Back from Jellystone

Hey everybody, thanks for having the patience to wait out my hiatus. Julia and I returned from a week long camping trip to Yellowstone, and while we saw many astounding animals - including a couple of adorable black bears -we luckily had a better time of it than Hector and Valdosta. Please enjoy the (hopefully) more regular updates from here on out.

Hard Drive Destroyed, Now We Get MS Paint Comics

Well, it always happens to me sooner or later... I use a computer long enough, and the hard drive fries crispier than a funnel cake in a Southern county fair. Fortunately, I have long made it a habit regularly to back up everything I create. Unfortunately, my 2.4 GHz dual core, 3 GB RAM laptop - my entire art studio, if you will - is a useless brick until I get my new hard drive in the mail.

In the meantime, all I have is our underpowered netbook - armed with the fun, yet evil (in a vague Comic Sans kind of way), MS Paint program. But the show must go on, and I bring you this week's less-than-appetizing The Remonstrance, in all its jagged glory. This is the first time I've ever used MS Paint, and I have to say, its simplicity is deviously addictive.

Twitter Redux

I posted on the subject of Twitter a few months ago, when I was testing the waters of this technology, both for my comic and for my personal life. By now, I've figured out pretty much what I like and don't like about tweeting.

First of all, it's just not a big deal. I think it's pretty funny to see Twitter hyped on the news as the next cutting edge communications medium that all the hip and tech-savvy kids are into. Really, Twitter is a super simple technology, seemingly used by mostly businesses and older people, that allows you to broadcast your short message through a site that is all too often down.

I don't find it useful for my personal life; Facebook gives me a similar broadcast outlet with the benefit of allowing friends to comment on my posts. Additionally, on Facebook I don't have to scroll through reams of out-of-context conversations such as:

sometwitteruser: I knew it! RT @othertwitteruser It's all my fault! The apocalypse is here. (47 minutes ago from web)

What?

Also I learned from day one that most of the people who followed me were basically shills for pornography sites, a common Twitter user experience I chronicled through Valdosta.

I do think it makes for a useful tool for promoting your product or service, since these types of posts aren't necessarily conversational and can be 140 characters or less without seeming artificially short. For this reason, while I've deactivated my personal account, I've retained @theremonstrance. So far I've mostly used it to announce new comic postings, but I do enjoy being able to follow other, more entertaining comic artists. I mostly see my Twitter feed through the iGoogle TwitterGadget; I rarely go to the actual Twitter site. When I had two Twitter accounts, I used the excellent and simple Matt web application to make posts.

In short, I would definitely recommend Twitter for anyone who wants to promote something (comic, band, dog walking business); but for personal stuff, I'd prefer almost anything else (e.g. Google Buzz) that allows for commenting, unlimited message size, and isn't always down.

Delay for this Week's Comic

Hey gang, sorry for the lateness in comic posting this month. Julia and I just returned from our 5th wedding anniversary trip to Utah - we did some sweet snowboarding, Mormon watching, and cheered on the Saints from a cool Irish pub in Park City - but I haven't had a chance to finish the next comic. Hopefully I can get that out this week. In the meantime, why not visit a webcomic portal and discover something new?

Late Comic, No Excuses

This week's comic is not yet done, and I don't have a good excuse except for the fact that I've been busy with something different every day. In the meantime, check out Nedroid Picture Diary, a cute and coolly stylized comic I have been digging lately (and maybe it's just me, but the I find the bird's big, dead-looking black eyes irresistibly unnerving).

Get Yer Tweets Here

I haven't done anything nerdy to shake up the site lately, so I decided to add the latest tweets from my webcomic twitter feed to the front page. I used the very nice python-twitter library, which made accessing the Twitter API a breeze for me in my favorite scripting language.

I'm not a huge Twitter user, but I do post comic updates and short news bits, as well as any cool comic-related links I come across. If you want to see a pretty comprehensive list of other webcomic authors to follow - some of whom post spectacularly funny tweets - check out The Webcomic List's Authors on Twitter directory.

In a Literary Mood

I realized that I subconsciously based the titles for my last couple of comics from literature; last week's from a David Eggers novel, and this week's from a story by the insufferably racist Lovecraft (whose collection of stories I'm still trying to slog through). Could I be any more pretentious?

Blame Rock and Roll

Hey everybody - Sorry, but the new comic will be out a little late. I just joined a new band (3 girls and me, rrriot rock!), and spent the weekend rocking my face off, when I wasn't watching football (go Broncos!). Not that that is a good excuse, but I didn't have time to finish this week's comic. Please check back in a day or so, and I promise it will be out there!

Blame Iceland

We just returned from our trip to Iceland - a gorgeous and magical country by the way - so I'm afraid this week's comic will be delayed. I'll post pictures soon.

What I'm Reading: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales

I was browsing the local Barnes and Noble recently, when a compellingly evil cover illustration caught my eye - it turned out to be for an anthology of H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories. I had read and heard many references to Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos, and I was vaguely aware of his historical importance to the horror genre, but I hadn't yet read any of his fiction. On a whim, I decided to buy it and educate myself. I was soon to find that the true horror of Lovecraft isn't necessarily his stories, but rather his appalling racism.

Now, I realize that racial perceptions were different in the early 20th century. I realize that we should be lenient about non-P.C. language in well-intentioned works by the likes of Twain, Faulkner, and Dickens. But Lovecraft's racism exists deep in the fabric of his horror; stories detailing the abhorrence of degenerative miscegenation; a passage blaming "negro blood" for the horrifying countenance of characters; and perhaps most amusing (in a kind of nauseating way), a main character's cat inexplicably named N*** Man. What what what?

If one can ignore his rampant racism, one can see how his writing had such an influence on horror. While his writing can seem antiquarian and overly turgid, Lovecraft does tap into some creepy, nightmarish themes, which were probably original at the time. Raising partially sentient bodies from the dead; secrets of a noble bloodline steeped in cannibalism; and of course the monstrous, mythological horror of Cthulhu and its stable of enormous and ancient creatures - these are ideas which I have to admire for their audacity and inevitable literary influence.

But can one separate an author's distasteful and immoral beliefs from his art? I can listen to Richard Wagner while mostly ignoring his antisemitism, but that is probably because his abhorrent beliefs aren't on display in the music or libretto. It is much harder to ignore racism that loudly proclaims itself on almost every written page in a work of fiction.

Alien Hands?

The affliction in today's strip is apparently for real. How freaky is that? I found out about Alien Hand Syndrome from an Internet list of the 10 most disgusting diseases. Gross.

Mary Worth Weirdness

I am always amazed at the amount of work people put into honoring / satirizing (the line can be very thin) their favorite serial comics, such as Apartment 3-G, Gil Thorpe, For Better or For Worse, and Mary Worth. This is great because these venerable comics have survived for decades, despite the fickle and unforgiving newspaper comics business, which has trended toward favoring gag-a-day strips (which I love too) to the detriment of serial dramas. These serial strips, which tend to be unintentionally hilarious and over-the-top outrageous, are definitely kept alive by their fans.

A case in point is a bizarre website installment I stumbled across while trying to search for a good Mary Worth RSS feed (still looking, by the way). I watched, in a state of unexplainable discomfort, these oddly hypnotizing movies: 3D Lego-styled characters acting out the geriatric, judgmental adventures of Charterstone's most meddlesome biddy. They speak in appropriately robotic tones and periodically pause to gesticulate and convulse with dead expressions on their smooth faces. What insane, dedicated fan spends the time to create this brilliant mess? I will certainly be following this site, which seems to contain a lot of other comic strip snarkiness and sublty funny strip modifications, in the future.

Congrats on 5 Years, Comics Curmudgeon

The Comics Curmudgeon, a blog that cleverly snarks on, lampoons, and lambastes the funny pages, had its 5 year anniversary this weekend. I wanted to give it a shout out because I truly think it is a gem that never fails to brighten my day.

Most people can agree that today's newspaper funnies are generally pretty lame, but I nonetheless could never give up my Sunday morning routine of reading the big, colorful comics section while eating breakfast and drinking coffee. I always marveled at the audacity of cartoonists making a living off of such blatantly unfunny strips such as Family Circus and Marmaduke; the Comics Curmudgeon's Josh Fruhlinger reinforces my obsession with cartoon mediocrity, and employs observational snarks that are brilliant in their high-minded ludicrousness.

Where else on the Internet would you find someone making reference to an obscure 1930s German short story to describe a lame Family Circus "ants in the picnic" punchline, or bravely calling out irascible old Crankshaft for the bitter, lonely sex offender that he is? Just as entertaining are the numerous comments after each post from the CC's many dedicated readers. Bravo Josh, and congratulations.

My (Short So Far) Experience with Twitter

As a computer professional I try to keep myself curious about new technology, even technology that I don't at first appreciate or understand. A perfect case in point is Twitter. I read about how microblogging was changing media paradigms and how everyone was integrating Twitter into their communications arsenal, from journalists to celebrities to special-interest websites.

To an extent, I understood the advantages of broadcasting short pieces of information; for example I think it's great fun to see what your friends are doing on Facebook. But I never quite got why there was so much hype, nor was I convinced that Twitter was much more than a fad. It seemed to be a lazy way to exacerbate our society's already epidemic attention deficit disorder, as well as an unnecessary tool for further increasing the noise-to-information ratio on the Internet.

But like a good curiousity seeker, I decided to bite the bullet and give Twitter a try. I signed up for an account a few weeks ago and have been tweeting pretty moderately since. Not on my phone - that would drive me crazy - but just in quiet moments in front of the computer. I found that Twitter is a great medium for broadcasting rhetorical questions and observations, as well as posting interesting links and special interest news, that you might never feel was appropriate for an entire blog post or for sharing with all your friends and family on Facebook. It's kind of a low-barrier outlet in which to throw your musings and stream of consciousness thoughts.

Most people who don't like Twitter, including myself just months ago, argue that they have no interest in reading inanities, such as what someone "had for breakfast" this morning. I think that may be a misconception - what I have found is that good Twitterers don't usually post mundane breakfast menus (although I am not proud that I once tweeted on flossing my teeth, which promptly led to my wife dropping me from her follow list). When you tweet, you tend to post your thoughts on things of interest to you - and presumably to your followers.

To that end I decided to start focusing more on The Remonstrance in my tweets, which you are welcome to follow, though I will continue to post whatever of my interests (music, computer programming, politics, sports) comes into my head. It may be that I will eventually lose interest and decide that Twitter is not for me. Or maybe something better will come along and leave Twitter in that same shadowy and moribund realm shared by MySpace and (shudder) Friendster. But for now I like that I found something positive about a technology that I used to think epitomized frivolous technological douchebaggery. Remember: cynism is fun, but an open mind will ultimately make you much happier and wiser.

UPDATE 8/16/2009: I have since created a separate feed for The Remonstrance, to allow for a tighter focus on things related to the comic. You can follow it at http://twitter.com/theremonstrance.

Vigorish: Touche Dilbert!

I thought I was the only cartoonist who tried to educate his audience with GRE vocabulary lessons in my strips, but lo! Today's Dilbert impressed me with its rather improbable use of the word vigorish - a word I had to look up (something I haven't had to do since I stopped getting Zippy the Pinhead in my local paper). Bravo Scott Adams, bravo.

Groggy Brainstorming

I keep a pad of paper and a pen on my nightstand so that when I get a creative idea while lying in bed, I can write it down before I forget it. This has sometimes been useful in brainstorming gags for my web comic, but lately... I don't know.

Not only is my handwriting almost indecipherable after years of exclusively using a keyboard for written communication, but I'm usually in some half-asleep dream state when I write stuff down. Here are my latest two entries: "Domingo (our cat) why do you meow all the time?" and "Funny pie restaurant." What on earth was I thinking?

Late Comic Excuse Du Jour

Hey everybody - I'm sorry that the next comic is taking so long to publish. For this week's excuse I will throw our good friends Todd and Bethany under the bus :). They did us the great honor of visiting Julia and me here in Denver for the last few days, and we had a great time sampling microbrewed beers, watching endangered animals in captivity, and wandering through hoary government institutions. However, since I have the feeling that Todd is approximately 1/2 of my readership, I don't feel too bad...

Evil Video Game + Vieques!

My friend Kristian pointed me to a Dueling Analogs webcomic, which satirizes an article stating that the Animal Crossing video game is only useful to adults as a vehicle for child predation. I was confounded for two reasons: 1. I used to play Animal Crossing all the time on my Gamecube, and it is truly a fun, open-ended persistent world that has absolutely nothing to do with perversion. 2. Kristian asked rhetorically, "Why does this strip remind me of your sense of humor?" I don't understand where he's coming from, because as I told him, I am simply an author of an educational, family-themed webcomic.

At any rate, Julia and I are on a relaxing vacation on the idyllic Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Other than the disturbingly banshee-like wails of cockfight roosters in the morning, we are thoroughly enjoying the postcard-perfect beach, the warm and unrelenting tropical sun, and the endless rum cocktails in the beach house we are sharing with our friends here. Since we won't be back in Colorado this weekend, I regret to announce that the comic this week will be at least a day late.

Gainesville Represent!

Whoa - it looks like achewood, one of my favorite comics, has started a story arc based in Gainesville, FL (thanks Todd for the heads up!). This is pretty exciting stuff to me because before moving to Denver, Julia and I hailed from the home of the Gators. And really, no one does a comic about that podunk town (unless you count The Remonstrance, where Mike and Lola very subtly live in Gainesville). Just when you thought Chris Onstad couldn't get any cooler - Bam! He even mentions Archer road on 75 ;).

Living Social: Books

I previously wrote about LibraryThing, an online community for book lovers, where you can create a virtual library and share reviews, etc. While I really liked the idea of the site, I never fully integrated it into my online routine - perhaps because it stops being free after you add your 200th book.

That has changed with my discovery of Living Social: Books. Maybe it's because this site is free with no detectable strings attached, or maybe it's because of Living Social's seemingly more robust online community and modern user interface. However, I think the main reason I've been using it - religiously - to host my virtual bookshelf is its plug-in integration with Facebook. I really think the sites that will catch on in this era will be the ones, like Living Social, that allow you to use them as seamless parts of the "indispensable" sites into which you are already logged - or at the very least, ones that allow for the convenience of single sign on, such as Blogger's integration with Gmail.