Banal Hemorrhage

Esteemed readers, I am not an overly ambitious person. That makes me a rarity among many of my friends and family. It took me a long time to discover that it is perfectly OK to be just OK in the dimension of ambition. What I found to be true in my life, however, was that you can lack the classical ambition of things and status and yet have a yearning for making an impact. Currently I work with an organization that helps adults obtain the literacy skills that the system failed to grant. It fulfills me more than any promotion or more bundles of cash could. However, I’ve also discovered that I don't need to help assholes. Psychological research warns us against the rat race of the pursuit of happiness . The jollies you get from achieving your goals are short and fleeting. So if you are not enjoying the journey, it will be all for naught. So, dear reader, if you’ve read this far all I want is to share that little nugget. Make sure you are not focused on other people’s goals. ...

Ahhh. The internet. The promise of the library of Alexandria, but the reality of the Library of Babel . Gen Xers saw this whole thing unfolding. We saw how it started as a place with great niche information, interesting message boards and slow loading porn. We saw it evolve into a place supported by ads, shaped by your biases and with fast loading porn. Today any idiot can have a webpage (what-what tens of thousands of hits right here, baby). Any idiot can write in the internet's pages. And every idiot does. I like to think about the messages that we put out there and try to make them sound like they came from a human mouth in a social setting. It's awful! You would just hear people saying stuff from their subconscious, consequences be damned. No real back and forth, just a bunch of people saying awful things about other people, other artists or other gamers. No one really comports themselves like this in a social setting. Except that one dude, but everybody hates him...

Dear readers, social behavior is like a muscle. And mine is as flaccid as your average GOP member's dangling neck blubber. I have always found joy in solace, happiness in oneness and validation in self-immersion. I enjoy hanging out with some people. I really, genuinely, do. However, even the most interesting, laid back, and nice people drain me a bit. The only person who doesn't exhaust me is my wife. For some reason she just feels like an extension to me. Like an angelic ingrown hair or a serene wart, she is a part of me. Legally. She is bound to me legally. So if she is upset that I just compared her to a wart for shits and giggles, she would have to go through a lengthy process to get rid of me. There has been years in which I venture out more than others. Years in which I say yes to social contact a little more freely. Those years seem to be also years in which I save up on bail money just in case. In any case, here's the extra panel: It's an homage...

Being bilingual is not always all fun and games. Some of the problems I've had because of being bilingual are: Hearing people talk about me when they think I can't understand. Being confused by two sets of grammar rules that make no sense. Being the de-facto guide if travelling to a country that speaks a language I know. Becoming the target of racism. Yep. Racism. The only instances of racism that I have experienced in the United States are when someone detects my accent or hears me talking to someone in Spanish. In a very memorable one, a man with a red hat (pre Trump, there must be something about red) asked what the hell I was doing in his country. I answered "To take your jobs and bang your women". Some friends I was with defended me from what would have been the pounding of my drunken life. The few cases where I've experienced this made me realize how bad some minorities have it. I've felt belittled and hated by another human due to my birt...

Dear readers, what makes one a failure at domestic life? I will tell you the formula that concocted me. Privilege + Unconditional Love. Back in Venezuela, I had a live-in maid. Many of us did. Her name was Aurora and she was, for all terms and purposes, family. I never realized the extent of my privileged existence until we left the country (admittedly with many of the fruits of my privilege).  I’ve been in the United States since 2003 and I could have learned to become a creature of domestic habit. But I haven’t yet. My mom has been a source of unconditional love for me and my brother. She prioritized academics for us and she was lenient on our domestic duties. Through her, I learned to unconditionally love others, but alas, not how to mop the toilets or however that is done.  I think she went the right route. I am learning domestic habits now, but would I be able to learn unconditional love had I been bereft of it? Now the challenge I’ve been working on: Unconditiona...

People moving in together is a wonder. I consider it one of the biggest challenges of my life. So many different habits coming together into one shared space. After the initial conflict, there can be some great times together, specially when it involves cats.  My wife and I spent so many years on our own before sharing a space. We both thought we were self-talking and cat-talking weirdos, but we realized shortly that we were matching weirdos. The challenge really came to be the domestic stuff like putting sponges were they belong and ontological discussions about bath mats. My dear readers, it is still a journey. It has been less than a year since we've moved in. I’m getting better! Just last week I got a gold star on my report card! The cat in the last panel is Twinkle and she is 22 years old. Never ceases to amaze me that she lived through Y2K! Extra panel 1: Extra Panel 2: Extra Panel 3:

When realizing that I was nearing 100 comics, I thought about doing something special. I wanted to aggrandize the situation and leave a gift for my present and future supporters. Paralysis ensued. We are prisoners of our own expectations sometimes, are we not? Fear of success is a true thing, as ridiculous and pompous as that sounds. We all know successful people who are prisoners to their own success, somehow less happy and less themselves as they were when seeking that success. We’ve all heard of the depression and loss many astronauts feel after their missions. How do you one-up those experiences? I am not here to tell you not to be ambitious, this world would be a sad place without it. I feel the problem is that some people see the world as a ladder instead of a spiral. If you climb to a rung you do not enjoy, going down seems like reversing. It’s not. It’s progressing. What IS dangerous to your health is advancing without happiness or joy just for fear of going back. The wor...

It may come to a surprise to you, my dear readers, that this infantile web comic author is an introvert. Like 99% of the people creating stuff on the Internet. Isn’t it weird how accepted introversion is these days? As a young man, no one talked about introverts and people most definitely didn’t self identify as introverts often. But here we are. Almost every web comic has tinges of social ineptitude, desire for isolation and comfort in blankets. Could it be that creating pictures for people attracts a particular personality type? Or is it that we are all introverted at some point, especially when perusing the world wide web? Alas, we may never know. Fact of the matter is, I am an introvert inside and outside the web. And not the sexy type either. I’m the type that can isolate for long periods of time and become unkempt and bereft of the social graces. Some times I can braid my ear hairs and have nails to rival my cats. I am very lucky to know amazing people that understand me...