{"id":2857,"date":"2015-08-12T17:48:31","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T22:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/?p=2857"},"modified":"2015-08-12T18:35:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T23:35:03","slug":"i-have-two-different-color-socks-on-today-thats-how-its-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/?p=2857","title":{"rendered":"I have two different color socks on today…that’s how it’s going"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a scene in the original Star Trek t.v. show where Dr. bone takes a smart pill or absorbs smart rays or something and starts doing a brain transplant with supreme confidence…then the ray or pill wears off and he becomes terrified and questions why he ever thought he could do it and why he started.<\/span><\/p>\n

and THAT my friends is what it is like working in a creative industry.\u00a0 Your job is all in your head and there is not much in the way of quantifiable things your ego can glom onto as far justification that you should have ever started.\u00a0 So, it is a lot of highs and lows, and not much in the middle.\u00a0 Even a weathered veteran such as myself, with a formidable resume, has periods of abject dismay at the path he took in life.\u00a0 It would help if the sink in my apartment was not in such a strategically bad location.\u00a0 It is the first thing I see when I walk into my apartment or when I walk out of my room in the morning.\u00a0 I see it and the dishes in it and nothing I have accomplished in life can supersede the realization that today I will be eating a hot dog over the garbage can.\u00a0 That’s a lie..I will eat it laying way back, slouched in the chair, so any crumbs fall onto my shirt. Then I will hold the shirt way out as I stand up so the crumbs stay on it and walk to the garbage can and shake the crumbs into it.\u00a0 It’s probably a toss up as to which is less dignified, but in my view…as man is a tool using animal…using the shirt as a tool has some shred of dignity.\u00a0 That’s a lie, I forget I could have just eaten it over the garbage can and lament that I now have to go through the shirt holding march to the garbage can.<\/span><\/p>\n

Someone asked me the other day what I thought of the GOP Presidential debates, I immediately thought back to my shirt\/crumbs\/garbage can march earlier that day and replied ” each population gets the leaders it deserves”.\u00a0 He found it to be a profound quote as opposed to the ” why on earth would you ask me who should lead the free world” reply it was meant as.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being an exhibitor at Comic-Con International does not help in the “highs and lows” department.\u00a0 You go from 5 days in the most beautiful city on Earth ( next to maybe Athens) with non stop fans encouraging you, surrounded by piers and friends to…a sink of dirty dishes and living in anonymity.\u00a0 It is a jarring contrast.\u00a0 It leads one to wonder which person he is…the creative powerhouse loved and admired by fans and piers alike, or the guy with a shirt full of hot dog bun crumbs.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I started putting some actual effort into my twitter<\/a> account (even though I don’t understand twitter or want it to exist, it does and having 78 followers is probably not a good look) and have been increasing my “followers”.\u00a0 It is customary, I am told, to follow those people in return, so I do. Each person you follow sends you some template message thanking you for following them with some blurb about whatever their creative efforts are.\u00a0 THIS is not helping. Instead of boosting my ego by increasing traffic to my creative endeavors, I am being deluged with the reality that every Tom, Dick and Harry also thinks they should have this job.\u00a0 That and the occasional scam or link to porn.\u00a0 Whenever I think about how tough it is to separate yourself from the pac in the creative industry, I think how tough it must be to peddle porn for money.\u00a0 95% of the internet is porn, good luck posting anything legal that is going to stand out.\u00a0 Hell…I bet posting illegal stuff only separates you from 60% of it.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I got this message in my twitter email just a few minutes ago…<\/span><\/p>\n

“thanks for the follow! Just know: You are enough, you can do it. Never give up. Have an amazing day.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

One might call it serendipity if it wasn’t right next to a message with a link to some porn.\u00a0 Maybe it was some diabolical cross marketing that was meant to bolster my ego enough to look at the porn…?\u00a0\u00a0 I looked at the porn, I was unimpressed.\u00a0 You call that “porn”?\u00a0 There wasn’t one thing on there that I wasn’t already personally tired of doing.\u00a0 Do you think porn stars are thinking about sleeping with someone else while they are having sex?\u00a0 That’d be depressing.\u00a0 You are having sex with someone so good looking they are being paid to be filmed while having sex, and yet you have become so jaded that you are picturing someone else anyway.\u00a0 Would they picture someone ugly, just as a change of pace? or a lost love? or the first time?\u00a0 Maybe they are thinking about their Dad or their Mom..that’s not what I meant..I meant like thinking back to their childhood and happier times…yikes, what the hell is a matter with you? Wait..is there a site for that? PM me.\u00a0 I’m kidding, don’t PM that to me. If you do, CC my therapist, so I won’t have to bring it up.\u00a0 He’ll bring it up and I can accuse him of something for a change. “how did it make YOU feel to see that? HUH? HUH? Is that how YOU envision YOU’RE mom?\u00a0 …does she look like that? what’s her number?’
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyways…any encouragement would help til I get pass the current bout of “lows”.\u00a0 I’ve been working on this the last day or so (see below) .\u00a0 A Vlad the Impaler story.\u00a0 It is one of those gags where the gag itself is just okay, but the subject matter (Vlad the Impaler) makes it fun to draw.\u00a0\u00a0 This is where the skill comes into play. An “okay” gag can be made into “good” or even “real good” if you tweek it correctly, give it some help in the set up and execution. I am only showing you the top half because the bottom half gives it all away.\u00a0 This gag requires a sense of timing that I will be honest, would be a hell of a lot easier animated. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of animated, season 2 of TRIPTANK on Comedy Central will once again feature one of my stories (more info next time).\u00a0 So that’s good.\u00a0 I really should get a f*cking agent, everything up to this point has just fallen into my lap.\u00a0 If you know one, mention me…uhm…best to focus on my formidable body of work and gloss over the whole hot dog crumbs thing. <\/span><\/p>\n

ALSO, you can come and see me this fall at these two shows…<\/span><\/p>\n

Cincinnati Comic Expo! Sept 18-20th<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Baltimore Comic-con Sept. 25-27<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

anyways..here’s the progress on the Vlad story ( follow me on instagram<\/a> for nightly progress on stuff like this, and YES, I will put up more how to videos soon…it would be helpful, if when you email me about that stuff one of you told me what exactly you’d like me to explain, I’m not a teacher, I don’t have a curriculum and I have been doing this for over a decade and don’t really know what is common sense and what needs explaining anymore, I’ve lost that perspective on things.\u00a0 ASK what you’d like tips on and I’ll make with the tips)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"vpenwd\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"vpenzm\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"vinkbr\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"vpenzmhalf\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

How is it possible I can ink so masterfully and yet it takes like 15 tries to hold the phone steady enough to get a decent non-blurry pic?<\/p>\n

\"vinks3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

www.arseniclullabies.com<\/span><\/p>\n

online store <\/span><\/p>\n

www.arseniclullabies.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a scene in the original Star Trek t.v. show where Dr. bone takes a smart pill or absorbs smart rays or something and starts doing a brain transplant with supreme confidence…then the ray or pill wears off and he becomes terrified and questions why he ever thought he\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,6,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insight-on-the-skills-involved-in-telling-a-story-in-comic-book-formate","category-where-to-see-us-and-what-ahppened-when-you-did","category-sneak-previews-of-all-things-arsenic-lullaby-and-iinside-dope","category-thoughts-complaints-and-mocking-the-industry-that-is-comic-book-publishing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ee9g-K5","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/vinkbr.jpg?fit=1536%2C2048","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arseniclullabies.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}