Sometimes the five-day forecast strikes me as the simplest, best comic strip ever:
They’re little stories, aren’t they?
PATHETIC OR GOOD, I’M NOT SURE
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words: ass (3x), crappy (2x), and limbs (1x).
In a way, this goofy blog rating script could be more helpful than most of the other stupid things that make the blog rounds. I did my own search for “dirty words” a while back, and cleaned things up a bit. (Meg says that if you wouldn’t want your mom or your employer reading it, you probably shouldn’t post it to your blog.) Unfortunately, I think this rating system falls short for me, as I have several cartoons featuring nudity and other weirdness on here. So I guess it should be at least a PG-13.
PETER KUPER’S OAXACA JOURNAL
I count Peter Kuper’s comics as a huge influence. In 2006, Kuper moved with his wife and daughter to Oaxaca City, Mexico for a year’s stay. You can see some of his wonderful Oaxaca sketcbook work online.
Look out in July for his new semi-autobiographical comic book, Stop Forgetting to Remember.
(And of course he’s coming to Mac’s Backs in Cleveland THE DAY WE’RE MOVING TO TEXAS. July 31st. Arrgh!)
WHAT MAKES SOMETHING CUTE?
Last night I was admiring Ice-Bat, Meg’s Ugly Doll, and it reminded me of a NYTimes article I once read about the scientific explanation for “cute.”
Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.
Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can’t lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.
And so, here are a few scientific reasons why Ice-Bat is so darned cute:
GETTING RID OF OUR JUNK AND CLUTTER
We are moving this week. Not to Austin, not yet — just out of our apartment and into Meg’s parents’ house temporarily. I’m spending 3/4 of my time doing the grunt work, and 1/4 of the time playing Godfather: Blackhand Edition for the Wii. (Looking something like this.)
Because of the 1400 mile trip and the ridiculous cost of renting moving trucks one-way, we are getting rid of most of our stuff. Our bed, our desks, our dressers…everything. It’s literally cheaper to just hit up IKEA when you get down there.
We had a yard sale of a tiny fraction of our stuff in front of our apartment yesterday and made $60. Mostly, it was lamps, bookshelves, etc. I thought I was going to be distraught, selling our posession at such cheap prices, but actually, it was a relief.
Saying goodbye to the good stuff, though — the books, the records, the CDs — man, that’s rough. I’ve always liked to keep CDs and DVDs in their cases. No more of that. Bought three binders, filled them, and chucked the cases. We had six 50-pound book boxes, I narrowed it down to two. Three crates of LPs, cut them down to one.
I suppose it’s cheating a little to be storing them at a parent’s house. But still.
Moving is such a pain in the ass, but it can be a great time to take stock of things, if you put in a little effort. Clearing out the junk, throwing out those old drafts of stories you’ll never draw, books you’ll never read, pens that the ink’s run out of…it sets you up for a new stories, new books, new pens…new beginnings.
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