every season can be split into two distinct halves and the halfway point is a holiday

Winter: Early winter starts after Thanksgiving and is before Christmas and New Years. Late winter is after and runs until roughly St. Patrick's Day or Daylight Savings starting.

Spring is split by Easter and runs until Memorial Day.

Summer is split by July 4th and runs until Labor Day.

Fall is split by Halloween and runs until Thanksgiving.

For Summer and Winter, the early part is a fun time of transition and change. 

As I'm writing this I'm also realizing that the solstices and equinoxes also play similar roles to everything I'm describing but I would argue that those are slightly off and the real noticeable changes happen around the holidays. 

Late half of Summer and Winter is where they really go whole hog.

Is this anything? Season commentary? Talking bout how late summer feels? 

Here's my new idea. If you've stuck it out this far. 

Early Winter- everybody works. We've gotta get ready for the holidays. Commercial activity has to take place. Whatever we can get done from Thanksgiving to New Year's. That's working time.

Late Winter- No working. Work shuts down. It's too cold. The days are too short. You have to rest and recover and sleep.

Early Spring- No working. The weather is too fickle. You've gotta wake up slowly. Maybe a little bit of work. Maybe. 

Late Spring- Working. Nature is reviving. Blooming. The world is green again. Full of energy. The sun has returned. Time to be passionate and thriving.

Early Summer- No working. You've gotta have fun. If not now, when? When will you have fun? 

Late Summer- No working. It's too hot! Are you kidding? No way. Keep having fun. It's growing season.

Early Fall- Working. Harvest time. It's cooling down just a little bit so you can think again. Be productive.

Late Fall- You could make a strong argument for working here BUT you gotta remember that we already committed to working in early Winter and so if we work in Late Fall that's three working periods in a row and that's crazy. Maybe you can choose if you would prefer to work Late Fall or Early Winter but not both.

Anyway so that's my 8 blocks of the year: 3 of which include working and 5 of which don't. I think if we implemented this system everyone would be more meaningfully productive and happier and everyone but the bloodsucking demons would be better off.

today I learned about professional wrestler, Ryusuke Taguchi

 AKA Masked Horse

His origin story is that he was abandoned by his parents and raised by horses. Then, he was abandoned by those horses and raised by a professional wrestler.

And isn't that really the story of everyone's lives? At some point you move out and leave your parents and work and/or live for some thing and then eventually you have to leave that thing and be with some other third thing. 

Baker Mosquito: guy who was taken in by mosquitoes and then abandoned and taken in by Baker mosquitoes.

Croc Fisher: Guy who was used as bait for gator fishing gets eaten by gator and ends up fishing for gator bait in gator's stomach.

Whale Salesman: Guy who sells whales ends up being sold to whales to sell guys to other whalesman.

Bird Porch: Guy builds a porch for birds on his regular porch but the birds build a bigger porch on the bird porch and rebrand his porch the man porch.

Italian Werewolf: Guy is bit by an Italian and cast out from society for his transformation and falls in with a werewolf commune who use him to help invade the were-italian base.

I met a woman today who was mad about the state of the world

 but she also wanted to be mad. she would've been mad no matter what state the world was in.

I am sometimes reminded by the world that you can never go 'full bitter'.

opera used car salesman

I just saw this video of this guy standing in front of a Corvette at a used car lot and pitching it while singing opera

this used corvette

it was a dream to drive

it can be yours

for the small price

come here now

ask for Andrew

It was really good, the guy can actually sing. And it's funny because of the contrast and all. And someone in the comments was like 'Shame that this guy has to sell used cars instead of singing.'

Which is true and I agree BUT, at the same time, it is also absolutely true that if that guy was just straight up singing opera in a opera house, opera-style that same person wouldn't care. Not nearly as many people would care. 

It's why T-Pain sang with auto tune even though he can actually sing well. No one cares about another guy who can sing well.

It's why I put paintings on craigslist free stuff. 

The juxtaposition is more important than the parts themselves.

Don't be a big fish in a small pond. Or a small fish in a big pond. 

Be the right fish in the wrong pond. 

what do you want to run a business?

 you want to run a multi-national corporation? or be in charge of a bank or large sums of money and assets? Is that your aspiration in life? To command respect and power through capital? To exploit the weak and people who have enough sense to know that they have to share this planet with everyone and to take what they need and be grateful for what they have? None of that appeals to you? Your just want to grow and grow like a tumor and have conspicuous wealth and bankrupt the environment and make the world a worse place for everyone who comes after? You want to fill with pus like a festering sore and create the conditions for atrocities to take place on the daily like a well-oiled machine? Constant growth is an aberration. And its fruits are on display for all to see. 

Assembling Raw Data into a Storyline

 I run the climbing league at the gym and the main challenge is taking the data from the climbs people do and converting that into points and then taking those points and crafting a story out of it. You want people to be invested and excited about the outcome. There's not much inherently exciting about it because you don't see the action as its happening. It's like narrating a sporting event where you only ever see the scores instead of the home runs or touchdowns or alley-oops themselves. 

And so as part of that narrative I've crafted a persona as a fraught and capricious commissioner who is fast and loose with wielding his authority and intentionally stirs the pot. I try to incite as much drama as possible because the worst thing people can be is bored.

The problem is when people want to participate in the bit and accost me and call into question the validity of the whole operation and do the very same dramatic narrative crafting that I'm trying to do but I get overwhelmed and defensive and, on the whole, too sensitive about it.

But that's okay. 

The test of a true rabble-rouser is that even he grows to fear the rabble he hath roused.

what did I make on this day in 2015?

 

I made this comic when I was 23 years old, in the middle of student teaching which I often tell people was the worst time in my life but at least I made this comic.