comic a long time ago, after reading or hearing on the radio that the elderly and terminally ill are being given a whole raft of unnecessary screenings and other tests. I was advised not to publish this comic because it is very dark and not funny, but screw that. I’m publishing it anyway. In this comic an elderly patient has terminal cancer and yet still she is scheduled for a routine pap smear. It’s like the doctors need to make all the money they can before the patient kicks it. It seemed to me like before HMO’s doctors were ordering every possible test, the more expensive the better. Then with HMO’s it seemed for a time that you couldn’t get the tests/procedures you wanted or needed, because they made more money by NOT doing anything. Now, however, the pendulum seems to have swung back the other way.

Isn’t it always the way. The song you most hate is your big money maker. Why doesn’t the public ever like anything good? I first heard the Macarena when my kids were little. I thought it was a children’s song. To me it belongs in the hallowed halls right up there with “Chicken Dance” and “Hokey Pokey.”

If you grew up on Pluto and never heard this gem, here it is. It’s catchy but trust me it gets BORING really fast, especially for the piano player.

Anyway, I’m just cleaning out and finishing up some random partial comics so the sketches stop cluttering up my space, then I’ll get to work on a big ol’ honkin’ story line.

This is a guest comic from my good friend George Ford over at Addanac City. I did the basic storyboard, and George embellished the script a bit (particularly the euphemism for taking a dump) and paired it with his own unique brand of visual humour. I knew George would have a good time with it… panel #3, especially. If you haven’t checked out George’s work before you should. Addanac City like a modern day Dennis the Menace… with the gloves off. Little Hank Addanac gets himself into scrapes of course, but unlike Dennis’s perfectly bland parents, the adult characters in Addanac City have their own hilarious imperfections.

Our hero Tix is occupying the bathroom and suggests that Robby use the second one. I think if Tix had looked at that disgusting revolting bathroom recently, she probably wouldn’t have suggested that Robby use it. But she was taking the kids at their word to keep it hygienic…. always a mistake to take kids at their word.

If you ever feel like this guy in the comic when you come home from work, no more wishing. If you share the dream of being waited on it will probably come true…. eventually. Are you sure you would want this?

Once a hater made fun of me because I write a little blurb about each comic. I forget if it was “your comics are so obtuse that you gotta explain ‘em” or “your comics are so pathetically obvious it is absurd to explain them.” Hmmmmm… hasn’t he ever heard of visually challenged folks! And blurbs are good for SEO dontcha know that you dumb hater? Anyway, remember the Life of Brian where each little group was fighting to liberate Judea and the groups ended up fighting more with each other more than actually doing anything to oust the evil Roman overlords. Yeh. Our little burg doesn’t need TWO Alternative weeklies that target the same base. But we have two and they can’t seem to get along. We have silos in other areas as well. Nobody wants to be a spear carrier who actually accomplishes goals in the organization — they’d all rather write mission statements and have their name on the board, and be interviewed by the daily paper. A couple of my comics including this one have appeared in The Corvallis Weekly Independent (the scrappier of the two weeklies), and I have a byline or two, and more in the works.

Geoffrey and Paloma are having issues with their sex life. It seems HE’s lost interest. Obviously she MUST be doing something wrong.