Recent Comments

1. 4 days ago on MythTickle

   Whoops, don’t know what happened to the rest! Here it is:

   , and the collar is ruffled, not kimono-esque like Mrs. C is wearing. Look at the third panel…yep. Ruffled collar.

   I think part of the confusion was the resemblance of Mrs. C’s outfit to a kimono (Karma’s usual jam) and that the two characters’ color palettes are similar. The poem couldn’t be helped: the meter entraps us all.

   I just love that I get to analyze this comic in such detail, and that when I do, I’m rewarded. El Jefe—would you please come be my Dungeon Master?

2. 4 days ago on MythTickle

   Good morning, MythTickle-ers, and El Jefe. I wrote a bit of a post, I’m afraid.

   I didn’t see this, the first time around, but I’m excited about the start of this arc. I’m also frustrated by the three-a-week delivery, but honestly, some shows are better when you can’t binge them. For one thing, “I’m going to watch this show/read this comic” over ten weeks (or three) means the experience of it in your memory is of a month of enjoyment and anticipation (or a season), not just a day.

   And, Wow! There’s a lot of exposition in today’s offering. The ability of our fearless* leader to cram in subtle details that you have to go back for, expand the page, look at everything, maybe get out some scratch paper to figure out the cast in their new roles. That’s fun!

   *(It just occurred to me: are you “fearless” if you fight inside a protective suit? I think it makes you “smart”— if you’re going to fight a guy who has an enormous sword and wants you dead, then the more armor the better! But you’d better not be fearless because that will get you killed. “Fearless” can be translated as “stupid.”

   I worked in medicine as an ER PA. (Retired, now.) I always praised the kids who were scared but still let me do my thing. “You were very brave!”“But I was crying!”“Yeah, I know. We’re you scared?” “Yeah.”“But, did you hold still and let the nurse give you your shot anyway?”“Yeah.”“That’s what it means to be brave; being scared, but doing what needs to be to be done anyway. You can’t be brave without being scared, first.”)

   Back to the comic.

   I had a little trouble figuring out the recasting of our usual characters. It wasn’t clear to me who was playing Maid Marian, and also what role Karma was playing. It’s not spelled out in the poem, and it seemed like she just sorta…appeared in the last panel. So, as is so often necessary, I when back and looked at details.

   There it is. Mrs. Claus said she was calling Maid Marian, and the close-up of the phone is hers (“Apple Pi” ),

3. 11 days ago on MythTickle

   El Jefe, a sincerely love the artwork you gift us with in general, but this is particularly good. I feel like the cartoon characters today are almost emerging out of the foggy transition between cartoon and caricature. And I LOVE good caricature! Drac, particularly, is looking Grinchlike.

   The other thing is the obvious care taken in the details. There’s a gag in every corner, without being overwhelming. It so worth it to invest time in zooming in on your panels.

   Thanks,—Vinnie

4. 11 days ago on MythTickle

   And check out that phalanx (get it?) of popcorn string.

5. 11 days ago on MythTickle

   I dunno—but it’s moving.

6. about 1 month ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Well, I guess I’ll chime in. I’m very close to retirement from ED…meaning the Emergency Department…as a Physician Assistant. The 4-hour thing is no joke; getting and maintaining a stiffy involves a set of valves opening and closing, and if those valves have to hold pressure on the blood bags on either side of “Mr. Happy,” the valves can get damaged and this time will, indeed, be your last one.

   I’ve only ever seen this situation twice. The doctor I was working with called the urologist for instructions: put the biggest IV needles you’ve got into the blood bags in two pairs, one pair at the top, on either side, & one pair near the “mushroom.” Hook up some IV tubing and a bag to the top pair and just let the bottom pair drain into a basin. The medication you added to the IV bag while you were setting everything up will get carried throughout the organ by the natural circulation inside and the two pairs of valves will switch from open to closed, allowing you to switch from elated to deflated.

   Hopefully.

   Sometimes it doesn’t work well. Back in the day, the drug was terbutaline and even that gruesome procedure didn’t always work, so I hope it was worth it for you. I’m sure there’s better stuff, now.

   In one case, the procedure wasn’t working and the urologist advised us to just kind of rhythmically squeeze and release, to create some circulation and get the drug “in there,” if you will.

   Hmm. Rhythmically squeeze and release. By a nurse with a front end she was VERY proud of. (And rightly so, bless her heart.) And nobody understood why that wasn’t working, until after the patient went to the OR to get the pressure released.

   The other case I was involved with, the dude stayed home for about 12 hours, not 4, and never had “success” again. What really sucks about ED (the condition, not the department) is that most dangly-bits-havers are still interested in such things but just can’t finish the job. I hear it’s super frustrating.

7. about 2 months ago on JumpStart

   Now that i think about it, that might not be Carla. The hot dog cart guy could have overheard Joe and Crunchy and known the answer “Goodfellas.” But it’s funnier if you decide that the hot dog cart guy is really Carla after all.

8. about 2 months ago on Pickles

   You know, there are parts of fabric stores that are interesting and fun to poke around in. I like to draw and I use drafting tools when planning a workshop project. There are all kinds of adhesives and materials that are useful—put them in your brain, and maybe they’ll pop up when you’re looking for that perfect something. There’s also usually a section on woodcraft, and painting (acrylic, watercolor, that sort of thing) that might catch your interest. It will only be bad of your “Opal” has you hold her bag and wants you to stay there and render an opinion.

9. 2 months ago on Frazz

   Natives of a planet with multiple moons have a few options, as I think of it.

   If there’s one dominant moon, that’s easy. Just use that for a local-calendar month.

   But, if you have a few roughly-equal sized moons, you can have more fun. Pick one to be the “chief god.” There’s your day or week. But then you can watch carefully over time (decades or more) and learn the rhythm of different alignments and eclipses, and make up all kinds of fun stories about what the gods are doing. Those would be great excuses for festivals and parties. And there would be one grand alignment of all the moons every long time. Oh, boy! That one should be a lot of fun! (Unless the priests decide the population has to be controlled by fear. Then it’s blood sacrifices instead of festivals, I’m afraid.)

10. 2 months ago on Frazz

    Robert L. Forward’s novel, “Martian Rainbow” —which was otherwise kinda cardboard, with a deus ex machina to save the colonists—handled the difference between days and Solis in a neat way.

    A second stayed a second, to keep the scientists happy. They’re defined by SI, after all.

    But a “day” (the term “sol” hadn’t been coined in 1991) was handled by taking those extra 39 minutes and adding leap seconds to about half of the minutes of the day. Some minutes had 60, some 61. So for administrative purposes and daily living, there were 24 hours a day, each just a little longer than on Earth. An entrepreneur in the Colony developed thin-film LCD time-keepers, programmed with the new system, that folks could just stick to their existing watchface.

    Most people could then go about their day-to-day as before but in a lab where it mattered a second was still the SI unit.