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Been hearing a lot about RaceFAIL recently. I haven’t been tracking it or following it at all, really, but I decided if it is getting this much blogspace I should at least work out what it was, right? So I skimmed a bunch of posts and worked out the meaning from y’all’s context. Like this? This is RaceFAIL, right?

I mean I admit it seems a bit biased to me, but if that’s the current internet meme it is. I don’t know why, I mean I’m not sure I get this one but I didn’t really get LOLCats for a while, either.

Besides, most memes come from 4chan and the lot, and they aren’t always exactly politically correct, right? Besides funny is funny. If we’re going to limit it for a while, I guess that’s fine. I’m sure HonkeyFAIL will come around as well. Right?

 
Well anyway, I just thought I should contribute to this RaceFAIL thing while it was hot. But, still, I also feel the need to show the other side. One-sided memes never suited me. So have some RaceWIN:

 
 
I was going to post some HonkeyWIN but the internets seem to be short of that recently.

My mind is weak. You know that whole “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” thing? Yeah that works on me. Without the hand motion. Or the Jedi. I mean, seriously, there are times when I simply am not at all bright or capable.

Now, I go to weather.com a few times a day. Not because I care so much about the weather as much as I am:

A) Forgetful and need to look 27 times to remember what I saw.

B) When bored and forgetting what page on the internet I meant to look at I will default to go there, because I might as well check the weather again and try to remember it this time.

C) My zip code starts with a 1, so after I’ve been there I can just hit a 1 and hit enter and go there. That feels fancy and easy.

At weather.com they run ads. For the last while they have been running an ad for Mentos Gum. These ads annoy me and obscure the weather so I have to see them. I see that ad almost every time.

But I don’t like gum. I just don’t. Not a big gum person, me. But I have been seeing these ads and they infected my weakling mind and I found myself in Rite-Aid the other day and there at the counter was a plastic bottle of Mentos Gun: Watermelon. And as the cashier put it in the bag I had this moment of clarity.

“Why is that going into my bag? Did I buy that? I wouldn’t but that, I hate gum. But it is Mentos Gum, watermelon flavored and that ad says … I don’t listen to ads, right? Do I? Wow, I found that ultra cool gum. I DON’T LIKE GUM! Why did I buy that and how did I black out just long enough to do it? I hope that gum is as tasty as it seems. Christ all mighty I am a weakling!”

So, realizing that in my head I sounded like Gollem/Smeagol fighting, I went home.

And I got home and I found myself thinking about Orbitz. No, not the travel site – the drink. Not sure how many of you remember Orbitz. It was only around for a little bit. There’s a reason for that. Orbitz was basically like bubble tea except worse. No, I am not a fan of bubble tea. Keep moving.

Orbitz, anyway, was a drink that made a big deal about the floating balls of … I dunno, snot? … suspended in it. See they seemed to float. Like magic. In the bottle, just right in there. And the liquid was always clear, the snot changed color depending on flavor. I always ended up with the Orange/Vanilla, or Creamsicle or whatever it was called. Orange Snot Bubbles In Goo.

So I had to try it. I mean I had to. It was this cool future looking drink and I simply had to try one. How could I not?

It tasted awful. So I had more of it. Because somehow I was convinced that it was cool and I should enjoy it and so I drank a few more. And every time I had one I thought about how I didn’t like it and then I would see it in a store I would be overcome with the unexplainable urge to have some, anyway.

But that was the past. Moving back to just the other day, I got home and took stuff out of my Rite-Aid bag where upon I saw the Mentos Gum and sighed. Here was the Orbitz factor all over again. But I bought it, I might as well try it.

Oh good fuck.

Ok, first of all the flavor lasts about .983 seconds. If you’re lucky. Or unlucky? Whatever. Not long-lasting. Not medium-lasting. Not lasting. It’s a hard-candy shell ball-thing that is gum. Like a Chicklet. But … a Chicklet with an abscess, I guess. Due to the size, ya know.

So I thought I would try, maybe, two pieces at once. It would, possibly, extend the crap flavor. Big mistake! This stuff has some chemical in it that, when played with in large enough doses (read: TWO pieces instead of ONE), manages to make my tongue both tingly and numb at the same time. Ningly! Tumb! TINGLY and NUMB. And also chemically gunky. So yeah, that was a gag-worthy experiment.

So I spit the gum out and sat there and made faces at the cat while hating myself for buying the gum and hating the gum for existing and hating my tongue and …

And I saw the container for the gum on my desk. And I thought, even as I sat there making faces and mentally writhing in metaphoric pain, “Hey, that Mentos gum looks good, I should have a piece!” because I am, as we established, mentally weak.

It is still on my desk. A friend suggested I give it to someone else. but I can’t! It’s my gum! What if I want some later?

I … I … I just … I mean, maybe it tastes better after a while? The gum only hits me because it loves me? My poor, poor, weak mind. Taunt me not with your advertising, for I shall weep (and then buy stuff from you!) and be sad.

… I might have a piece of gum when I get home. I mean it could be good. Looks kinda good. Bottle is nifty looking. Yeah maybe I should have …

STEAMPUNK BORG – Transistors are futile.

Ever notice that when you meet someone, for the rest of the time you know them you are always somehow stuck at the age you met them at? I don’t mean they treat you that way, I mean you treat you that way. This gets me all the time, and I hate it.

I have a group of friends that I met when I was something like 18 or 19 and they were all in their late 20’s or older (that’s a lie, I wasn’t the youngest but I was one of and there weren’t many and shut up my point stands) and I always felt like the kid. In your early 20’s a few years is a huge gulf. So I always felt like the kid in this group, no matter what. It wasn’t something they did to me or a way they treated me, no the feeling just came about because of my own insecurities and age. But now, years later, I see some of those people and I have to fight back the feeling that I’m this kid again.

We imprint.

Many of my closest friends are people I have spent enough time with that there is no age blocking, we’ve grown up together. I don’t just mean the few people from High School I still talk to but also a few folks I met right around the turn of the century.

And all of this is a preamble to why I am slightly twisty about going to SF later this month.

See I’m going to be staying with family. Now it is family I love dearly but let me explain. I will be staying with my sister and my nephew. I didn’t meet this sister until I was about 13. So when I met her (She’s ten years older than me? I think?) I was full of being 13 and awkward and unsure and meeting this person that I thought was really, actually, quite cool and I was just a kid.

I went to her wedding and hung out with her friends and they were awesome people but I was just a kid. So they tried to make me feel welcome but I was, say it with me, just a kid. And every time I see her I fall back to that. The defensiveness, the awkwardness, all of the shuffling and uncertainty just envelops me for a while.

I hate it.

My nephew is … young. I want to say 10 but he may be 11 and I feel like a jerk because I should know this. But either way he is what he is. And I hang out with him and I am caught between treating him like the person he is and trying to make sure I don’t leave him feeling like I did, that somehow he is the kid, and I think I make a hash out of it by even trying. Big shock, right?

Because when I see them I end up torn at first blush. I feel like a kid but I don’t wanna make him feel like .. and I kinda shut down. You know when I met him I think I came into the house, dropped my bags heavily on the floor, took off my sunglasses and said “guh.”

Now, granted I had flown out to L.A. the morning before, leaving my house at 4am, gotten to L.A. had meetings and then gone to bed at 2am L.A. time before getting up to catch a 6am flight to SF so I was a wee bit tired. But even still.

It isn’t that I came off like a bastard. I am a bastard. I just got hit by a wave of all that crap at once and didn’t know what to do. My amazingly fluid and deft way out of it all?

Guh.

And as I hung out more I got past it and all was right with the world. My nephew thinks I’m cool (this is how you can tell that he is either: A) young B) very sheltered C) heavily medicated or D) delusional) and I’m sure that will wear off. My sister thinks I am cool as well and she should certainly know better. For her sake I’ll limit it to D.

Still, I’ll be there for something like a week this time and I worry about this sort of thing. I want to be able to just be me around them. And sometimes I am, but not every damn minute. Sometimes I get caught in the trap. That’s just human, I know, but it annoys the crap out of me.

I never really do this, but I will warn you it will happen again in a few months.

I actively want your help to spread the word about stuff. I am writing two ongoing webcomics. Seriously, every single day of the work week you can read a new comic, in some form, written by me.

The first is Legend of the Burrito Blade which updates Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Legend of the Burrito Blade is an epic fantasy story set in modern-day New York. It is also the story of how mythology affects us and how we effect mythology. It is also the story of how we choose sides and what those sides mean. And, you know, it has food based weaponry and silliness and action and humor and everything else you might expect. We are nearing the end of Chapter One this week (only a few weeks to go) and things are building. This story is oddly dear to my heart, because how often to you get to do a grand action comic featuring swords with burritos on the end?

Not often, my friend.

The other webcomic is Things Wrong With Me and it updates every Tuesday and Thursday. It’s a strange beast. Well not for readers here, I suppose. For folks here it is Talking Heads, done somewhere else with original characters. Of course, they also have expressions. Fancy! Things Wrong With Me is all about six friends who sit around, like we all do, and talk about life, and the strangeness that falls out of our heads.

And here’s where the asking comes in. The more readers each comic gets the more able I am to do them, as advertising on the sites will begin soon. Also more people reading means more chances for them to tell other people and so on. And then the more chances to do merchandising, which might sound base and money-grubbing but I promise it is stuff you will like. Well, no, I don’t promise that but I strongly think it is true.

But readers are what make all of this happen.

I am not asking for your money, though. All I am asking is that you give each comic a chance yourself and, if you enjoy them, you tell all your friends, more than once even, and link to the sites and help me drum up readers.

To help I give you tools!

How to read Legend of the Burrito Blade:

• At its website: http://www.burritoblade.com
• Via RSS: http://www.burritoblade.com/feed
• Via LiveJournal: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/burritoblade

You can also use these icons on various blogs and such:

You can also use these small ads:

How to read Things Wrong With Me:

• At its website: http://www.thingswrongwithme.com
• Via RSS: http://www.thingswrongwithme.com/feed
• Via LiveJournal: http://thingswrong.livejournal.com/profile

You can also use these icons on various blogs and such:

I do ask that if you use the heads … you do not make fake episodes. Please? Seriously, actually, I would consider that a personal favor. And don’t use them to comment on the site itself, mmkay? Just oddly rude, really. But use ‘em! Enjoy ‘em!

Also here is a small banner you can use:

So yeah, I am asking you to actively go and pimp stuff with and for me. If you don’t want to I won’t hold it against you. If you decide to, I will appreciate it. Also let me know how else I can help you pimp stuff, if you want. Seriously. Do you think an image of X size that was kinda like Y would help your readers? An icon of whatever? Tell me and I will try to make it happen.

I am also more than willing to do a mini blog tour about both comics: Interviews, writing things for your blogs and whatever else you want, to help promote these.

So, if you could, if you are so inclined – help a brother out.

Thank you! Either way, truly, thank you.

Sometimes things piss me off for no good reason, they just get to me. Here are some things that annoy me right now:

People who, on LiveJournal, use the “Writer’s Block” thing to give answers that are shorter than the text of the whole “Writer’s Block” feature. My all time favorite, and by favorite I mean made me want to slap someone, was the time someone posted “No.” in reply to the question. This shit ain’t a general quiz, it’s a feature to try and help you find something to post about.

People on FaceBook who use the new “I like this” feature to comment on something, when that something is a status update, or similar. “Bob finally got rid of the ongoing pain in his right leg and can walk again!” deserves, if you feel moved to do anything, more than a check box telling Bob that you “like it.”

Twitter feeds to other blogs. Yeah, that one still annoys me. Deal.

People telling me “You know what story you should write?” Yeah, I do, in fact. The one I feel like writing. You want this other story written so damned bad go write it yourself. Stop telling me what to do. Stop thinking that I will magically hear an idea from someone else and ever think “Well shit, that’s GOLD!” because I never, ever have.

Everyone who decides that because they like Genre X, Medium Y or Creator Z they are somehow better or smarter than other people. Those people need to be kicked in the spleen until they die. Comics people aren’t better than prose people aren’t better than literary fiction people aren’t better than science fiction people aren’t better than romance people aren’t better than Wheadon fans aren’t better than Pauly Shore fans. End of story.

Bad pizza. Bad pizza pisses me right the fuck off. Like you wouldn’t believe. Seriously. Don’t toy with me.

People who feel somehow ashamed because they like a book, TV show, band or movie. The entire concept of “guilty pleasure” makes me want to kick babies. You know what? If you like it then you like it. I may not like it, I may loathe it, but if it works for you then hey! Enjoy the shit out of it! But don’t be coy and tell me it is a guilty pleasure or you are ashamed of liking it. Why in fuck’s name would you ever be ashamed of liking something? Because other people will make fun of you or tell you you’re wrong? Fuck those small-minded motherfuckers! By hiding from them you give them power. Christ!

Yeah, there’s a sample. If something you do, did or think isn’t listed here you can assume it made the list but I couldn’t be bothered to type it out. If you want. Or you can assume that I am magically unbothered by that thing. Whichever you prefer really. You know, it’s a choose your own adventure type of thing.

Someone mentioned, over the weekend, a cupcake with icing inside it. I was aghast. I mean I think I am missing something here. I like cupcakes, sure. I like icing on them, this too is true. But there is a balance that, I feel, is seriously fucked with if you start shooting icing into the intestines of the cupcake like a junkie.

It’s like pizza with cheese in the crust. When I eat a slice I want a slice. And when I get to the crust I want to eat some crust. I do not want a reject mozzarella stick thing that was appended to my pizza, destroying the goodness of a bit of crust and adding yet more cheese to the whole affair.

Yes the cheese, or the icing, is a great thing and we all love it. But when you keep adding more and more and more and more and more and more of it you lose what made everything so good in the first place. I like cupcakes. The cake part. And when I want to eat that cake-y goodness I don’t want to have to have half of it turn out to be even more icing. Fuck! Get a room with your icing needs! Just buy a tub of icing and a spoon and be done with it. The same for the pizza. Buy a bunch of string cheese, melt it and shove it in your pants, you love it that much.

But really too much of a good thing can something be … too much of a good thing. So please, I ask of you world, leave your icing on the top of the cupcake and cheese on the top of the pizza and lets all remain sane and calm in these obviously troubled times.

So the more comics I write the more I realize there are some basic truths I live by when working on comics. So I thought about it and then I decided, “Hey! Free blogging topic!” so I wrote some of it down.

I BELIEVE…

… in the 9 panel grid. A lot of artists I have met recently don’t, but in my brain every page I write is written for Keith Giffen to draw. I can’t help it. There is something soothing about a 9 panel grid when done right, to my head. It isn’t an “every page should be 9 panels” thing but I would like the option far more than I seem to get it.

… that webcomics are comics, too. The delivery system is not the medium.

… that the best comics I can create are the ones where the artist leaves my script behind to interpret it rather than cleave simply to it. That when true collaboration happens the pages I eventually see are not just what I’ve written but something more. Truly comics. Not just art, not just words but an honest merging of the two.
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I was thinking of fairy tales the other day. Shared mythology and how we use it. All of that. I realized though that when I think about shared mythologies I don’t stop at … well a lot of the normal mythologies first. I stop at them a step removed. At pop culture from when I was a kid.

When I was a kid I didn’t get read a lot of the normal kids books, and I didn’t pick them up once I could read them myself. Dr. Seuss happened a bunch but after that it was on to Simak and Heinlein and whatnot. You grow up with a father who writes SF and see how you fare. So I never read Oz or Pan or the original Pooh or Alice and so on. I heard some fairly tale type stuff, Brother Grimm whatnot but that was all from TV.

My mythology was Birdman and Thundarr the Barbarian, The Galactic Trio and the Smurfs. That was what I was raised on, in terms of those things. Now as I got older I grew more and more interested in mythology and the whole children’s book idea and I read all of the classics. I just read them when I was 18. I’ve never seen Alice, except the cartoon, through the eyes of a small kid, I’ve only understood it as a much older kid. The same goes for all of them. Sure I knew the Oz movie but I never got the joy of Oz until much later.

And since then I have delved deep into various mythologies and fairy tales and belief systems. I love them and dig into them with relish. But at my core if I want to connect with someone else, and deliver a shared experience I will go to the pop culture of my youth first and big shared things second. Something gets lost? St. Anthony might be popular but for me it’s all about yelling:

Bobby! (bobby, obby, obby…) Cindy! (cindy, indy, indy…)

Like when they were lost in the Grand Canyon, ya know? I can’t let a friend go to Hawaii without cautioning them to never take a little cursed tiki statue. Just for a few quick Brady examples. The Bradys, man they were like the Greco-Roman Gods for me. They really were. Just this huge system of rules and interactions that wove myth out of itself.

So yeah. My myth is Superman, and Greg Brady and the Beav and Gilligan. It’s Muttley and Speed and Johnny Quest. That’s how I phrase my world and from there I integrate all of the other myths that those are echoes of. And somehow it makes sense in my head.

Now. Where did I leave Kitty Karry-All?

The first page of LEGEND OF THE BURRITO BLADE is live! Wow. Been waiting since August to be able to say that.

————————————-

And here I need to stop and say a few things about a few people I work with. Just because yesterday was that kinda day. It happens.

First of all, given the day, lemme say a little something about Renato Pastor. I have yet to find the thing he refuses to draw. I can come up with any visual and ask for any layout in my head and he never bitches. He just makes it work, or improves it. He’s gracious about it, too. I mean this is a guy who will stop and find me to make sure that what he did fits what I had in mind. To be fair, sometimes it really doesn’t. And we discuss it. And either I rework things to make his vision work or he shrugs and starts sketching. We once spent three hours with him sketching and trying out a few ideas before we were both happy. Did he bitch? Even once? Nope. That’s a joy to work with.

So is Lauren Vogelbaum. I have an editor who never balks. And I’ll be honest here, I’m a bag of issues. Every time I come to her with “I don’t know if this works at all but here.” she laughs and tells me it will work or we’ll fix it. And then either it does work (sometimes I know what I’m doing) or she helps me fix it. Working with Lauren really is a partnership, across all the projects we’ve worked on. Sure we take a 20 minute editing discussion and turn it into an hour of laughing and insanity, but we get the work done and get it done right. She keeps me on track and on target and has yet to ask me to do anything that doesn’t work for me. She could. She could demand all sorts of changes and I would listen and probably go along with it because I trust her, but she seems to know where I am coming from and be able to match me step for step and make each line better.

I also need to give major props (Do we still give props? Kudos? What are the kids giving out these days?) to D.J. Kirkbride. I’m working as the assistant editor over at Popgun for Image Comics (oh for those of you keeping track I was just the asst. editor for vol 4 but I am now also the assit. editor for vol 3 out in March) and we’re hitting the biggest crunch of the book (vol 3 that is) with having to proof every finished page again and so on. It’s a hell of a job.

Now I can proof a page, in general. Or I thought I could. But every time I go to do the work Kirkbride outshines me. Hell he outshines everyone else at Popgun. Everyone knows he is the best eye around for proofing. It is uncanny the stuff he notices that I thought was fine. Fine for my MORTAL standards perhaps. But Kirkbride is after the gold and he’ll chase it the fuck down. It is inspiring to work with him on these, it makes me up my game.

And as long as I am giving shouts to Popgun I need to stop at Thomas Mauer who is just a kickass letterer and production guy. Seriously. He tosses out work like it was breathing, and it is all fantastic. I admit that when I get a huge batch of proofs and stuff to deal with I might not appreciate that as much as I do otherwise (Yes, I mean I might curse him out but I love him anyway) and of course to the rest of the team which is in transition right now but everyone is acting all good and well-behaved and getting things done. It’s good to see.

And now coffee.

But seriously: read Burrito Blade I mean I know it is just one page right now but if you add it to your feeds … or check back at it every M/W/F … yeah. Also there are forums there, where I will be talking about comics I’ve read recently, some movies and a lot of behind the scenes Burrito Blade stuff. So come chat with me.