As you may have figured out, I’m the “Kevin” mentioned in the third panel with reference to a masturbation joke. This tickles me to no end. Many thanks to Chris Baldwin, who is turning his diary into a daily comic strip through the month of May 2008.

Tags: chrisbaldwin, comics, cartoons, masturbation

Tags: incontempt, politics, john mccain, cartoons, comics, political cartoons

It is too easy to blog. It is too easy to set up multiple blogs. It is too easy to mirror your content across several blogging platforms at once. It is too easy to add widgets and themes and plug-ins and ads and feeds and mobile connectivity and galleries and on and on and on.

These days I have a livejournal, a wordpress.com account, a blogger account, a vox account, a myspace account and a facebook account. To the last account, the same posts that appear in the first three accounts upload to the notes and Mirrorblog sections. If I could figure out how to do the same with vox and myspace (and I am sure there is a way) the same content would populate all six blogs.

Why am I doing this? Well, partly I am experimenting. I have been noodling around with blogging platforms to see which ones I like best, what strengths and weaknesses each application has, what I feel most comfortable working with, and what offers me the most features. Also, the brilliant Rory Bowman has generously provided space on his server to play with Movable Type, the first blogging application I had ever played with back in the days of the now defunct blargblog.

It is probably no surprise that I am going with WordPress. Over the next month, in fact, I will be using it to design three different websites: Mooretoons, In Contempt, and Wanderlost. For the latter two I will be using the Comicpress theme, modified to my special needs and with some help from Barry Deutsch, who has done an excellent job at Hereville. Movable Type is a wonderful application, but the learning curve is just too high and time is just too precious in my work/parenting/creating schedule.

The roll-out is going to be about a month. So I am not changing much visibly yet. The only thing noticeable will be the absence of Wanderlost updates until June 12, 2008. I hate to do it, but I need the time to develop these sites and write the next story. I don’t wanna hack the artwork, or put up a shoddy story - or shoddy websites for that matter. The end result is going to be a Wanderlost site with its own domain name (wanderlostcomics.com, not sheldonthepig.com) and with a workable, feature-rich site.

It’s gonna be so freakin’ boss, duuuude, ya gotta believe me!

As for facebook, livejournal, etc. - yeah, I’m keeping all that. I use facebook for totally different reasons these days (like my scrabulous addiction), I love my livejournal fwends, and myspace is a necessary evil.

Like I said, it is way too easy to do these things.

Tags: blogmigration, wanderlost, in contempt, mooretoons, wordpress, web developing, social software

Over all, this week has sucked.

I won’t go into details, but if you have been looking forward to seeing new cartoons up at Wanderlost or In Contempt, you have been sorely disappointed. And it’s all cuz my week has sucked. It has sucked like I stepped over the event horizon of a black hole and found myself accelerating toward higher and higher concentrations of suckitude, the gravitational force tearing my body and eventually my cellular structure and my very atoms apart through a process physicists call the Spaghettification of Suck. The end point was, of course, a Singularity of Suck.

I think - I hope - I have emerged on the other side into a calmer dimension. I don’t expect to see my embryonic form hovering above me or my ancient self in a giant white room. I just expect a lot less of the factors that contributed to the Suck That This Week Was.

Let’s try again next week, shall we?

Let’s!!

Tags: thisweek sucked

Remember how yesterday I said something like this about Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign?

If Clinton were running a campaign that did not consistently appeal to lowest common denominator Republican talking points and to the worst aspects of American racism, I’d happily encourage her to carry on. As it is, it’s become a ginormous headache.

How nice of Clinton to provide us with a fresh example.

“There was just an AP article posted that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Em-phas-sis mine. I heard it on the radio this morning, driving along with a kind of drop-jaw stupor, so I’m surprised that I’m not wrapped around a tree right now. But Barry’s excellent round-up of outrage, annoyance and analysis reminded me of it, so I thought it best to pass it on. It’s actually really good reading, quite informative, and amusing - all necessary antidotes to the poison.

Tags: HillaryClinton, Barack Obama, presidential politics, racism

From The Superficial. Which I am merely citing, not endorsing. The same goes for this other link, which has another repulsive doll to wretch at. Seriously, look at those anorexic legs! Those narrow-set heavily-painted cat eyes! But don’t gaze too close lest thou lotheth thy thoul.

All said, as nasty as the doll is, nothing tops Paris.

Tags: parishilton, youth culture, sexism

Narrowly squeaking by in Indiana last night, Senator Hillary Clinton has donated another $6.4 million of her own moolah to a campaign that her own spokespeople admit will not reach the necessary number of delegates to secure the nomination, even if they succeed in seating the delegates from Michigan and Florida.

Earlier in the call, Clinton officials were asked to lay out the math by which seating the delegates from Michigan and Florida would get Mrs. Clinton significantly closer to the nomination. The reporter asking the question, from the Detroit News, said that it appeared, based on estimates of pledged delegates, that even if those delegations were fully counted, “it’s likely you’ll come up behind.”

Mr. Singer said that even if the delegates were counted, the campaign would still be about 100 delegates shy of the number needed. The implication was that the gap could not be made up, even if she wins more delegates in the remaining contests, as she is expected to do. He also said he expected the Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida to ensure that all voters are represented.
Asked again if it was correct that the Clinton campaign would still not reach the full number of delegates, Mr. Singer said, “That is correct.”

Howard Wolfson and Singer argue that “the process must play itself out” to ensure all votes are counted, no one is disenfranchised and democratic values are upheld. Or something like that. Hot air. This has become a vanity campaign, a multi-million dollar venture in self-aggrandizement. As my friend Amanda commented to me this morning, “She’s turning into Mitt Romney.” Given Clinton’s tendency to echo whatever Republican talking point she can use against her Democratic rival, that characterization ain’t much of a stretch.

The only compelling argument I have heard for Clinton to remain in the race is the history-making aspect of her status as a woman coming within an hair’s-breadth of winning a major party nomination. I have a great deal of sympathy for this argument, because a) who knows when a chance like this will emerge again, b) were the tables reversed, Senator Barack Obama would be in a similar situation and faced with similar calls to drop out prematurely, and c) Clinton and Obama both have been handed the tricky task of blazing trails for their respective identities as a woman and as an African-American, so that (to extend this much extended metaphor) they are both operating without a map of defined trails. Women of all ages deserve a pioneering candidate who will provide an example to emulate, someone whose history will demonstrate the political power of competent and hard-working women. Women deserve someone who will speak directly to issues that affect them, something Clinton has done significantly better than Obama.

Yet at some point Clinton’s value as a history maker has been undermined by Clinton the typical pandering Democrat, Clinton the Neo-Liberal who runs to the Right when its convenient, Clinton the Neo-Con Dupe, Clinton the bourgeois white feminist willing to exploit racial divisions to her advantage. If Clinton were running a campaign that did not consistently appeal to lowest common denominator Republican talking points and to the worst aspects of American racism, I’d happily encourage her to carry on. As it is, it’s become a ginormous headache.

Tags: hillaryclinton, barack obama, presidential politics, racism, sexism

From Tom Spurgeon’s photo gallery of cartoonists at Stumptown 2008.

Tags: stumptown, comics culture, tom spurgeon

Which sounds like the lamest promotional gimmick ever. “C’mon down to the Hut of Contempt for No Strip Tuesday! We got nothin’! Nothing is half off! Nothing must go-go-go!”

Anyhoo, my dear wife took ill today, so I had no spare time to cartoonize the political situation. Admittedly, the Neverending Primary thing is not inspiring, and some of the other ideas I have kicking around require more time than I had tonight to put them together. Thursday looks good. So long as I don’t catch Jenn’s virus.

I really need to stop working 6 days a week.

Tags: incontempt

Click the image to see the whole cartoon.

Tags: wanderlost, sheldon, writing hiatus, cartoons, comics