She's Not There

I lost my "active" Moleskine notebook today. That's where I flesh out most of my comic scripts and jot down ideas. The story has a happy ending, though: retracing my steps, I found the lost Pac-Man limited edition black book in the public library lost n' found.

DO YOU THINK ANYONE READ IT?! Imagine reading this stuff out of context. And I totally had my name and address inside, too...YIKES!!

I also had a little writeup (for the purposes of a suspense story) on how to create a false online presence for a competitor. I'll try to remember to scan that next time.

So Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is upon us. While not Catholic, I habitually give something up on Lent because it helps me break bad habits long-term. One year I gave up soda, particularly Mountain Dew, which I used to drink all the time. This year I'm giving up bread. I've been eating lots of sandwiches lately, being that there's a WaWa right down the street, and my 4-pack is beginning to soften as a result. Unacceptable. I think the "Barbie dolls" glorified in the media are pretty boring to look at. On an unrelated note, when I lean forward and feel a small roll of fat caving in and exerting pressure against my torso, it's a signal that I need to change my diet and exercise habits. I'm not fat, but I feel discomfort when layers of fat prevent me from comfortably moving as I like. It's very easy to make a small change in my lifestyle to combat the problem before it escalates into something worse, so rather than sandwiches and rolls, I shall satisfy my hunger with rice and other healthy non-bread foods.

I also plan to give up INVACEBOOK. I'll continue to update the blog page, but not my personal profile. That's the plan, at least. I don't know if I'll keep that up, though. I like the Invacebook sometimes because I have lots of cartoonists and writers in my network, and it's awesome reading and looking at their new stuff. I don't waste time on there, or have it connected to my cellular phone. I write lots of long-winded statuses, but I'd be writing somewhere else if not on Facebook. Look at me now!

The problem is, I don't enjoy watching culture crumble before my eyes. "It can't get any worse than this," I think and then some horrible new technology comes up that makes people speak and write shorter sentences and pay less attention to things than the day before. I hate spending time editing long statuses down to 420 (HA!) characters. Seriously, I've spent longer amounts of time editing a damn status down than I did writing this entire blog entry right here. I make that effort because I like to share my thoughts and observations about things, possibly with the intention of starting a little dialogue or banter. Rarely do I write some boring drivel like "today is friday," beacause I don't care much to blather on just so people can see my face on their feed or whatever. But there's no evidence that anyone ever reads 3/4 of my stuff, then meanwhile a sorority girl writes "Good Morning" or something and gets like 50 likes and replies. Discouraging.

I'm also sort of sick of these old-hat political debates popping up all the time, you know. And rarely does anyone have a normal, common sense argument, it's just a rehash of the same old tired lines over and over again. And I get sucked into them, tempted to share my views and it's like a stressful thing. But I know that sharing my views via InVacebook reply in a long chain of 50 other replies would be a giant waste of time and would not change anyone's mind or even be read after the next two respondants bump my comment out of visibility-land.

I hate posting something that's meant to be funny and sarcastic and brighten days and then having kids misread my tone and get offended. The alternative, I suppose, would be to post YouTube clips of Family Guy episodes. I was considering replying to all such offended comments with a link to the "Lemonade? Please" episode of "Itchy & Scratchy," but it is too difficult to find and perhaps too outdated of a reference.

Sometimes I make up fake information about myself, like that I'm "in an open relationship" or some silly nonsense which, while I'm doing it I think is obvious in its facetiousness. Next thing I know hordes of friends are calling me or messaging me or commenting asking if it's so, and who. I hate that, and who cares whether or not I'm in a relationship. Why so interested in that over all else? I get more feedback from nonsense relationship stuff I make up than any comics or artwork. This is also sort of a depressing thing.

And what I REALLY hate is that damn new way photos are displayed, small and in a black frame. What a crapola birthday present that was, as I first saw it on February the 14th. I immediately saw the problem with that, from the very first picture I clicked!!! Practically impossible to decipher small text and hidden background gags in comics and other artwork. And who wants to make the extra effort to actually go to a Web-page or blog and view the art in higher quality, or even to press "refresh" in order to magnify the photo?  Practically no one, as far as I've seen. Clearly, the hack -- Zuckerberg's new girlfriend, I'm guessing -- set up the new photo display imagining duckfaced little teenagers uploading phone pics of themselves donning bikinis and sipping Corona Lights as they tan at the shore. Surely no one uses INVACEBOOK to share their creative output. And yet the coders do nothing to correct sad mistakes such as this, instead they lie doggo, brainstorming the next steps in destroying our civilization. This is another depressing thing about InVacebook. No sir, I don't like it.