Consulting the guru

This is great news!

Mental Health

Do I come here often? Me? Listen, I'm not exactly allowed to talk about it. Look, lady, you seem nice, but I'm actually on the job. Can't talk. 

No, I don't enjoy it. I have to sit here all night with this drink and somehow pretend I've been drinking it all along, but I can't even have more than a few sips. Who am I fooling? Would you buy that?

Of course you wouldn't. But the FB– I mean, the agency I work for– they won't even pay for a single, lousy acting class. They wouldn't send someone into some Latin American country to install a puppet dictator without giving him some weapons, you know? But this is exactly the same thing. 

And that's why this sting operation is going to be a total flop. Not my fault. 

Learn to say no

Honest answers

Remorse

Mental Health

The Botulism Twins advanced, and George took three involuntary steps back before running into a wall. One grinned (and no one could ever tell them apart) and stretched his length of chain tight between his hands, while the other spit out the butt of a cigar. George was pretty sure his seconds were numbered, and he couldn't think of a single way out of this mess.

But they do

Editor's note: Yet. We don't know yet why they deserve unkindness...but when we find out, they'll no longer be strangers. 

On a more serious note, everyone "deserves" unkindness for something or other; good human beings realize that forgiveness has the same ability to place all on even footing, but without requiring everyone to suffer more than they already have. There, there's my sermon for the day.

What Saturdays are for

Accuracy

Gushing sentimentality

I know this is uncharacteristically sentimental and honestly, pretty dumb, but there's really only one reason behind it: DINOSAURS. 

Ogling

Nice try

Drastic measures

Mental Health

Robust, they called it. Bombastic, even. The reviewers were very positive about Chartreuse's cannonball, even when soaking wet from its aftersplash.

Of little consequence

I'm hard of hearing in that way

Blah blah blah, I'm lazy and this is a re-run.

Overcoming obstacles

We interrupt this webcomic to bring you news from one of the author's other lives: today he will begin the 24 Hours Project, in which he will attempt to write and record an entire album between noon today and noon tomorrow. You can witness this fascinating disaster in progress by reading that blog or by following the Livingstonian (band) facebook page. And now, back to your regularly-scheduled program:

A fair trade

Bonus round: I was asked to "please hold" while trying to reach a certain deadbeat doctor, and do I drew a portrait of said individual:

Indirect treatment

Sacred duty

Mental Health

Adepts of the Order of St. Sycophantus were charged with the task of praising the Lord so immoderately, day and night, that it would distract Him from the potentially sinful acts being done ostensibly in His name by their very pragmatic brethren in the other orders who had, after all, a church to run on earth, with human beings and their free will constantly running amok.

This is one of the first ever Lobsterman drawings, from early 2005.
I think that may have been a darker time for me.

The council has spoken

Before coming to this conclusion, the cartoonist attempted to be funny, and really only succeeded in being weird, as seen below:

Obligatory on this day

More great parenting tips

Best decision I ever made

Mental Health

Don't take this the wrong way, stranger, but just from the way you rob banks, I'm pretty sure I love you.

Naming day

Mental Health

After a long and passionate debate, it was decided that the newly-found stray dog would be named Fecal Incontinence, for reasons which were all too obvious to the kids assembled in the tree house.

Not really a surprise

Mental Health 

[Editor's warning: this is approximately 50x longer than my own attention span usually permits; if you get tired, experience irregular heartbeats or chest pains while reading, or currently have extraterrestrial parasites, please exercise caution in reading the following]

Paul Kugelman, aged 44, was a mildly successful personal trainer and life coach. What he loved most in the world was to arise early in the morning, before dawn, and to jog down empty streets and imagine that he was the only one in the entire suburb, or even the greater metropolitan area. His feet would go clop against the asphalt (he refused to ever run on a sidewalk; that was for pedestrians, and he was a jogger) and in the cooler months, the steam of his breath would shoot from his nostrils and Paul would be very close to perfect contentment.

The rest of his life was far from unpleasant, and suffered only in comparison to his morning jogs. He rarely thought about any of it; it held no particular interest for him. At work, as at home, he was courteously absent, perhaps preoccupied with some thought the world was unable to read.

The thought was, in fact, this: Paul Kugelman had decided to become a horse.

This idea had snuck up on him, but once he took a close look at it, he realized it had been a long time coming. The jogs he loved so much were really just his inner horse emerging from the captivity it so often felt. Becoming a horse would free him, liberate him beyond the power of any of the advice he gave his clients.

He had been aware of the sacrifices it would cost him. He had studied it out, long ago when he was only contemplating the transformation, had gone so far as to leave the confines of his own mind and had asked inscrutably vague questions of people he considered wise, spinning counterfactual situations upwards until they (the supposedly wise) invariably looked at him in the way one regards the mentally unwell, with pity mixed with revulsion, and he was forced to return the question to his own inner mental workshop. He could not bring himself to ask them about the specific case which presented itself to him, knowing full well that this would bring their judgments of his sanity further away from the gentle distancing and towards well-meaning phone calls to social services and other such institutions.

Paul is not the protagonist of this story, but he does re-enter it later, in a way which is quite unexpected and terrifically convenient.

Thanks for asking

Headless in Seattle

Idiomatically speaking

This re-run is brought to you by the year 2005:

You will not win

Interrogation Tuesday results are in. Thanks to all ten of you who responded.

The journey of understanding

Mental Health

At the beginning of a new candy bar, Gus felt so much optimism for the world and for his own place in it. As he chewed through the middle of the chocolate and sugar, however, he began to grow disillusioned. Was this really all there was? As he finished chewing the very  last of it, and threw the wrapper to the ground of his dingy apartment, Gus realized once more that his entire life was like that discarded wrapper on the ground.

Go to the park

I drew this, and then decided to google "bird leash". Then I was sad.

I mean, I drew it because it was a mildly odd idea that grew in sadness the more I thought about it. So finding out that it's a real thing, that people buy off of Amazon or try to produce homemade, kind of ruined humanity for me today.

Employment opportunities

Mental Health

The evil Dr. Vandertramp peeked out from under the ill-fitting and remarkably itchy cowl, which he was wearing in order to remain undetected during this routine assassination. He had been irritated when required to receive the confession of several parishioners, all astonished by this new, profanity-muttering priest. Now, however, he waited in peace, and that was one thing at which Dr. Vandertramp excelled.