The 300th Post

Welcome to the 300th post and 3rd year of the website! Remember what we did for the 200th? …You don’t? Geez, it wasn’t even that long ago. Okay, here’s a link. Now do you remember?

Because we’re doin’ it again!

Pretty exciting, eh? I’m excited, and I still have to draw most of it. I just bought a new bottle of rum ink and a stack of Bristol board. The hard part is the writing, because I can predict how long the art should take. The writing is almost impossible to force or cajole. My advice: write roughs when the inspiration hits, then refine them later when you have the time. Actually, my advice would be not to draw cartoons at all, I just don’t have any better suggestions.

Wait- I take that back. I would prefer that you draw cartoons rather than gape at your smartphone. Every second you spend drawing, you improve your mind. Every second spent on your phone is a step closer to death.

Wait a minute… are you reading this on your phone? Fuck. That’s different, obviously. I kind of appreciate it, frankly, because I put in code to give the site a mobile version. What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah, 300th post. Woo! New comic, coming… sometime soon!

I don’t know what else to add; this post has served its purpose. I feel a weird obligation to produce articles that run about a thousand words. I commented a couple years ago that I average fifteen articles a month. In your dreams! Check the archives, it’s more like eleven. Pssh, what am I, Cracked?

I forgot to put “Adult Humor” on the cover of BIUL4. Does it matter? We’ll find out! (I’ll probably add it later.) The magazine includes a drawing of an old man’s balls. It makes as much sense in context as the rest of the garbage I scribble out. I do try to work the word “Adult” onto the cover if I can. People can be mean if they think you’re corrupting minors with your funnybooks.

2013 was the 15th anniversary of the strip. Why didn’t I set the site up then? Oh, that’s right; poverty. Why is it considered abnormal and unhealthy to live in the poverty that I do, when it’s the way someone like me would live fifty years ago? Exactly how would material success benefit my artistic abilities? What’s more interesting; hearing about purchasing expensive art supplies, or hearing about how I get by with the same tools, for decades? (Neither.)

Everything you see on this site was produced while I lived in what most would consider impoverished squalor. Nobody would care if I wrote from a warm dorm room, or the safety of a parent’s basement. I’ve bled onto my comics- bled on them! I don’t play at the idea of being a cartoonist, I live it! I’ve actually ate it!

Instead of setting up a cushy artist residence, I carved out an office within what I was given. My bed, a twin, is three feet from my drawing table. My computer equipment is generally second-hand and refurbished. My desk chair is partly held together with duct tape and the seat is an old pillow. I’ve used the same Wacom Intuos tablet for ten years, and I’ve held on to the same copy of Photoshop for eighteen. If I get a working version of a program, I stick with it. My copy of Flash still says “Macromedia”. (And “Flash”.)

Charging for constant updates is abhorrent. Do I charge you every time I come out with new comics?

…I do?

What was the point of this article? My skull hurts.

Bands I Useta Like 4: coming soon. Featuring (subject to change):

• an imagined meeting with Moby
• pasta and vehicular gags
• actual Bands I Useta Like strips, per request*
• a lengthy Tony Fabuloso story

Tony Fabuloso is a comedian who appeared in the third issue. I hope you like him, because he’s got a bigger show scheduled for the fourth. It’s probably best if you don’t like him. He’s a real shitbag. (Don’t tell him I said that.)

*I don’t know why it took me so long to realize I should keep putting Bands I Useta Like strips in my Bands I Useta Like magazine. To me, they’re like reruns; they’ve already appeared in print, at far greater numbers than I can produce myself. I feel somehow redundant putting them in the magazine. The first two issues have a handful apiece; the third issue has none. The fourth will have quite a few. Why not? They’re already done.

You may note that my hamster Vern appears on the cover of BIUL4. This means he is currently alive and well. Plus, whenever he does decide to pass on, he gets to live forever on the cover. Unless you buy one and burn it. You… you monster! How could you?!

What the hell kind of website is this, anyway? I mean, 300 pages of this crap? Who would call this any kind of accomplishment? Who’d call it entertainment?

I don’t like it like I useta, but that’s life.