You know I couldn’t resist an April Fools’ story!
Archives: Comics
-
Why I Won’t Eat Blueberries
Ref: My hunting successDespite the side joke about putting off my religion class, I will use the commentary section to make a serious note about that: Many colleges are undergoing financial hardships as a result of COVID and other issues. As a result, they are trying to cut the humanities, often telling professors that they must justify their programs and provide evidence of their worth. Many programs are being judged on how many students major in the field, while the humanities often serve a much larger population in order to educate the whole student body about the world, not just those in their program. My religion professor is faced with such things at my old school (of which I have let the board know my thoughts in no uncertain manner) and he has articulated what is going on and the importance of the humanities much better than I can. You can follow him on Twitter to learn more at @DanClantonJr. -
Finding My Direction
Ref: A (Not So) Brief History of Road Signs in Lincoln | Victory News Post | The Great Nebraska Highway Revision Project
So I intended Baloney to be an exaggeration of events. And then I wrote this. There’s only one exaggeration, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if it actually was true.
Anyway, I’m going to be posting random road trivia all month on Facebook. Because I can.
-
Lighter Fare
I came closer to missing this deadline than I’d like to admit, given that I only update once a month. November has been a heck of a year, hasn’t it? Ah well, it’s December now and on with the festivities! And that means Christmas lights! Huzzah!
-
Yeah, I Hunt
Okay, I can’t be a cheap McManus knock-off if I don’t talk about hunting! I figured this would be an appropriate topic for November and the start of deer season.
I had a bit of fun making locations anonymous (ignoring the fact that I’m about to reveal their real-world origins here). Twelve Sleep County is a fictional Wyoming county featured in the Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box (highly recommend), but the stuffed jackalope does actually exist in the museum in Douglas, WY. Chicken Butte is in reference to Crow Butte near Crawford, NE. My thought process was “hmm, replace Crow with a different bird, like a chicken, heh, guess what, chicken butt”.
Ironically, of the stories published so far and the ones I have planned, I think these hunting stories actually stick the closest to what actually happened.
-
In-Tents Character Building
Here is the second entry for SR:Baloney! I’m sure this won’t be my only camp story.
I liked the idea of imagining showing my future kids the camp, and I may return to that type of storytelling. It took me a bit to figure out how to jump between the past and the future, but I think using the italics worked well.
The “staining with colorful language” is a thing I’ve had in my head since at least high school, but I never managed to get it into any of my work…until now!
-
The Art of Baloney
AND WE’RE BACK! Sort of. Trying out a new series here, and instead of comics it will be the written word. I’ve always been more of a writer than a cartoonist, and it’s high time I started doing something with that. As mentioned in the story, one of my inspirations has been Pat McManus (writer for Outdoor Life and The Blight Way series), and I have lived a somewhat unusual life that several people have said I should write about, so why not?
This style does run into a similar problem as Not on a Camel did, in that I’m actually writing about real events. Well, sort of. Everything I write about will in some way be rooted in real events, but, as per the title of this series, it by no means should ever be interpreted as exactly how it actually happened! Also, the people mentioned are more or less totally fictional, and I will often lump multiple people into one character partly for the sake of privacy and partly for the sake of not having a ridiculously large “cast”. So don’t bother with the “guess that person” game because that character will probably show up again as some wild exaggeration of somebody else. Obviously, this is directed at people who know me in real life. If you are one of those people who have stumbled upon this site because of some reason outside of me shamelessly plugging it to all my friends on a regular basis, HELLO AND WELCOME! Regardless of who you are, I hope you will enjoy this little trip into my own personal insanity.
Because the world is the way it is and this is not my day job (probably a good thing, given how little I’ve ever made off of the previous comics) and because I don’t want to burn out of material too fast, I will be making this a monthly posting, but hey, there’s more words in each chapter than a month of On the Origin of Santa Claus even in its heyday!
I’m currently planning on posting these as PDFs like you see here as that seems to work best with how I’ve formatted this site, but if you can think of a better way I am certainly open to ideas! (Remembering that I am horrid at programming, of course.)
-
Still Open
Ref: Nikki is a teacher as well
I’m likely working from home for the remainder of term (as is most of the world). Current peeve is people asking me if I’m enjoying my break; I’m still working! And it’s mostly the less-fun stuff of teaching, not as much of the fun stuff. But hey, I have two years of experiencing “Semper Gumby” conditions and it’s made me quite adaptable, and I’m making the best of it!
-
A Decade of Spoofy Randomness! Color
Here is the celebration in color! I mentioned that I would tell you where each of these comes from, but I’m going to hold off once more. I will post a third version with shading, but I don’t have time for it today.
