My Best Friends

My Books

I continue to get asked when a collection of my comics will be available to purchase. Isn’t that wonderful? Seriously. There’s no creative compass in the world more accurate than people requesting a collection of it in print. It’s a euphoric feeling, and the desire to instantly produce a bound volume of sarcastic, toil-ridden comic delight couldn’t be stronger.

Did I get that out of the way? Great. Now I can say that putting together a book is hell. Why? It’s easy these days, right? I mean, you upload your stuff to some site (probable name: Some Site Publishing), and BOOM, there you go, a book of church recipes, a travel guide to America’s worst toilets, or (occasionally) a collection of comic strips. What an age we live in!

Except, and here’s where my personality traits interfere with my tasks, it’s work for me. I love books. Books are my friends. My BEST friends. They were the original on demand entertainment for centuries. They passed for “studying” at school. Reading a book was considered, get this, intellectual. Everyone else was hopelessly bored in study hall and there I was reading A Princess Of Mars right under the teacher’s nose. What a great friend, books.

I can’t put together a book with the same degree of apathy that I put together a grocery list. It’s a book. Books matter. They have to be done right. And my days are spent on other work, with only brief pauses for relaxing activities like hurried eating. With little splishes of time here and other splashes of time there, I’m getting bits and bobs squared away. That way, I can be an exhausting perfectionist and finally get to the point where I stop myself and just slap everything in place.

I call it my creative process.

“Slapping everything in place” is what I eventually call step one, however, because I’m going to go through it with a fresh eye and weed out the drivel. Then I might put some of the drivel back in, because the world needs a little drivel, and perhaps add in a few more things.

Wait, this is also how I make a grocery list.

What I’m trying to say, to answer the initial question about the book, is that the book will come out and I will buy healthy food. We just have to trust the process.

This is based on my current life. I’m more of a night person, but lately I’ve had to start work at seven in the morning. I’m very thankful. It could be six, after all. My longing for nighttime sleep during the day never matches my nocturnal nighttime state of mind. As far as mammals go, I’ve decided that I must be a bat who’s been mistaken for a human.

Oh, those people who are always late because something happens when they try to leave the house just…also…remind me of me.

Again, if something is perfect it’s because something is wrong.

This was very popular on Facebook, not so much on Instagram. I’ve said this before, but comics on the internet are similar to standup comedy. A joke that kills in one city can fall flat in another.

I want to say that this is one that isn’t based on real life. However, it’s based on real life.

A clerk can be given instructions about certain customers when they are temporarily at a station in case one of them shows up. “If someone named Mike comes up, tell him that it will be here on Friday. There’s a lady named Cindy who needs to run her card again. If anyone named Bertha shows up, run.” I call these “In Case Of Customer” instructions.

I did have a boss whose idea of a friendly conversation with his employees was, “So do you have anything special planned this weekend?” That was his sole question when attempting to socialize. It was very awkward when he asked it on a Monday.

Some customers come in with their own mobility scooter, not the ones the store provides, and some those things can fly. You might think you’ve accidentally wandered onto a racetrack. I’ve decided there’s an illegal black market for mobility scooters, where unscrupulous mechanics increase their speed in case somebody needs to drive one on the highway.

This is based on someone I slightly knew who consistently made the mistake of talking down to people based on their age. The fact that she was mentally outmatched was always lost on her. It wasn’t too difficult to mentally outmatch her, now that I think about it. She wasn’t a sharp cookie, a dull cookie, or anywhere near the cookie family. Still, she had the ability to be completely immune to embarrassment. Ignorance protects the ignorant.

Many, many years ago when I was much more stupid than I am now, I made the observation that stability is boring. It was a joke to get a reaction. I give younger, stupider lines to Berle.