Showing posts with label Comic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comic. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2011
Moved to the mountains
I moved to Pinedale, Wyoming when I got a job offer at the Sublette Examiner as a reporter. Normally I wouldn't move 1,000 miles away from home without knowing someone in the area...but the 7200 ft elevation was too tempting to pass up for improving my running and learning how to snowboard.
My new job rocks, the office is loaded with mac computers, my coworkers are awesome and I got permission to make comics for the paper in addition to my regular reporting load. (One step closer to obtaining national syndication as a cartoonist...suck it, art school!)
Things were totally epic for this first few days.
Then I hit a freaking deer and totaled my car! A stupid suicidal deer on the other side of the highway jumped out in front of me and my only options were to swerve into oncoming traffic, go off the side of a mountain or hit the stupid jerk.
Not wanting to die, I hit the freak and drove 18 miles through the mountains at night with no headlight or passenger window. Fan-freaking-tastic.
I was so mad at that deer that I promptly broke my vegetarianism and ate a deer burger out of vengeance.
[Girlfriend] and I named my 2001 Daewoo "Appa" last summer because I bought it at the peak of our Avatar obsession (the anime series, not the blue freaks) . Daewoo was only made for a few years and then the company tanked...so parts are rare and expensive even though the car is cheap.
Fun fact of the day: Gigantic Wyoming deer love to kill cheap Korean cars.
So, I was 1,000 miles from home, new in town and fresh out of college with no income yet since my first pay day was 5 days away. There was no freaking way any bank would hook me up with a car loan without my parents as a co-signer...and I thought I was an adult. Guess not!
Fortunately, the people here are extremely nice and the local car dealer hooked me up with a crazy nice loaner truck until we could get me in something new. Despite all this, I was freaked!
After a week of begging the banks in Wyoming to hook me up with a loan, I ended up going with my hometown bank back in Iowa since they knew me well enough to know that screwing me over with high interest rates would be totally bogus.
My new ride is boss. In fact, I might go so far as to say is soooo cash.
I'm a diehard fan of "Kill Bill" and an alumni of the University of Iowa, so anything that is black and gold must be mine. I named her Uma (after Uma Thurman, my favorite actress who coincidentally looks a lot like [Girlfriend]).
My coworkers and friends reactions to my car crash were pretty similar...and it was a pretty good blow to my recently inflated ego. Yay karma!
Jacie is one of my chillest coworkers, so I drew her in my first comic to get printed in a newspaper since college.
[Since Pinedale is way up in the mountains, there are tons of moose here...so I grew a beard. Deal with it.]
So Appa is dead and I got a car loan in addition to my student loans to pay off...but it's worth it.
Doubt me? Best check yourself, fool, because I don't front...much.
Ch-ch-check this view out, cousin!
Living and training up here is improving my running in ways that never could have happened in Iowa. The thin air, massive mountains and awesome aquatic center across the street from my house is totally getting me ready for the 2012 Canadian Death Race. (77 miles in less than 24 hours over 3 mountain peaks).
You all knew I was insane, and this is the extent of my madness.
My new job rocks, the office is loaded with mac computers, my coworkers are awesome and I got permission to make comics for the paper in addition to my regular reporting load. (One step closer to obtaining national syndication as a cartoonist...suck it, art school!)
Things were totally epic for this first few days.
Then I hit a freaking deer and totaled my car! A stupid suicidal deer on the other side of the highway jumped out in front of me and my only options were to swerve into oncoming traffic, go off the side of a mountain or hit the stupid jerk.
Not wanting to die, I hit the freak and drove 18 miles through the mountains at night with no headlight or passenger window. Fan-freaking-tastic.
I was so mad at that deer that I promptly broke my vegetarianism and ate a deer burger out of vengeance.
[Girlfriend] and I named my 2001 Daewoo "Appa" last summer because I bought it at the peak of our Avatar obsession (the anime series, not the blue freaks) . Daewoo was only made for a few years and then the company tanked...so parts are rare and expensive even though the car is cheap.
Fun fact of the day: Gigantic Wyoming deer love to kill cheap Korean cars.
So, I was 1,000 miles from home, new in town and fresh out of college with no income yet since my first pay day was 5 days away. There was no freaking way any bank would hook me up with a car loan without my parents as a co-signer...and I thought I was an adult. Guess not!
Fortunately, the people here are extremely nice and the local car dealer hooked me up with a crazy nice loaner truck until we could get me in something new. Despite all this, I was freaked!
After a week of begging the banks in Wyoming to hook me up with a loan, I ended up going with my hometown bank back in Iowa since they knew me well enough to know that screwing me over with high interest rates would be totally bogus.
My new ride is boss. In fact, I might go so far as to say is soooo cash.
I'm a diehard fan of "Kill Bill" and an alumni of the University of Iowa, so anything that is black and gold must be mine. I named her Uma (after Uma Thurman, my favorite actress who coincidentally looks a lot like [Girlfriend]).
My coworkers and friends reactions to my car crash were pretty similar...and it was a pretty good blow to my recently inflated ego. Yay karma!
Jacie is one of my chillest coworkers, so I drew her in my first comic to get printed in a newspaper since college.
[Since Pinedale is way up in the mountains, there are tons of moose here...so I grew a beard. Deal with it.]
So Appa is dead and I got a car loan in addition to my student loans to pay off...but it's worth it.
Doubt me? Best check yourself, fool, because I don't front...much.
Ch-ch-check this view out, cousin!
Living and training up here is improving my running in ways that never could have happened in Iowa. The thin air, massive mountains and awesome aquatic center across the street from my house is totally getting me ready for the 2012 Canadian Death Race. (77 miles in less than 24 hours over 3 mountain peaks).
You all knew I was insane, and this is the extent of my madness.
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Saturday, November 27, 2010
Existential War In Me
This is an experimental musical blog-comic. Yes, I am taking my three favorite forms of Web 2.0 entertainment and combining them into one mind blowing experience. (Hopefully)
Turn your sound up, and click the link here and let the music video play while you read. The song is "Halo" by Porcupine Tree, one of my favorite bands of all time. The idea for this musical blog-comic came to me while running, thinking about where I want to go in life, and listening to this song.
I hope you enjoy it.
Some people have mood swings, and I kind of envy them because I get lifestyle-swings.
One day I will be an ultra charitable vegan, motivated by an insatiable desire to make the world a better place and to make myself a better person. The only money I will spend is on other people and every action I take is thoroughly analyzed for ethical integrity.
The next day I will want to be mindlessly self-indulgent with an endless appetite for instant gratification. I will only spend money on stuff I don't really need just because I think having it will make me happy...and I won't do any background checks to see if it's fair-trade, environmentally friendly or anything of that nature! (Gasp!)
During the transitional period between these phases I will find myself heinously conflicted about my goals in life, and to some degree who I am as a person.
I know that deep down inside of me that fat and angry teenager still exists, and boy does he want to kick my ass for being such an insufferable perfectionist.
This is about the time that I will drive 40 miles to the nearest shopping mall and buy crap I don't really need. Novelty hats, fart machines, gourmet snack food...pretty much whatever looks awesome, feels good or tastes amazing gets brought home and marveled over it for a few hours.
Things seem pretty awesome at this point. With my belly full of over priced treats and fresh kicks on my feet, I will strut around with more self-content than Oscar Wilde's "Dorian Gray" and Kanye West combined.
It is good to be bad...sometimes.
This phase will last a week at most, and only be borderline obscene for about an afternoon.
Then the guilt sets in and I become aware of how insufferably shallow I've been lately.
I'll start to think about how the cash I spent should have been used to buy food for the animal shelter, or how my energy should be spent on charity and not on working out or running just so I can look good.
I'll get paranoid about karma (and I don't really subscribe to that belief, though I sometimes suspect there is truth to it). I'll scrub the floors to make even for strutting my shit all over the house. I'll pick up trash along the roads while running to put those nice new kicks to good use. ...Then I will stare at the Peace Corp. website and contemplate doing it until I realize that means no internet and lots spiders and/or snakes.
I don't care how good I want to be (or can be), poisonous snakes and gigantic spiders are where I draw the line.
When I'm in full-blown saint mode, I very nearly shit rainbows and radiate sunshine...but after a while this behavior starts to annoy even myself.
Then I start to shift back to being a bit more self-centered.
As I start to transition back to being increasingly focused on myself, I start kicking myself in the face and brooding over how utterly pathetic it is that I can't just stick to one lifestyle.
Does it always have to be one extreme or the other? Can't I buy myself something stupid (yet cool) and do something nice for others for no reason?
Can't I run for charity and write an obscenely detailed blog that focuses mostly on myself?
...Shit. [Cycle of shame]
Turn your sound up, and click the link here and let the music video play while you read. The song is "Halo" by Porcupine Tree, one of my favorite bands of all time. The idea for this musical blog-comic came to me while running, thinking about where I want to go in life, and listening to this song.
I hope you enjoy it.
Some people have mood swings, and I kind of envy them because I get lifestyle-swings.
One day I will be an ultra charitable vegan, motivated by an insatiable desire to make the world a better place and to make myself a better person. The only money I will spend is on other people and every action I take is thoroughly analyzed for ethical integrity.
The next day I will want to be mindlessly self-indulgent with an endless appetite for instant gratification. I will only spend money on stuff I don't really need just because I think having it will make me happy...and I won't do any background checks to see if it's fair-trade, environmentally friendly or anything of that nature! (Gasp!)
During the transitional period between these phases I will find myself heinously conflicted about my goals in life, and to some degree who I am as a person.
I know that deep down inside of me that fat and angry teenager still exists, and boy does he want to kick my ass for being such an insufferable perfectionist.
This is about the time that I will drive 40 miles to the nearest shopping mall and buy crap I don't really need. Novelty hats, fart machines, gourmet snack food...pretty much whatever looks awesome, feels good or tastes amazing gets brought home and marveled over it for a few hours.
Things seem pretty awesome at this point. With my belly full of over priced treats and fresh kicks on my feet, I will strut around with more self-content than Oscar Wilde's "Dorian Gray" and Kanye West combined.
It is good to be bad...sometimes.
This phase will last a week at most, and only be borderline obscene for about an afternoon.
Then the guilt sets in and I become aware of how insufferably shallow I've been lately.
I'll start to think about how the cash I spent should have been used to buy food for the animal shelter, or how my energy should be spent on charity and not on working out or running just so I can look good.
I'll get paranoid about karma (and I don't really subscribe to that belief, though I sometimes suspect there is truth to it). I'll scrub the floors to make even for strutting my shit all over the house. I'll pick up trash along the roads while running to put those nice new kicks to good use. ...Then I will stare at the Peace Corp. website and contemplate doing it until I realize that means no internet and lots spiders and/or snakes.
I don't care how good I want to be (or can be), poisonous snakes and gigantic spiders are where I draw the line.
When I'm in full-blown saint mode, I very nearly shit rainbows and radiate sunshine...but after a while this behavior starts to annoy even myself.
Then I start to shift back to being a bit more self-centered.
As I start to transition back to being increasingly focused on myself, I start kicking myself in the face and brooding over how utterly pathetic it is that I can't just stick to one lifestyle.
Does it always have to be one extreme or the other? Can't I buy myself something stupid (yet cool) and do something nice for others for no reason?
Can't I run for charity and write an obscenely detailed blog that focuses mostly on myself?
...Shit. [Cycle of shame]
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About Me
- Matt
- I got my English degree and mountain of student loan debt from the University of Iowa. I like boo berry cereal, martial arts, running and cats.
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