Link Farm and Open Thread, Squirrel Face Edition

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Ampersand

  1. My friend PH Lee’s short story Just Enough Rain has been nominated for a Nebula Award! Congrats, Lee!
  2. Millions of Angry, Armed Americans Stand Ready to Seize Power If Trump Loses in 2024
    Disturbing. Not surprising, but disturbing.
  3. Transgender Teens and Their Families Prepare to Flee Texas – Mother Jones
    “But even if families manage to avoid a knock on the door from child protective services, many worry that the governor’s directive could fuel anti-transgender sentiment and harassment in their communities or discourage doctors from prescribing medically necessary treatments.”
  4. Idaho legislation infringes on transgender youth, families | Idaho Statesman
    “If you want to live in a state that controls you, that removes your choice, that tells you how to raise your children, a state that inserts itself into your family’s private medical decisions, then maybe you should support HB 675, a bill that criminalizes medical experts for providing care to my transgender child. This bill puts politics over the health and well-being of my family and turns my beautiful and thriving daughter into a political prop.”
  5. Telltale Signs of Democratic Backsliding
    “So how can we tell whether a country is likely to experience, or already is experiencing, democratic backsliding? Fortunately, enough research has been done to help us identify key telltale signs…”
  6. Hamilton Flays the Filibuster (and Slams the Senate) | The New Yorker
    Mainly quotes from Federalist no 22. See also.
  7. The Shameful Final Grievance of the Declaration of Independence
    The revolution wasn’t only an effort to establish independence from the British—it was also a push to preserve slavery and suppress Native American resistance.
  8. ‘I Lost Everything’: More Than 160 Former Hertz Customers Are Suing Company Over Claims It Falsified Stolen Car Reports, Landing Some Drivers In Jail
    Hat tip to Gay and Tonic.
  9. What would artificial wombs mean for humans?
    Includes a list of “Ten things that were basic, regular, near-universal experiences for most people in the world’s most technologically advanced societies just four decades ago, all of which are either rare or almost unimaginable today.” And that list could be a lot longer, of course.
  10. In Higher Education, New Educational Gag Orders Would Exert Unprecedented Control Over College Teaching – PEN America
  11. “I loathe these people”: Rick and Morty creator’s backlash against TV’s bad fans | Television | The Guardian
  12. What are words worth? Thoughts on the pardoning of witches – language: a feminist guide
    I think I disagree with one premise of the article – I don’t think that a “pardon” carries with it an assumption of guilt, since legally people can be pardoned because they are innocent. (For example). But it’s an interesting article that covers a lot more ground than my nit-pick with one premise. (Thanks to Mandolin).
  13. All the King’s Women: the Fats – Fantasy Magazine
    “Stephen King hates fat people.”
  14. #MeToo: Eric Schneiderman Says He’s Changed. Is It Enough?
    Medium-long, frustrating article about Schneiderman’s post-#MeToo life, including his ongoing conversations with a friend, herself a survivor of sexual violence, who has been trying to make him understand the harms he caused.
  15. The Strangely Tangled Legal Battle Over a Series of Shark Sculptures Near the Antepavillion in London
    The video is very entertaining. I am on the shark’s side.
  16. Men experience body image issues, too — and this actor says it’s time to talk about it | CBC Radio
    The article begins with the actor, but wanders away and is actually about male body image, especially for older men. “But research shows that men now receive more cultural messages than they have in the past about retaining lean, muscular physiques as they grow older, she said. However, because men are also socially conditioned to be stoic and not emotionally expressive, they don’t talk about body image much…”
  17. Biden’s economic message doesn’t really matter | by Katelyn Burns | Feb, 2022 | Medium
    “…it’s laughably absurd to believe that rural Republicans are storming school board meetings, and vandalizing their liberal neighbors’ property because of ‘defund the police.'”
  18. Two Teenagers Were Fighting. Only the Black One Was Handcuffed. – The New York Times (And an alternate link).
    The video is very clear. By the time the cops arrived, the bigger, white boy was on top; they put the white boy on a sofa while they tackled and handcuffed the black boy.
  19. Rikers Guards Are Punishing Inmates Who Speak Out
    There’s probably no group in the US whose free speech is as routinely smashed as prisoners. For every story like this that gets reported, there’s no way of knowing how many prisoners were more successfully silenced.
  20. “He Died Like an Animal”: Some Police Departments Hogtie People Despite Knowing The Risks | The Marshall Project
  21. No, the war in Ukraine wasn’t because of pronouns | by Katelyn Burns | Feb, 2022 | Medium
    “So if an obsession with pronouns makes a group of people weak, the evidence here is that the far right is the weakest among us, and it’s not even close.”
  22. Florida House passes ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill
    “This bill goes way beyond the text on its page. It sends a terrible message to our youth that there is something so wrong, so inappropriate, so dangerous about this topic that we have to censor it from classroom instruction.” … “…in less than two months this year, conservative state legislators have filed more than 170 anti-LGBTQ bills.”
  23. EU withheld a study that shows piracy doesn’t hurt sales | Engadget
    It’s a 2017 article, but it was news to me, so…
  24. Wyoming Senate Votes to Defund Gender and Women’s Studies
    It still has to get through the Wyoming House, however. In the past a law like this would be unequivocally unconstitutional; I honestly don’t know if the current Supreme Court would agree, if it comes to that.
  25. Opinion | War in Ukraine Threatens World Food Supplies – The New York Times (And an alternative link).
  26. In Missouri, Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman proposes abortion law to stop women from accessing abortions out of state – The Washington Post
    It’s a variation on Texas’ new anti-abortion law; it gives Missouri residents the ability to sue people in other states if they in any way assist someone from Missouri’s abortion.
  27. The Short, Strange, Very Predictable Story of Caroline Calloway’s Snake Oil
    She sounds like someone who’s found a niche that is simultaneously perfect for and incredibly unhealthy for her. There’s something very funny about people angry because they paid for a product called “Snake Oil” and were scammed.
  28. A Vast Web of Vengeance – The New York Times (Alternate link.)
    A sixty-year-old Canadian women uses the internet to get revenge on dozens of innocent people, many of whom she’s never met, and she’s surprisingly and horribly effective at it.
  29. The Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism | The New Republic
    “Slippery slope thinking, fallacious to most, is the reactionary liberal’s primary means of understanding the world around them, and their tendency to catastrophize produces a state of alarm about the spread of dangerous ideas as constant and hysterical as the stereotypical liberal arts student’s. Thus, White Fragility, the widely criticized and lampooned book by social justice educator Robin DiAngelo, can be characterized by Matt Taibbi as not merely counterproductive, misguided, or even harmful but actually “Hitlerian.””
  30. Opinion | Who Should Be Allowed to Transition? – The New York Times
    “Far from accidental, this stereotyping was one of the early aims of the gatekeeping model: to ensure that only people who could “pass” would be allowed to transition. … Conventional attractiveness — and gender conformity — became a proxy for successful transition, a bias that still shows up today.”
  31. The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters | The New Yorker
    “Gonzalez is part of a new transitory workforce, made up largely of immigrants, many undocumented, who follow climate disasters around the country the way agricultural workers follow crops, helping communities rebuild.”
  32. The photos accompanying this link farm are by Steven Weeks and Semyon Borisov on Unsplash

Posted in Link farms | 20 Comments

Excerpt Sampler of Stories from 2022 Weekend Warrior

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Mandolin

My exclusive Patreon content for February collects excerpts from the beginnings of five new stories.

As I do annually, during January and February, I participated in the Codex contest Weekend Warrior run by Vylar Kaftan. Participants write one piece of flash fiction each weekend.

The stories in the Example Sampler are:

“Thing about Timeline Collapse I Decided Not to Post” based on the prompt: write about someone moving who doesn’t want to.

“An Alphabetical Guide to Potential Building Materials for Aspiring Urban Planners” based on the prompt: what is your kingdom made of?

 “The Letters You Lost” based on a suggested title.

“Dear Awesomest Uncle Zarny” based on the prompt: write a letter to an imaginary relative for a special occasion.

“The Thing about Things,” theoretically based on the prompt: choose a random wikipedia page… although I ended up meandering onto an unrelated subject.

(I released the full text of my week two story, “An Alphabetical Guide to Potential Building Materials for Aspiring Urban Planners,” on my Patreon in January.)

These were a lot of fun. I seem to be playing a lot with humor right now! Maybe it’s reading all that Wodehouse and Adams.

Thanks to all my patrons. All of my Patreon content–including a substantial, patron-exclusive offering once a month of something like an original essay, poem or short story–is available to all my patrons, no matter how much or little they contribute. Every contribution is greatly appreciated and makes a big difference to supporting my writing career!

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Cartoon: The News Could Not Be Any More Objective

Posted on February 28, 2022 by Ampersand

If you like these cartoons, please help us make more!

This cartoon was drawn by the one and only Kevin Moore!

Hello from the east coast!  When I originally wrote these words (in December 2021), I was in upstate New York (Ithaca is upstate, right?), visiting my family and basically not leaving my sister’s house at all (because plague).

The trip from Portland was okay. I’m someone who usually enjoys layovers and doesn’t mind a long trip, so I booked a flight that include two 4-5 hour layovers without giving it much thought, bringing the whole trip to about 19 hours – long even for me, but not impossibly long.

What I hadn’t considered is that, although in the past I haven’t much minded spending long trips like that, that’s because in the past I didn’t need to wear a mask the whole time. I don’t find surgical-style masks that uncomfortable – I even sometimes forget that I’m wearing a mask at all – but 19 hours is a reallllllllly long time to go masked. It made me feel very lucky to have a job that I can do unmasked from home.

From a creating-cartoons perspective, the big news about this trip – and by “big,” I mean, “it matters to me and no one else in the entire universe has any reason to care” – is that for the first time in well over a decade I’m traveling without my Windows Cintiq tablet. I recently bought a used IPad Pro I found on Craigslist, and I decided I could do with just the IPad this trip.

Pros: So lightweight! The IPad weighs much less than the Windows tablet I draw most of my comics on (which is a Wacom Mobilestudio Pro 13, for those of you wondering), plus it doesn’t require a power brick to be hauled around. With the Wacom I‘d never take it out of my bag unless I was at a table and knew I’d be planted there for at least an hour, because it was too unwieldy; with the IPad I can take it out, use it for five minutes, move on, etc., without giving it a second thought.

Cons: I actually miss Windows. Maybe it’s because I’ve been using Windows for so long, but many extremely simple tasks that seem intuitive to me on Windows – like knowing where files are saved and being able to open them easily from any compatible program – can be weirdly difficult and finicky on the IPad.

Anyway, so far, so good.

In a column about how news media frames “the homeless problem,” Adam Johnson writes:

This Sept 24 NBC4 Los Angeles segment entitled “Streets of Shame” led off with the anchor telling the viewer that, “NBC 4’s John Cádiz Klemack spoke with some homeowners who say they are looking forward to fewer tents and fewer trash.” Needless to say, no homeless people or homeless advocacy groups were quoted in the story. It’s simply taken for granted that the most important moral constituent in a story about displacing homeless people (some of whom may or may not end up in shelters, according to the report) is the “homeowner,” rather than the party clearly suffering from massive social failures of the state and housing market.

I’ve noticed and read about similar biases in how news reports on labor issues and on sex workers – the sources are almost always business owners, the chamber of commerce, police, “rescue” agencies. Labor unions and sex workers are rarely quoted, and even more rarely are their views used to frame the story, the way business owners and cops‘ views are routinely used to frame stories. And of course, fat acceptance advocates are virtually never part of any story about “the obesity crisis.”

I’ve wanted to do a strip about this for a while, but the ideas I’ve had – all focusing on the news anchors – never seemed right. The issue is fundamentally about the news, and who it leaves out – but doing a strip focused on journalists seemed to just be another example of what I’m trying to criticize. It wasn’t until I thought of focusing on the people the news usually leaves out, listening to the news, that I had a strip that I thought was worth completing.

The protest signs in panel 3 weren’t made up by me; I saw them all in photos of sex worker demonstrations. The “fuck the patriarchy but not for free” sign in particular was too great not to use.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has five panels, each of which shows a different scene.

PANEL 1

Three people sit on the ground, warming themselves around a small fire burning in a large tin can. We can see their tento behind them; from their clothes and context, we can infer that they’re homeless.  All three of them are watching the screen of a smartphone that the woman in the center is holding. A TV Anchor’s voice comes from the smartphone.

ANCHOR: Welcome to WMSM, where we bring you the objective news!

ANCHOR: Tonight’s stories begin with homelessness! Our reporter spoke with homeowners who say they want fewer tents and trash. No homeless people are interviewed.

PANEL 2

A fat man sits in a coffee shop (we can see the coffee shop’s logo on the window behind him). He’s holding an open laptop in his lap, and watching the screen. The News Anchor talks from the computer.

ANCHOR: A new report on how the obesity crisis is crushing America! We’ll interview a weight loss guru and the author of a new diet book.

ANCHOR: But no fat people, let alone fat acceptance advocates.

PANEL 3

A group of protestors, dressed in warm winter clothing, stands outside of a building, holding up protest signs. The signs say “sex work is work!,” “Outlaw poverty not prostitutes,” “rights not rescue,” “nothing about us without us,” and “fuck the patriarchy but not for free.”

In the foreground, a woman with pink hair and cat eye sunglasses is frowning at her smartphone as she watches something on it. A news anchor’s voice comes from her phone.

ANCHOR: We’ll then have a segment about prostitution, which will quote “rescue” groups and the police—

ANCHOR: But no sex workers or sex worker advocates.

PANEL 4

A waitress in a diner is about to pour coffee into a customer’s mug, but has paused and is giving major side eye to a news anchor on a small TV placed on top of a display case filled with pies. The waitress is wearing an apron over her outfit, and a name tag, and we can see a pen tucked behind her ear. This is the first time in this cartoon we’ve seen the anchor’s face, which is grinning hugely.

ANCHOR: Next, the minimum wage: Does it mean you’ll never work again? To find out, we’ll interview restaurant owners—

ANCHOR: But no workers or union organizers.

PANEL 5

This panel shows the news studio where the anchors – there are two of them, the man we saw on TV in panel 4, and a woman sitting next to him at the news desk – are speaking to a large TV camera. A bored looking cameraman stands behind the camera. Behind the anchors, we can see a backdrop showing a graphic of skyscraper silhouettes, and to the side is the backdrop for a weather report. Both anchors have huge, inane grins, and the female anchor is giving the camera the finger.

MALE ANCHOR: WMSM news — we literally could not be any more objective!

FEMALE ANCHOR: And if anyone says otherwise, you won’t see them here!

This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Fat, fat and more fat, Media criticism, Sex work, porn, etc, Union Issues | 3 Comments

Cartoon: Easy Ways to be Cancelled

Posted on February 26, 2022 by Ampersand

If you like these cartoons, please support them on Patreon! Even a little bit unlikely anyone reads this can help!

I wrote this cartoon in July of 2020, and posted a sketch on the Discord. Here’s what it looked like then:

One Discord participant, ChessyPig (hi, ChessyPig!), made a criticism that stuck with me:

I am particularly uncomfortable with the second panel because I know entirely decent people who live in fear of Twitter criticism and think that it means that they’re about to be cancelled, because the hype about cancel culture interacts badly with their anxiety.

That struck me as a very good point. There was some more discussion in the discord, and more good points were made, but I didn’t see a way to fix things that left me with a comic strip I enjoyed. So I did what I often do: I left the cartoon to sit and stew in my “unfinished” folder, either forever, or until I saw how to fix it.

Recently I reread the sketch, and noticed a few things.

* First, the original panel four – based on Alan Dershowitz, in 2018, complaining that his friends in Martha’s Vineyard don’t invite him to parties since he publicly hopped on the Trump train – was about an event that virtually no one remembers.

* Second, the “kicker” panel was the funniest part.

* Third, the “Barry as salesman” thing in panel one really wasn’t adding anything and could be replaced with something funnier.

* And finally, the Twitter panel would be easy to rewrite.

With those things in mind, I rewrote the cartoon – deleting the original panel 4 and “promoting” the kicker panel to panel 4 – and felt much better about it. I also added a new kicker panel to prebut the “what about ordinary people who have lost jobs?” criticism.

Panel two could apply to a number of anti-woke academics, but I had in mind British philosopher and transphobe Kathleen Stock, who more than once complained specifically about the terrible burden of having her views criticized within academia. For example:

[Stock] becomes visibly distressed is describing a research talk she was due to give her department in April. Some graduate students organised a rival trans solidarity event, with a guest speaker critical of Stock, and 40 of her colleagues chose that event over her talk.

This event was often included in lists claiming Stock had been “run off campus” by “cancel culture.”

The character’s appearance is loosely based on Stock’s appearance. Since it’s not important that readers recognize Stock (or even know who she is) – the character is inspired by Stock, not Stock herself – I didn’t sweat getting a perfect resemblance. I don’t think Stock wears glasses, but my character does because I thought glasses popping of her face would look funny.

In a similar fashion, the panel three character’s appearance and complaint is loosely inspired by Andrew Sullivan. (I could have just as easily used Bari Weiss, without modifying the text at all.)

In panel four, I got to draw the multiple-waving-arms effect, which is always fun. Especially drawing on a computer, since doing things like fading arms out and adding white “zip” lines on top is so easy.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, each showing a different character and scene. There’s also a tiny kicker panel, below the bottom of the cartoon.

PANEL 1

This panel shows a man with neatly-combed hair wearing a black vest over an orange long-sleeved shirt. He has an expression of intense concentration, and is clasping his hands almost as if praying. Above him, in the panel, is a lengthy caption.

CAPTION: Are you a wealthy and famous reactionary, but somehow your SJW boss hasn’t fired you? Not to worry! You can still be a martyr for free speech with these

CAPTION CONTINUES IN MUCH LARGER FONT: Easy ways to be CANCELLED!

MAN: Please please let me be a victim!

PANEL 2

A woman wearing a striped shirt, dark orange pants, and comfortable-looking boots is on a city sidewalk. She’s jumping in shock as she stares at something on her tablet screen, her eyeglasses popping off her face. Her expression is extremely alarmed.

WOMAN: Other academics are criticizing my work! That can only mean…

WOMAN (much larger font): I’ve been CANCELLED!

PANEL 3

A strong-looking bald man with a white beard and mustache sits at a desk, with a coffee cup and a laptop on his desk. He’s speaking directly to the readers, shaking his fist in the air.

MAN: My co-workers don’t like me so I’m resigning to start my own incredibly lucrative media site! In other words

MAN (much larger font) I’ve been CANCELLED!

PANEL 4

A man stands on a hillside in a park or some other fairly tame natural area. He’s pretty distant from the “camera” and is speaking (well, shouting) directly to readers. He’s waving his arms so fast and frantically that it looks like he’s got six arms.

MAN: My book got panned? CANCELLED!

MAN: My $20 million Netflix special was criticized? CANCELLED!

MAN: Mocked in a cartoon? CANCELLED!

TINY KICKER PANEL UNDER THE BOTTOM OF THE CARTOON

The white-bearded man from panel 3 speaks directly to the reader, while indicating himself with a thumb.

MAN: Hey! Some non-rich people have actually been fired! Which clearly validates my claim to be a victim!

This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 3 Comments

Cat Pictures! Pete in a Sink

Posted on February 25, 2022 by Mandolin

drawing of a cat in a sink

This is one of the images I used in Scragamuffin, the chapbook I released as October’s exclusive Patreon reward. I thought it might be fun to release the pictures with the photos that inspired them.

When we lived in Bakersfield, our master bathroom had two sinks, which meant there was always an extra for a cat to flop in. It was probably summer when this picture was taken since Pete’s mane seems relatively short. I like the mad look in his eye.

drawing of a cat in a sink

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Cartoon: Capitalism can Innovate Around Anything!

Posted on February 22, 2022 by Ampersand

If you like these cartoons, please support them! Each $2 pledge really helps! Do it or I’ll buy a puppy from a puppy farm instead of going to a shelter!

This cartoon was inspired by a Paul Krugman column that was published in August, “The Bad Economics of Fossil Fuel Defenders.” Krugman wrote:

…there is a remarkable inconsistency between conservatives’ expressed faith in the power of private initiative and their assertion that climate policies will paralyze the economy. Businesses, the right likes to tell us, are engines of innovation and adaptation, rising to meet any challenge. Yet somehow the same people who laud private-sector creativity insist that businesses will shrivel up and die if confronted with new regulations or emission fees.

In fact, a number of studies have shown that government projections of the effects of new environmental or safety regulations consistently overestimate their costs, precisely because businesses respond to new rules and incentives by innovating, finding ways to reduce compliance costs. And industry projections of the adverse effects of regulation are far worse, typically overstating the costs to a ludicrous degree.

I made a process illustration. I’ve done these a few times before, because I honestly love looking at other cartoonists’ process illustrations, so I figure some of you will be interested too.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, plus an additional tiny “kicker” panel under the bottom of the cartoon.

The cartoon shows two businessmen-types walking on a city street. One of them is wearing a red bow-tie and a sky-blue suit; the other is wearing an ordinary tie and a duller suit, with a desaturated green jacket and black pants. The bow-tie guy is totally bald – probably shaves his head – and has a van dyke beard and mustache. The regular-tie guy has blond hair and is cleanshaven, and is looking at his smart phone as he walks.

PANEL ONE

The two of them walk on the sidewalk, Blonde looking at his phone, Bowtie raising his arms enthusiastically as he talks, grinning. (Not important to the cartoon: In the background, across the street, a smiling businessman talks to a smiling man with red skin, horns, and a tail, who is holding up a clipboard. And a woman in a second story window leans out to smile at a largish bird which is hovering and looking back at her.)

BOWTIE: The most amazing thing about capitalism is the creative genius of entrepreneurs!

PANEL 2

A closeup on just Bowtie, who looks overjoyed. His eyes are drawn as stars, and the air around him is filled with stars and dollar signs.

BOWTIE: If there’s profit to be made, there’s nothing capitalism can’t do! Feed the world! Create the internet! Create modern medicine!

PANEL 3

A shot of the two of them walking. Bowtie keeps on grinning and talking, his fists pumped in front of him in a pleased sort of way. Blonde reads something from the cell phone he’s holding.

BOWTIE: There’s no problem that capitalism can’t innovate around!

BLONDE: Hey, look at this: some senators want new regulations to protect the climate.

PANEL 4

Bowtie jumps straight up into the air (cartoon code for “I am very surprised”), clutching his face in his hands, his mouth and eyes huge in an expression of enormous dismay. He is yelling. Blonde, surprised by Bowtie’s big reaction, is stumbling back from Bowtie a little.

BOWTIE: NOOOO! CAPITALISM IS DOOMED!

TINY KICKER PANEL UNDER THE BOTTOM OF THE STRIP

Bowtie is speaking directly to the readers, his face still showing distress.

BOWTIE: Even if capitalism miraculously survives, some rich people will be slightly less rich! I can’t imagine a greater tragedy!

This cartoon on patreon

Posted in Capitalism, Cartooning & comics, Environmental issues | 1 Comment

Cat Pictures! Ru Mane

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Mandolin

drawing of cat looking at camera

Cat drawing! This is Ru, the cat of my friend and administrative assistant, A Humphrey Lanham who kindly allowed me to use the photo. Full-grown here with a fabulous mane.

photo of brown tabby with pink nose and white chest looking at camera

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Cartoon: The Purple People Next Door

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Ampersand

This cartoon is by me and Kevin Moore.

If you like these cartoons, please support them on Patreon! Each $2 pledge really helps us keep making new cartoons.

Kevin’s comments on drawing this strip:

The thing I got into was thinking about how purple people would actually look. I thought it might be funny to make them really “normal” — or “normie”, very suburban and conventional in hairstyle and clothing. You’ll notice that their clothes are not also purple, but just ordinary clothes, albeit cheery and colorful. And they’re really upbeat in demeanor, enthusiastically making a new friend with their neighbor. I could see an introvert taking a small exception to them, but they’re friendly good-hearted people. This makes their neighbor’s discomfort with his bigotry funny. You should cringe, dude.

I also made sure that their skin tones differed, much like any other skin color phenotype. And I tried to give their faces ethnic characteristics, but nothing that would be too stereotypical or too indicative of a real ethnic group. I wanted to leave that open to interpretation.

The “I don’t care if someone’s Black, white, yellow or purple” cliché is something I’ve been hearing since at least the 1980s. And it’s almost always said as a lead-in to saying something awful.

I was reminded of the cliché back in July, when Michael Harriot tweeted about it.

“I don’t care if you’re black, white, green or purple…” – People who never say stupid shit about white, green or purple people.

That made me think about the kind of person who’d say this actually meeting purple people, and that led to this cartoon.

 

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. All four panels show the same scene: A suburban-looking back yard, surrounded by a chest-high wooden fence. On one side of the fence is a dad-looking white man, wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt (blue with yellow stripes) and brown shorts.

On the other side of the fence are a woman and a man, both of whom have vividly purple skin. His skin is somewhat lighter in color, and he’s completely bald (I joked to Kevin, when I saw his sketches, that Mr. Purple probably shaves his head so people won’t know he’s going gray). He’s wearing an orange t-shirt. Mrs Purple has neatly styled neck-length purple-black hair, and is wearing a reddish orange t-shirt with a squared-off collar. Throughout this cartoon, Mr. and Mrs. Purple have big, cheerful smiles.

PANEL ONE

Polo Shirt Guy is talking on his cell phone, looking quite cheerful, as he flips a burger on his barbeque. We can see some toys and a sandbox on the ground nearby. Behind him, Mr and Mrs Purple have walked up to the fence and are talking to him, but he doesn’t see them yet.

POLO SHIRT: It’s like I always say… I don’t care if someone’s Black, white or even purple. Doesn’t matter to me!

THE PURPLES (speaking in unison): We’re so glad to hear you say that.

PANEL TWO 

Polo Shirt Guy has turned his head and seen the Purples, and he’s taken aback. Both Mr and Mrs Purple are waving their hands at Polo Shirt.

POLO SHIRT: What? Who? What? I mean… What?

MR PURPLE: We’re Sally and Drew Purple. We just moved in next door!

PANEL THREE

Polo Shirt Guy has turned to face the Purples; he’s sweating and looks utterly distresed, even though he’s trying to be polite. He waves back at them, not noticing that he’s dropped his cell phone. Behind him in the background, we can see a tree with a tire swing, and a pink tricycle.

We’re looking at the scene from behind Mr and Mrs Purple, and can’t see Mrs Purple’s expression. Mr Purple is still smiling big and seems completely unaware of Polo Shirt’s distress.

POLO SHIRT: Oh. I see. Uh… Welcome to the neighborhood.

MR PURPLE: Hey, I see you have kids! Us too – we should schedule a playdate!

PANEL FOUR

Polo Shirt turns partly away from the Purples, his fists pressed against his chin and lower lip, his eyes huge, sweat flying. He looks even more distressed than in panel 3 as he babbles.

The Purples still give no sign of showing distress, although Mr Purple looks perhaps suspiciously amused. Mrs Purple grins as she talks.

POLO SHIRT: Oh! Uh, I don’t know… Scheduling and you know, um…

MRS PURPLE: Wouldn’t it be a hoot if our kids grew up and married each other?

This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Race, racism and related issues | 3 Comments

Haiku for February 17

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Mandolin

background image of foggy hill with a haiku in the foreground

In early dimness,

a quiet, unmoving sky

chills, waiting for dusk.

Posted in haiku, Poetry | Comments Off on Haiku for February 17

January Fifteenth, My Forthcoming Novella, Front Cover

Posted on February 15, 2022 by Mandolin

I’m still really excited about my upcoming novella, January Fifteenth. It’s coming out from Tor.com in just a few months.

I really like the cover:

book cover of a person walking down an alley with an umbrella and the following text: January Fifteenth, “Money Changes everything–except people.” Rachel Swirsky, “One of the best speculative writers of the last decade.” –John Scalzi

I really like the cover! It reminds me of one of my favorite paintings,”Paris Street; Rainy Day” by Gustave Caillebot.

image of oil painting "Paris Street; Rainy Day" by French artist Gustave Caillebotte with several people in walking the street of 1800s Paris
January Fifteenth tracks four points of view, each in a different part of the United States of America, on the day when the government disburses Universal Basic Income. There’s a young mother in upstate New York; a freelance journalist in Chicago; a wealthy college student at a resort in Colorado; and a pregnant teenager who is part of an FLDS cult in Utah. None of them quite look like this gentleman in the rain, but he could be part of their world, a page or two away.

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