So this blog got taken down for a few hours

 Apologies to my approximately one regular reader who I've never talked to. It seems that updating the page with my personal info flagged the blog as a phishing site. I guess having your email address posted publicly could let people email you, which would let you find out their email address, a vital step in stealing their identity, I think.

At least that's my guess. No one told me what was wrong, of course. And I couldn't access the blog to fix it if I did know either. And I couldn't contact anyone to ask either. Fortunately, requesting a review gave results within hours.

The moral here is try to keep track of your blog ramblings and back them up if you think you might want to keep them, cause you never know if google will allow it or for how long.

Paradigms of human memory

Oh boy that's ugly.

But I wanted to show you, dear reader, what I have accomplished this week as I'm trying to regain that momentum of the webcomic that this site is ostensibly about.

Yes, this entire damn week I've struggled to open Photoshop. I have searched through drawers and folders for bits of page 10 I thought I had made back in April, and I have laboriously taken myself into town to get new pens because to my surprise my ink pen that I like to hand-write dialogue with had dried out, and I have written the dialogue and scanned it and even used Photoshop to touch it up a bit, and I have given up on the Windows 10 computer I bought last year when I got a small inheritance and returned to using my old Win 7 one that's actually much nicer (Windows 10 is such garbage fire) and can use my old tablet just so that working in Photoshop would be that little bit less of a hassle, and now, very early on Sunday morning, I have finally managed to put lines on a page.

Just this little pointless sketch, which I'm showing to you because I'm amazed at how I managed to do it while in the middle of an ontological breakdown because it turns out in the six months since I last drew anything I have forgotten everything about how to do it. Just this existential dread at the discovery that all of the rules I have discovered and internalized for the process of putting lines together into shapes like the ones in my head are complete gibberish and I have to work it all out again from the beginning. I'm just trying to draw some comics and my entire, unraveling mind is shoving itself in my face and demanding that I completely rethink how and why I think, what my thoughts are for and what they look like.

I probably have to make a serious effort to draw something every single day for a while just to get back some of the skills I had. Well, Inktober is coming up so that's a nice excuse to flood the blog with any pictures I can make and fuck perfectionism and lack of confidence.

Feel free to share any drawing prompts you may want to give me in the comments.

You can't take the past from me

My childhood was running through streets, fields and forests and play tag, war, fairy tales, superheroes, farming, hide and seek and Lord of the Flies. It was hiding from big kids and building huts out of ferns and selling cartoons to the neighbors. It was breaking off icicles from garage roofs and jumping on beds and stealing lego from my after-school sitter and getting frightened and scarred by scary movies. It was mom's bed time stories, and my own stories growing in my head when mom got sick and couldn't talk, and learning to read with my aunt's boyfriend's comic books. It was kids putting popsicle sticks in each other next to me in the sandbox while I dug to find the center of the earth; it was digging holes in my bedroom floor; it was vibrantly alive nightmares about my house disappearing when I turned my back. It was a superhero costume with a cape, an allowance large enough for cap gun ammunition, a ragged plush panda, love for the girl who built a snow fortress in the school door, a rumor that said I turned invisible when nobody saw me and a bullies teaching me about sex and violence. It was grandparents who were the nicest people there were who lived way too far away and cousins who I wanted to kill and at the same time live with forever together in our secret clubhouse.

And what was before I turned ten and interesting things started happening.

What I'm talking about here, as Ghostbusters (1984) enjoys a best-selling streak on Amazon unlike any 30 year old movie and proves it's possible to make everyone happy excepting only those whose happiness depends on having stuff other people can't have, is that anyone who claims a movie remake ruined their childhood had better seek professional help to get over the crippling sensory deprivation experiment their childhood must have been. If you're trying to say your childhood is the ephemeral experience of whatever pop culture was served to you, you have problems. Of course, it's never too late to have yourself a childhood you can participate in. Start right now, by going outside, and doing something you have never done before.

So to speak

It's not often you get to say this completely straight-faced, but goodnight, sweet Prince.

So you disagree with homosexuality

Do you realize that if we are going to respect everyone's rights we also have to respect the devoutly religious groups's that disagree with homosexuality right to their opinion?

Quit it. Your human rights are not threatened by extending human rights to persecuted minorities.

Oh no, not me. I'm not a homophobe. I'm just asking for a friend.

Sure, buddy.

I'm not your buddy, pal.

Okay you're taking it as a personal accusation when I'm clearly using "you" in the general sense but we'll let that slide. The point is we've talked about this a hundred times already and a person's right to their opinion, even their religiously mandated opinion, still holds up even if we start treating gay people like people.

But if I disagree with homosexuality I can't express that opinion freely, that's impeding my free speech.

How can I explain this? Disagreeing with homosexuality is like disagreeing with the sun. First of all it's wrong. It's fine, you are legally entitled to the right to be wrong, we'll get more into that in a moment, but you need sit down and think about how you're choosing to think a thing that is wrong. The sun exists. You cannot argue against that without being wrong. When you disagree with a thing, be it a chair, a table or a sexual orientation, you're clearly wrong.

Okay maybe I was just weaseling about that whole "disagree" thing, it's more of a dislike.

I know. So secondly it's garbage.What's wrong with you? The sun is wondrous. It's fabulous and hot. It's never done anything to you. In fact the sun is what makes life on this planet possible.

I think this metaphor is getting a little out of hand, surely you don't claim homosexuality makes life possible when if you want to be pedantic it's doing the exact opposite.

Well, overpopulation is a problem among the humans. But the point is gays have more style than me and lesbians are prettier than me, they add beauty and strangeness to the world and blaming them for your inability to tolerate people who're different only makes you an asshole.

So now I'm an asshole for having an opinion. This is what I'm talking about.

Yes, yes you are. What's the problem?

I'm not allowed to freely state my opinion without being mobbed by self-appointed crusaders like yourself, dick.

Do you have a problem with me using my free speech to argue against your opinion? There's this classic xkcd strip that you may find speaks to you personally.

Of course not, you have the right to disagree with me just like I have the right to disagree with homosexuality.

So what's the problem? No one's getting punished for their opinion. Except the homosexuals are punished for someone else's opinion.

You're saying you are not punishing me? You think I'm an asshole and an idiot.

I have no authority over you, so no, nothing I can do to you can prevent you from using your free speech.

But you hurt my feelings.

Sorry?

You don't understand, man. Everywhere I turn everyone hates me just for expressing my opinion. I can't even call my enemies out on their cowardly tactics in my videogames by shouting the f-word without getting lectured.

Well, that's their opinion. Free speech cuts both ways. And I know it's not a contest, but your hurt feelings don't actually compare to gay people getting raped with broken bottles and fucking crucified.

But don't you see, when public opinion is so overwhelmingly one-sided, having the wrong opinion makes you afraid to speak out. It's not government censorship, but it is effectively keeping a segment of the population silenced.

Maybe that's how free speech works? You're familiar with the free market, right? I bet you love the free market.

Why yes, I do. Viable businesses prosper and create jobs and non-viable businesses fail because no one supports them. Everything works out naturally, and in the end everyone wins.

Think of your opinion as a business. What happens if dsagreeing with homosexuality, or whatever you're calling it, doesn't have any support? I submit to you that hate is a non-viable business.

But I do disagree with homosexuality. I admit I am a wretched man, I'm not kind or open-minded or whatever it is you have in you that lets you come to terms with a world that has gay people in it I do not have, but that is honestly how I feel. What do you expect me to do?

What do you want to do? Where does the notion of disagreeing with homosexuality take you? Precisely what practical actions do disagreeing with homosexuality entail? Sitting around being angry at gay people for existing? Assuming that actually doing the work to better yourself is off the table.

Let me think for a moment. Okay I got it. I want to be able to tell people how I feel without being yelled at. That's not so much to ask, is it?

Why should they have to listen to you? Don't they have the right to not be around your disgusting, hateful bullshit if they want to?

But, um, are you telling me I should be satisfied with a lonely life, without anyone to talk to?

Do you not have a single person you can talk to? Someone who shares your opinion and doesn't judge you? Reddit have tons of people just like you, entite communities built up around a mutual fear and hate for those who are, throughout the western world, legally considered less than fully human, i.e. homosexuals.

I can only talk to people who already agree with me? That's no fun.

If you don't want to say anything worthwhile and you don't want anyone  to hurt  your feelings, yes, that is who you can talk to. Lots of people have fun talking to people they agree to, maybe because they're talking about fun things.

Thank you, voice in my head. You've given me some stuff to think about. But I'm tired now so I'm going to go back to wallow in my hateful cocoon of inadequacy or whatever you want to call it.

It's been very unpleasant. But seriously, you can be a better person than this. I believe in you.