Mr. President

Today we usher in a new president for the United States of America, and Julia and I couldn't be more proud, not only of Barack Obama, but of our fellow Americans for making the improbable a reality. There are those who say that President Obama's speech isn't as sweeping or grand as they would have liked, but I beg to differ:

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

His speech emphasized his consistent message of peace in strength and diversity, of unity over divisiveness, and hope over fear and cynicism. Perhaps most important of all he never talked down to us. He never shirked from giving us his challenging and eloquent vision of dignity in hard work, in stead of an easier message of lazy nationalism or coded classism. He is the man Julia and I thought we voted for; he is the man who has helped us rediscover our pride in our country; and he is the man we hope and trust will lead our country into a new era of intelligence, reason, science, and compassion.

Also, my next comic isn't ready yet - I hope to get it out in the next few days.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! Julia and I just returned from our Christmas and New Year's trip to Arizona, which was a rather random, but adventurous, way for us to spend the holidays.

We climbed the Grand Canyon, explored the eerily beautiful Mojave Desert, hiked along the beautiful trails in scenic Sedona, and witnessed some awesome animals in the Phoenix Zoo (you haven't lived until you've seen the multicolored splendor of a baboon's ass!). To top things off we spent New Year's eve in a festive block party on Tempe's Mill Avenue, meeting some cool new friends and seeing Styx (yes they are still alive, and their big 80s hair hasn't changed a bit) kick off 2009 in classic rock and roll fashion.

Julia has posted her photo album of our trip. I have posted my noticeably lower quality pictures too, grouped by days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. While the entire trip was a fun and new experience, as a cartoonist, I have to admit that one of the highlights for me was the opportunity to see Needles, CA, home of Snoopy's brother Spike. Although the town itself is no great shakes (just 3 miles of motels and a few restaurants and convenience stores), the local Denny's did honor Spike with a little doghouse in their parking lot. So, Denny's just got a little bit cooler in my book.

We hope you had a fun and safe New Year's, and let's all have a 2009 full of adventure, creativity, literacy, goodwill, and a sensible work/life balance!

Computer meltdown!

This has been an unfortunate week for me computer-wise. At work, my machine would not start at all. I ended up having to replace the power supply and a fried stick of RAM. Later in the week, my screen froze up completely, and after rebooting I found the filesystem was corrupted. I spent the rest of the afternoon fscking my drive, which thankfully did the trick.

But to complete the trifecta, this weekend while we were in the mountains on a snowboarding trip, my laptop (which I use for cartooning) booted up to a big blank screen. After some fruitless troubleshooting, I could only restore the factory settings, wiping out all my data and installed programs. The good news is that I have most everything backed up on an external drive. However, I will be a little late with this weeks comic - hopefully I can put it up early this week.

Vacation Time

I apologize for the lack of updates for this and next week. Julia and I are visiting our good friends in Atlanta and then spending Thanksgiving with family in Florida.

I promise to continue with our regularly scheduled web comics family fun on December 1. Happy holidays all y'all!

Hooray for America!

America made the right choice yesterday, and we made a definitive statement with a landslide victory for the good guys. I couldn't be more proud of our country and with the rising level of intelligence and awareness of today's voter. I wrote a post in our other blog detailing what Julia and I did on election night. It was a celebration and a night to remember.

I am not sure if Obama's presidency will make "Joe the Cartoonist" a priority in his first hundred days, but maybe once he solves our country's staggering deficit, two wars, recession, and housing crisis, he could turn some of his attention to America's struggling working cartoonists ;).

Slight Delay

I just bought a new laptop which is a huge improvement over my old cartooning machine. Unfortunately I have slacked a bit in setting it up to do all the things I need to create this comic (damn you, fantasy football!). I expect to have a new comic up early this week.

Incidentally, if you live in Colorado and want a good reference on how to vote on the staggering number of constitutional amendments on this year's ballot, I posted a blog that links to a good (progressive) source of information. Don't forget to vote in this most important election!

Change, For Better or For Worse

No, that's not a reference to Lynn Johnston's brilliant comic, but rather a mundane announcement regarding a software change to this site. All the comic pages used to be served dynamically, using Python CGI. Under the hood, this involved a fair amount of processing, including XML parsing of the ComicsML data for each cartoon. I have rewritten the site to generate static HTML pages for each comic - this only affects you, the reader, if you have previously linked to any of the archived comic pages. If you have linked to a comic image, not a page, this will not affect anything.

I am generally against the practice of changing URLs, but I was always bothered by the limited scalability of my dynamic pages - especially since even the index page was generated dynamically (and my web host's machine isn't exactly a powerhouse). So I decided to bite the bullet and take the plunge. For the one or two people this may inconvenience (it's likely that no more than that many people actually read this comic), I offer my sincere apologies.