Getting back to my comedy roots: Gumby evolution!

How Gumby Has Evolved: A comic by the author when he was much younger.

Here's a one-page  comic I wrote -- in pencil on notebook paper -- almost 24 years ago. One of my classmates actually saved it and posted it to Facebook, and now I present it to you. And now, here's a colorized version:

The last Homeland Security Advisory System parody you'll ever need

 

How worried should you be at any given time about Lindsay Lohan? Use this handy chart to keep track. 

P.S. - Did you know that I had a YouTube channel and a Podomatic page? Well, I do.

Something I'd never noticed in an old "Simpsons" episode

The Simpsons and The Shining side by side.

On the left are screenshots from "Bart to the Future," an episode of The Simpsons which aired March 19, 2000. On the right are screenshots from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. It took me 13 years to notice this.

Bad MS Paint Art: Celebrities from memory

One of my abstract works made possible by MS Paint

 
Of all the advances of the so-called Computer Age, certainly one of the greatest is Microsoft Paint, that most auspicious of digital time-wasters. While the programmers who created Power Point, Word, and Excel will certainly spend several lifetimes in Hell atoning for their technological sins, the creator of Microsoft Paint has an express ticket to Heaven. At least that's how I see it. I have spent countless, contented hours scribbling away on MS Paint. It's remarkably therapeutic and relaxing. Unfortunately, this delightful application did get me into a bit of trouble once. A little over a decade ago, you see, I was a customer service representative for a major American automobile manufacturer. Let's say the name rhymes with Schmeneral Schmotors. Anyway, before we were allowed to take calls from irate customers, we had to attend a month-long training course which was held in a small classroom on the property. We each had computers at our desks, and our instructor stood up front and lectured. I confess that I frequently got bored during the lessons and started using my computer to draw crude likenesses of Fred Flintstone and Bart Simpson. Well, apparently one of my fellow students ratted me out to the teacher, and I was briefly and gently chastised by her. Oh, remind me to tell you about this woman sometime. She was something else! My guess was that she was some sort of cyborg or replicant, but I have no proof of this. Her name was Nina, but she pronounced it "Nine-a." Can you beat that?

But let's get back on track. All these years later, I still love MS Paint. I've used it to create every last Zomby cartoon, for instance, and I still while away the hours doing little abstract designs whenever I am bored, which is frequently. Lately, I've had the idea of trying to draw various celebrities from memory. I thought I could turn it into some kind of parlor game -- kind of a variation on Pictionary or Win, Lose, or Draw. Anyway, here are a few examples:

Michael Jackson

Prince

Hulk Hogan

Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean

Benjamin Franklin

As you have probably guessed, I normally pick celebrities who already have a cartooonish, outsized image and who can be reduced to a few outstanding physical characteristics. So then I added a little twist to the game: I would draw less obvious celebrities from memory, then redraw those same celebrities after doing some photo referencing and compare the results. Here's how those turned out:

Anne Hathaway

Alfred Hitchcock

Michael Douglas

You might be wondering what the point of this article is. Frankly, there isn't one. But it's been a while since I posted anything to this blog, and I had all these pictures saved to my hard drive and decided to get some mileage out of them. Hope you enjoyed.

How ZOMBY spends his days off

So now you know.

ZOMBY has some... uh, interesting hobbies

 

It feels nice to do a new ZOMBY! cartoon. I hadn't done one in a few months, so I thought it was time to bring him back. Hope you enjoy.

My therapist stood me up. That's not a joke.

A scrambled portrait of your humble blogger. No,wait, I hate that word. Your humble bloggist.

It sounds like the setup for a joke in Woody Allen movie, but it actually happened to me this week. My therapist did not show up for our weekly appointment. Actually, the office she shares with another doctor was totally locked and empty when I got there. I stood out in the cold, knocking on the door for a few minutes, but to no avail. I have no idea what happened. Maybe she's ducking me. Who knows? I could have been the patient who finally drove her out of the therapist biz. But I kid my therapist. She's actually very nice -- a thin, spiky-haired woman of about 50 with a heavy Polish accent and the wardrobe of a bohemian art teacher. At our last session, she had dyed her hair blue to match her outfit. No kidding.

Anyway, since I live alone and have very little social life, my therapy sessions are pretty much my only opportunity each week to interact with another human being in person and speak as myself. Naturally, when speaking to coworkers or relatives, I have to be on my best behavior. It's very nice, then, to have an hour a week to say whatever I want and speak freely.

Well, guess what? Since I didn't get to have a therapy session this week, I'm going to treat this blog as if it were my therapist's office and you, dear reader, are going to be my therapist for the week. I'm going to say whatever comes into my head, and you're going to nod and say things like "Mm-hmm" and "Very interesting. Please go on."

Do you think you can handle that? Good! Let's get started.

We only have an hour here, so you're going to want to keep at least one eye on the clock at all times, the way a real therapist does.

I usually start out each session by saying how my week has gone. Well, citizens, it was sort of a rough one for me even though nothing much of note actually happened. Work has slowed down to a crawl lately, which puts a damper on my bank account. And naturally, now is the time when seemingly everything I own has to be repaired or replaced. So more money is going out than coming in currently. I think/hope/imagine/pray that the situation will be better in a few months, but it does sort of get depressing to look at my recent bank statements. I really ought to have a better-paying, more stable job. Even my immediate supervisor has said so. I've basically taken a temp job and managed to make it last ten years. I should probably aim a little higher.

But here's the thing about that: I hate business. I hate business people. And worst of all, I hate business people talking about business stuff. I can't even be around those people for long. I can barely survive an elevator ride with corporate-minded folks spouting all that business gibberish.

The great thing about my job is that, for the most part, it involves very little interaction with these people... or any people. I can just put on my headphones and listen to podcasts all day while doing my work, which is great. The pay is lousy, though, and it's sort of humiliating to be in such a menial, low-level job for a decade.

Why don't I try for something better? Well, for one, I'm not the least bit ambitious, at least not in that way. I've seen the people who get promoted at my company. Many have come through my department. But they're driven by a kind of hunger I just don't have. They hear about an opening for "regional associate managing project director" or some such thing, and they go after it like a dog devouring a T-bone steak. Meanwhile, I can't schmooze. I can't network. I can't self-promote. I just can't bring myself to do any of that stuff. I shudder just thinking about it.

So if the corporate thing isn't for me, why don't I quit my job and pursue my dreams? After all, it's not like I have a family to support or anything. But here's the sad truth: I don't have a dream. There's never been anything I've wanted to do as a career. Not one, even when I was a kid and too dumb to be disillusioned. I'm just a dabbler. I dabble. I've tried all sorts of creative pursuits, including this blog, and they're sort of fun and fulfilling. But I've never stumbled across anything I would describe as a passion. I have interests but no passions. Wow. That sounds just awful, but it's the truth.

Ultimately, that's what makes it really difficult to keep going. I have no goals. There's nothing I really want. And that's the essence of life, isn't it? Wanting stuff? The same goes for relationships. I've had maybe five dates in my entire life and never anything close to a girlfriend. But it's not like I've put a whole lot of effort into that arena. I have no dating skills, and I know from my few disastrous dates that I'm not boyfriend material. I don't think I'd really want a girlfriend, and the idea of being married or having kids scares the life out of me.

So what do I do then? Work a crummy, low-paying job and live alone for a few more decades until I finally die? Yikes. That doesn't sound too appealing. That's the upshot of all this: I'm kind of out of options. I've seen and done as much as I want to do, and there's still so much time left. How am I going to fill it?

Well, well! Speaking of time, it looks like ours is just about up. This has been a great session, doc. I really got to express some stuff that's been on my mind lately. Thanks for listening. Same time next week? Super.

ADDENDUM: I feel I should add a little tag to this article for anyone who reads it and thinks it is too dark or depressing. What you have to understand is that I use my therapy sessions to vent all the negativity that builds up in me over the course of the typical week. Once I've said all this terrible stuff, I usually feel much better. As odd as this might sound, I would liken it to an exorcism. The therapist is the Max Von Sydow to my Linda Blair. This week, I'm asking you to be my Max Von Sydow. Thanks.

Homer

This is the earliest episode of The Simpsons.

Let me explain this one a little bit.

Apparently, an Icelandic magazine ran a comic in 1949 with a character who looked incredibly like Homer Simpson.

Here's the Buzzfeed article which alerted me to the existence of this comic.

What I have done is take the panels from this particular comic and turn them into an animated GIF, thus creating the oldest animated Simpsons episode in existence. I want you to imagine that the show was originally just about Homer and his misadventures in wood chopping.