Giving the poor sick dog a break.

Allow me to get the obligatory "I'm a bad blogger / What a slacker" paragraph out of the way right up front. Hmm. Okay. Done.

So I'm sick right now. I wouldn't say I'm quite "sick as a dog," I'm just regular sick. No dogs were harmed in the qualifying of this sickness. What dog are we refering to when we say that anyway? In my experience I've actually known fewer sick dogs than I have sick people, and I never got the impression that dogs are known for their tendancy to be extremely sick. (well, eating your own turds is sick, and dogs do that, but that's not the kind of sick I mean.) So why is it that when we are really, really sick we say "sick as a dog?" I propose that we cut dogs everywhere a little slack and amend this phrase to read "sick as the dog who is really, really fucking sick." I further propose that we allow this new phrase to be shortened to "sick as the dog," assuming that we all understand that the dog in question is the one who is really, really fucking sick.

Glad we're all agreed. So, to correct myself, I am currently sick, though not quite "sick as the dog."

It's one of those coughing, stuffed up kinds of sick, as opposed to the barfing, fevery kind of sick. For those of you keeping score.

Ever notice that whenever you are sick, and tell someone about it, they always say "Oh yeah, there's something going around." And they always know two other people that are sick. I've been wondering about this. Do we really think that we always get sick right in the middle of some sweeping epidemic of sickness, or is this a variation of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing? I propose (since I seem to be on a proposal roll in this blog) that whenever you are sick, it is inevitable that whoever you tell will know, in their vast circle of aquaintances, two people who are also sick, or at least "a little under the weather." I think that at any given time enough people are sick out there to create this effect. Therefore I think it's pointless to say "There's something going around" because there is always something going around. Let's take the precious time we save by not uttering this phrase and use it to spread the love instead. For example, you could pay the person a compliment:

MAN: "I'm sick today. Sick as the dog."
WOMAN: "That's a lovely cumberbund."

See how much more pleasant that is?

So. To recap:

a) Sick as the dog
b) Cumberbund

Now honestly, don't you prefer it when I don't write in this thing?

Greetings from the Sunshine State!

Florida is the Sunshine State, right? If it isn't, then please strike the above title and change it to the less snappy "greetings from Florida."

Hey Blog-o-philes. I'm visiting my dad in sunny and beautiful (stated with no irony! It is sunny! It is Beautiful!) Northern Florida. I could wax lyrical about how great it is down here, how nice it is to hang out with my dad, etc... And perhaps I will at another time, but today I want to take just a second to mourn the passing of Will Eisner.

Will Eisner died yesterday in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He was 87. You can find out more about him here, but suffice it to say that in the world of comics and graphic novels there is no one more important or influential. Not only did he do more in his life to enhance the art form of comic books than anyone alive, but he also was the first and best to attempt to understand the mechanics of it. His book on sequential graphic art is the definitive textbook for people who do what I do.

Other people are far more qualified than me to extoll his virtues, so I'll just tell a story... It's the only Will Eisner story I have. I never even got to meet the man.

A few years ago, I was doing the artwork for a comics adaptation of The Wind in the Willows which never wound up seeing print. The publisher took some of my pages down to Bethesda to The Small Press Expo and showed them around. He called me a few days later to tell me Will Eisner had seen the pages and liked them. I can't describe what a boost this was for me as an artist. Understand that I'm sure this was no more than Will flipping through the pages for a second and saying something like "These are nice." I mean, it was a passing thing. But such is the power of Will Eisner. Just knowing that a living legend like him, a man whose work I have so admired had actually held some of my art in his hands and had something complimentary to say... I was floating for weeks.

Like I said, I never got to meet him, but in that one fleeting compliment, he did more for my confidence that a lifetime of feedback from other people. Thank you Will, for everything you did for the art form, and for me.