Call me heartless, but you know the thing babies do where they’re crying and they pretend they’re starting to choke? It makes me laugh. They totally do it. I love babies.

Goodbye, Windows 95 comics.

I started a new twitter; it’s less of a personal diary and more of an alien news station (better than my real twitter).

During the X Games I discovered that what used to be called “Extreme Sports” are now “Action Sports.” ACTION SPORTS! Not that I don’t appreciate the update – “Extreme” always felt a bit severe. (Look for Christian Youth Groups across the nation to start putting “Action” in their names [trying for a clever misspelling but ending up bungling it, e.g., "Axetion Christ Evermore36" {"Dude, you comin' to ACE tonight? It's a great place to look for possible future wives."}].)

What I really like about the label “action” being given to a certain arena of sports is what it says about the rest of them. (Basically: “Yes, everything else is boring.”) We have Action Sports, and…sports. Imagine espn.com’s channel selections as genre sections at a movie store:

There’s Foreign (Soccer), Music Video (Basketball), Crime Dramas (Baseball), Rom-Com (Tennis), Disaster (Football), Documentary (Golf and Outdoors), and Action! Woooooo!

Coming soon: The Food Cooking Network! The Discovery Finding Channel! ESPNESPN!

MAN I love the X Games. Some of things these guys do – 360 tailwhip backflips, double tailwhip backflips, double frontflips over a 70 foot gap, all on BMX bikes, 360s on a freaking motorcycle, skateboard tricks that are quite literally starting to look like video games, then all of a sudden they stop spinning wildly through the air and land in the exact right spot (it feels illogical to see), rolling away like it ain’t a thing, smooth as butter on baby seal’s behind. It want to cry sometimes, it’s so beautiful. I love jumping.

I also love that the trick competitions aren’t judged with fall-once-and-you’re-done scoring. I love the Olympics too but that drives me crazy; it’s hard to enjoy a rountine when all you’re thinking is “please don’t fall…please don’t fall…” Gymnastics and ice skating judging have gotten particularly nitpicky – it’s as if all they do is look at a huge list of possible deductions and then sit there not smiling, inspecting for errors. It’s like how a lot of people see God. It’s totally demerit-based rather than merit based, and it sucks the artistry right of out the room. But when you watch the X Games Mega Ramp competition, guys’ll go for a huge trick and fall it’s no big deal. THANK YOU.

If you don’t have ESPN, like me, you can watch it here.

You can also see great moments from X Games past. Some breathtaking stuff here.

Notice the time.

Attire for the week: scrub pants cut off into shorts.

“Often it can be easier to find common ground with a white person by talking to them about something you both hate.  Discussing things you both like might lead to an argument over who likes it more or who liked it first.  Clearly, the safest route is mutual hatred.”

from Stuff White People Like

A friend brought it to my attention that another webcomic and I both posted somewhat similar comics yesterday. Check it.

I just moved, that’s why the comics look different now. Only thing wood and large enough I could find. Sorta totally looks like an old Windows 95 desktop background, but whatever. Maybe I should buy a piece of wood and stain it.

Today is my birthday and I get to post whatever I want. It’s one of my favorites, though.

Last night I dreamt I stole a car and ran from the police. I don’t remember why they were after me. It was fun, but I knew if I had to deal with the consequences, the dream wouldn’t be fun anymore, so I woke myself up.

I’m toying with the idea of turning Saturdays into Not Funny Comic Day. I get a lot of stupid ideas and it’d be nice to have a place to exhume a few of them, plus no one’s on the internet on Saturdays anyway. It would only work if it was understood they were failures. It could just be dumb. They’d have to be the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel ideas. Although, I really like things that are almost funny, too, cause sometimes that’s worse. And come on – The Office – the pain of medocrity can be funny, you just have to present it the right way. So maybe Saturday could be Mediocre Comic day? We’ll see.

There’s a new “share” button by each comic now, so you can easily post things to Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, what have you.

A while ago someone liked one of my comics enough to post it to Digg, and I got about twice as many visits as usual that day. So if you believe in love after love, be strong enough. I really think you are.

This is a very funny site.

Earthworm Jim
A film by Tim Burton

The Sims
A film by Robert Altman

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?
A film by David Fincher

A few highlights from Rotten Tomatoes’ video game movie wish list.

Today I worked with 2-4 year olds, and built this:

It’s a helicopter/teeter totter. Two kids sit in the middle and two sit on the sides and make it rock. It’s pretty sweet. It took me about four hours of cranking screwdrivers, ratchets, and mostly little allen wrenches. It was kind of like building a big LEGO set. The kids were pretty excited about it.

I’m flying at 11:45 pm tonight for my sister’s wedding in Michigan. I’ll fly through Texas, reach Detroit at 11 am ET, and then get on a bus that’ll get me home around 2:30. That should be weird. I stayed up super late last night doing some wedding stuff (finished writing my sister’s processional, actually), so I already have a little travel delirium going on. I kind of like it; makes it exciting.

Today’s comic has absolutely nothing to do with Mother’s Day.

Shoulda thought about that.

In part of my dream last night, I could smell the smells of fast food and mountain air at the same time, and I was like, whoa, I’ve never smelled these two things together; it smells so good. And then someone had a plate of cookies on top op their van, but they forgot about them and drove off, so I went and got cookies off the street and ate them. I think they were raisin at first, but I made them change to chocolate chip.

I’ve just run out of my notebooks. I have the names of stores Carolina Pad ships that product to, so I should be able to find some more, but to hold myself over I made my own.

From espn.com:

“STAT OF THE GAME: The Spartans had 21 turnovers in the game, and the Tar Heels converted them into 25 points. You simply can’t make that many mistakes against a team like UNC and expect to win the game.”

I’m really disappointed. No team lost to North Carolina by any less than 12 points the whole tournament, but still, it hurts to lose like we did. Especially right after beating 3 really good teams to be there.

Had we lost in the semifinals, people would have just been happy to see us make it that far, and turned back to ooh and ah at the Louisville game. But after we beat UConn, people really started expecting more. So instead being overachievers, we’re now a team that got too another level, but failed there. It’s more disappointing, but it is also more satisfying to have played on the higher level, and to have proved that none of our wins against Kansas, Louisville, or UConn were flukes.

I hate to talk this way so soon, but I don’t think we’re losing too many seniors. Next year should be a good one. And this loss should be a really good bad memory to motivate us this whole summer and through next season.

And hats off, North Carolina. You guys were freaking amazing.

Both my parents went to Michigan State. The first house I ever lived in was on Spartan Avenue. My dad used to put us in the bike seat and take us to the end of Spartan football games, when they’d start letting people in for free.

Ergo I am majorly rooting for MSU this weekend. I am also mildy proud of the fact that I once trimmed Tom Izzo’s hedges (though he technically had moved out the day before, from the nice neighborhood to the really nice neighborhood across the road).

Why should you root for them, too? Here is a very nice article about that.

Made it the US Barista Championships yesterday.

It was pretty neat. I waited in line for 20 minutes and got this thing for free. It was really good.

It was fun for about an hour, and then I got bored.

The 2009 US Barista Championships are being held in Portland this weekend. I’ll probably go tomorrow; I hear there’s free coffee to be had. One time a friend and I played music for an event and signs went up all over campus that said “Free Coffee” in really big letters and then had our names, so we called ourselves Free Coffee. I remember I tried to start doing this ambient guitar loop thing, but it wasn’t working out very well, and my friend gave me this “what are you doing” kind of look so I stopped.

So I’ve had today’s comic ready to go for a week or so (typically I’m a bit more ahead than that…), and on Wednesday I saw this front page USA Today article on a newstand, with the words “We Will Recover” in giant letters. Hmm.

I played at the PSA finals tonight…didn’t win, but someone from a local cable station did ask me to come be on their local music show. Yay! Who you tryin to get crazy with, ese? Don’t you know I’m local?

I’m playing in the PSA finals tonight. I just found out there’ll be some local TV people filming us. Hoo-ray…

I’m currently down to my last notebook. I grabbed a bunch of the model I liked from a Food Lion shelf before moving from Nashville to Portland last Spring, and haven’t been able to find the same model since. But after some research, I spoke to a very nice North Carolinan lady at Carolina Pad and have located a few stores here in Portland that should have CP Item #775 in stock. Good news. I love those notebooks. And I really don’t like perforated pages, because they start falling out after a few months.

Happy Digital TV Day! Woooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found out over the weekend I made it into the top 10 finalists of a songwriting competition I entered here in Portland. Music as competition is a little weird, but hey – some iTunes tracks get downloaded more than others, and some Portland Songwriters Association judges voted for me more times than someone else. So I’m excited. The finals are on February 19.

Here‘s my music page if you’d like a listen. The songs I sang were “I am a Bird” and “Amelie.” Both recordings are pretty lo-fi. I’m pretty happy with “Bird” performance-wise; “Amelie” is…well, it’s old.

I went snowboarding on Friday, and by the end of the night executed a couple tricks down I was working on. I drummed with the band on Saturday night and I swear my snowboarding helped my drumming – the confidence I’d gained Friday transferred right over to the drums. It was cool.

Wanna make a quite note here…

Not all my comics are autobiographical. I don’t want you to assume that everything I write (even this) is a reaction to a specific event or person, because it’s not. There’s a name for that: The Autobiographical Fallacy. Of course there’s some of me in my comics. But not every joke springs from a specific personal experience.

Sometimes a comic might be replay a situation where I got pwned in real life, but then go back and write in my razor-witted comeback. Or it might not be something that anyone said, ever, I’m just making up something dumb for someone to say so I can pwn them. The latter is more likely, probably. Part of the reason they’re stick figures.

If you’ve ever wondered if you’d actually survive a water landing in a plane:

(Picture of yesterday’s Hudson River plane crash; I got it here)

All 155 passengers were safe, the worst injury being a lady with boths legs broken (no “serious” injuries, apparnetly, whatever that means).

OK, internet – it’s kind of annoying that one day after the incident there are already articles to wade through to find the initial report. This happens a lot – you google an event and all you can find are 27 analyses of analyses of analyses of the original report. People like talking, I guess. (Here is one of the first reports on it.)