Don’t try this at home
Getting annoyed, for me anyhow, is allot like being a tea kettle. It just sort of builds up slowly until a shrieking noise comes out of me seemingly out of nowhere. People who are the straw that broke the camels back often didn’t REALLY have it coming…they get the shrieking noise that is an accumulation of allot of heat building up over time. While they maybe didn’t deserve the brunt of my anger …i was justified in being angry. SO…the following is not directed at any one person….but my hope is that shrieking in general will be like lifting the lid on the tea kettle.
I have had an assful of people who think what I do is an accident or I have my job, not because I am good at it, but because I didn’t’ feel like growing up and getting a real job. Let me address the people who don’t seem to understand how much goes into what I do , and who do and will blindly stroll up to me at a signing or at a show and offer aid in the form of worthless advice.
Here is a pie graph.
The red is how much i know about my job, and the blue is how much YOU know about my job. Print this picture out and keep it in your wallet, next a print out of THIS bar graph…
the red is how much time I spend thinking about what i do over the course of a week, and the Blue is how much time you have spent thinking about what i do over the course of your entire life. NOW …before you wander up to me and suggest some painfully obvious bit of advice like “hey you should sell on Amazon”…take out these two pictures and stare at them…long and hard …until it dawns on your …silly…ass, that perhaps I ALREADY THOUGHT OF THAT AND AM NOT DOING SO FOR A REASON! and perhaps that reason has something to do with the next picture.
This is a funnel.
The top of the funnel is the amount of time and energy needed for ALLLLL of the things i need to do, would like to do, might want to do ect ect….and at the bottom is the amount of time and effort and energy i actually have. See the disparity? See how the bottom of the funnel….the harsh reality of me being a mere mortal ruled by time, is much smaller that the top of the funnel which is everything that i could do if time and space and money were not an issue.
SO….when one of you wanders over with a suggestion…with a big old smile on your face…and your chest puffed out because you are really doing me some good …really laying some needed advice on me that’s just gonna rock the way i do business…ask yourself if what you are suggesting is A- going to help widen the bottom of the funnel…or B-add more crap to the top of the funnel. this is trickier than it sounds, because you suggesting …oh…i don’t know ..try a new computer program you heard of…that may SEEM to you like you are widening the funnel…but in reality you are doing this (see below )
are you following along? every suggestion you bring up is just more crap in the top of the funnel and does NOTHING to help what so ever. NOW…IF…you were to give a suggestion that involved YOU handling the whole idea yourself, that 99.99999999 percent of the it time ends up looking like this.
If i had a dollar for every middle aged dickwad trying to reclaim his forgotten college dreams by helping me only to disapear into the fog of not enough time/dedication/too many other priorities/just plain not up to the task in the skill and or brains dept. (which is why he reached middle aged only to attempting to help me and not actually being in my posisiton…nothing wrong with him going down a different road in life, the problem is when he tries to back up and get onto my road) and never actually providing any of the aid he was so stoked to provide, I would be able to buy a robot to go out and kill people like that on my behalf.
NOW…and this applies to those of you whom i ask for help and feel like you aren’t actually doing much. Let’s say i ask you to price check some Mac computers…or look up reviews of microphones…and i end up NOT buying anything you looked up. You may feel like you have not helped, you may feel like your efforts were futile. Let me assure you right now that YOUR efforts…even though they did not directly translate into something …provide a VITAL service. you eliminated some of the crap at the top of the funnel! Things that needed to be done or checked up on where done or checked up on by YOU instead of ME which allowed ME time to draw more cartoons (which HAVE to be done by me) which are loved and enjoyed by everyone. You see how YOUR service is very very valuable.
Now then …you suggesting a story line or using a character more…is NOT what i am talking about when i refer to the dipshits. I am happy to hear which characters you like, and you suggesting i use one more than another IS actually helpful….so long as you do not suggest a story line. I know it is tempting but know this …i am maniacal about Arsenic Lullaby being original and from MY brain…so IF you suggest a storyline, even if it is good, i will not use it. and what could be worse…if i WAS working on a storyline that was similar and you suggest it…now i have to discard that storyline. I have thrown out probably 100-150 pages of stories over the years because i saw something close on t. v., in a comic book, in a movie, while i was finishing. I work very hard to make Arsenic Lullaby unlike anything else. so please do not suggest a story line and if i see your e-mail heading in that direction i delete it. So …suggestions about the actual creative content of the book is NOT at all annoying…and my angry rant does not apply to you…but i still ask you not send story ideas.
While i am on the subject of dipshits…heres’ an example…here is how YOU know that you ARE the kind of asshole i am talking about. let’s say i post on facebook that i need to know of a good pen pad for a computer…if YOUR first instinct is to respond “google it” you are a dipshit…you are a child…you have the mental capacity of a monkey who’s life is guided 95% by stimulus and response. DO you honestly think you are helping at all by suggesting “google it”? here’s a better one…someone out there WILL “google it” and post links of the first three things that come up on google. This may be even more worthless than the first person. Let’s take out our two graph pictures again…do you think perhaps i was maybe…just maybe…asking for someone WITH FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE OF A GOOD PEN PAD?! SOMEONE WHO HAS ACTUALLY USED SOME?!…or do you think i was staring blindly into my computer just waiting for you to come along and type the words “google it” or paste three links onto my page to shake me out of my frozen confused state… i pray that the people you work with on a daily basis find the patience to not push you down an elevator shaft…because i want you to live…i want you to live and have kids as stupid as you so that my kids will have slaves to use…that is IF you can figure out how to unzip your pants, if and when a member of the opposite sex decides to let you fuck him or her just in hopes that you will stop talking.
Keep this in mind, please, all of you…I am not a proud man, when i need help i ask for it. and when i don’t…I DON’T. I am incredibly creative, and have excellent problem solving skills, and I am literally 2 i.q. points away from genius…literally, if i took some fish oil and was rested i would probably be able to join “mensa”…AND i have been doing this for over a decade…AND i have had a plan in place the whole time…and the plan is working…and i am following the plan…and the chance of you coming up with something that my nigh genius brain hasn’t already thought off over the course of dwelling on all this every waking moment for ten plus years is about .000000000000000000000001% which is much much lower than the odds of you suggesting something that is going annoy me.
so unless your “help/suggestions” begin with “why don’t you let me handle the following choir for you so you have more time to work on writing funny things” do not bother to open your mouth/e-mail/post on my facebook page/e-mail/at my booth.
I know it is tempting…you like a book or band or whatever and you want to help…I write this blog knowing full well I MYSELF am guilty of most of it from time to time, but now that I have written it down none of us have any excuse for blundering on in the same way.
NOW…i will refer to this as the “how to help blog” and you will see me post this link in response to silly assholes from now until…probably the day i die…in fact i am considering having the bulk of this blog chiseled into my headstone.
having said all that…come see me at the next two shows
St.Paul may 19 – 20
Phoenix may 24-27
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