Halloween Bits

I love Halloween. As a self-proclaimed conservative Christian, you might find it odd that I do (I also like the rock music and I only refrain from dancing because I'm aware of how ridiculous I look when I try). I mean, it seems to be all the rage amongst people of a churchy nature to denounce the holiday as evil and such, but it still ranks as one of my favorites. I like dressing up and I like candy and, more than that, I like the Halloween cookies we made with my mom growing up. Dad, Steven and I (Andria now replaces my brother) would all be forced to decorate them as Mom churned out batch after batch of the cookies. It was our job to frost them and put their little chocolate chip eyes on and candy corn teeth. Eating more than a couple was a surefire way to send yourself into sugar shock, but well worth it.

Candy corn is the most underrated candy on the planet. It's one of those that you only see between Halloween and Thanksgiving, even though they have it hanging in those off-brand bags that go 2 for $1 at gas stations year-round. The thing is, someone realized its good stuff and decided to screw with it. My parents came home with a couple bags of "gourmet" candy corn. Cherry candy corn is an abomination before God. Green apple is strange, but at least it doesn't make the angels weep. I fail to see how they ever made it out of the taste test phase. I mean, surely one person had to have the good sense to say, "Hey, this tastes like floor cleaner!"

I've been kind of rant-y lately. In fact, it's been bringing to mind some comics I did a while back that I rather enjoyed making.

I'm just saying...

Hollywood, I'm looking at you!

Adoption is a beautiful thing. At one point, my wife and I discussed adoption (we had decided we wanted a family and were discussing alternate plans should nature not work for us). If you are at all inclined to adopt, and are capable of giving the child a better life than what it would get in the "system", by all means.

That said, Madonna, you stupid, overpaid, undertalented piece of whoretrash! Oh, you've adopted a poor African child! You wonderful humanitarian, you. Let me bask in your magnificent glow while I BARF! Geez. I hear he's small. Maybe you can keep him in your purse like Paris Hilton does her dog.

I'm seriously sick and tired of all these celebrities thinking they're such great people because they pulled a Willy Wonka and "saved" some poor kid from a third-world country. One child, that's an accessory. If you want to do some good, save a ton of them. Start an orphanage, give to World Vision or Feed the Children or something. If you're going to be a publicity whore, AT LEAST DO SOME MEASUREABLE GOOD WHILE YOU'RE AT IT.

I'm tired of famous people pulling the wool over our eyes. Just admit it, already. You just wanted attention.

At least I could respect the honesty.

Late, late, late.

There is no comic, currently. CG seems to be experiencing Technical Difficulties. As I cannot find a strip in the queue, I don't know if that means that yon Cricket has done one and it is waiting to be updated or if he is the King of all Slackers.

My money is on "B".

In Orange!

Well, last Friday, my wife and I did our last ultrasound thing. This time, we went with the 4-D, which, as far as I can tell, claims to have more D's than it delivers. Even still, my boy made a good showing for himself, even cracking what could be read as a smile when we mentioned his name.

Bearing Gifts

Well, as I have the ability to do things unilaterally and have no fear of repurcussions (what can Cricket do to me from Virginia, huh?), I've decided to crack open the vault, so to speak. Back in the day, when we were young, naive, and a great deal more likely to do things beyond the comicking for kicks, we had a series of gift offerings for those who would jump through certain hoops to get exclusive content. This lasted about four months before we decided that doing comics was quite enough effort. Also, we were doing it for MAYBE three people.

Now, years have passed, Cricket's got several hundred more strips under his belt (plus the whole engagement thing, let's not forget that), and I've all but quit comicking entirely (though I promise to come back regularly...I've just not made good on that, yet), I've decided to redefine what exclusive meant, back in the day. So, here they are...links to stuff that I think is worth making available to the general public: September, October, November and December. Enjoy!

Also...

I am not, at present, prepared to make a statement concerning Cricket's latest announcement. I will, in time. You can expect it to appear above the blogs in the space usually reserved for comics.

They're in my car! They're eatin' my gearz!

Related to nothing else below, the lady (loose definition) that works nights here at the library is apparently an idiot. I could understand if she were just a drama queen, but it is becoming apparent that the drama is not out of desire, but out of incompetence.

At life.

Ok, so, I've been having car troubles. They started a couple weeks back with what seemed like an exhaust issue. Specifically, when we started the car, we could smell exhaust...IN the car. Since it wasn't a pressing issue while we were moving (and it's a real pain in the butt to get in to see "the guy"), I put off taking the car in to get it fixed. Well, it got worse, so I worked things out so that I could get the car down to the shop and "the guy" fixed it.

Took all of about 30 seconds.

Since I'd left early that morning, I had time before work to get the car back to my wife, so as to return our usual transportation schedule to normal, and went to work. The car drove beautifully all the way home, or at least as much as it ever had. A couple hours later, Andria calls me up and says that the car is riding at least as bad as before and probably worse. This was not encouraging. "The guy" did his 30 seconds of work for free, since it was just a bit of welding and no real effort on his part (plus...I've gone to him for exhaust issues for years since he's something of a magician...dude can take a look at your car and bend the exhaust pipe to a perfect fit WITHOUT measuring...but I digress), but that didn't make it any less frustrating. By lunch time, I'd worked it out so that we'd meet at the guy we take our car to for all its other issues, which it has had many of. Turned out that what seemed to be the issue was solved by putting more oil in the car, which it had been burning and left us in need of. It had not been long enough since our last oil change to be that out of oil.

The next day, no noise, but the car was starting to vibrate. Hard. By this time, I was beginning to think it was going to be expensive since in the first two tries, it had totalled just under $11 to get those problems fixed. So, Monday I called and got the car in to have it checked. Again.

Know what the problem was? A wiring issue with the fuel injector. That much made sense. I mean, if your fuel ain't getting into the engine properly because of bad wires...the car wouldn't run smoothly. But do you know what the issue was?

MICE!!

Mice had eaten the wires in the fuel injector! WHY ARE THERE FREAKING MICE IN MY FUEL INJECTOR?!?!??!

So, I've got those mice a special treat. A little D-Con should take their minds off of my wiring. And, also, off living....muahahahahahahahahahaha!!

Productivity

I'm feeling pretty good about last night. I got a lot done. Precious little of consequence, I suppose, but still a lot was done.

I started by getting two strips drawn and inked while Andria was in choir practice. That's 2 strips in an hour and twenty minutes! That's practically burning up the page for me. Then, when we got home, my dad came over and we started work on putting the carpet in Aaron's room. Got the baseboards up, the pad down, the excess cut off the carpet roll and right now its sitting to relax the wrinkles out of it.

Granted, I know nothing about laying carpet, so a great deal of the time, I was standing there like a moron while Dad did stuff, but...I was in the room!

Anyway, after that, I managed to get those two comics slapped together in color and such. It was quite fulfilling.

When, you might ask, will these strips see digital daylight? Probably never, but I am getting in a groove, I think, which I've been missing for some time now. I think this might actually be a good sign.