Rebuild That Server

I had a different strip planned for today. I thought of it last night, but then could not remember this morning. So instead, I pulled one from my backlog file. By the time I decided what I wanted the minor characters to say, this turned into a total geekfest cartoon. The trickiest part was finding the last geek insult that would be worse for a hardware developer than running on a slow CPU.

Donkey Bomb

I almost did not publish today's Clarity of Vision. I only justified it to myself by the fact that a$$ refers to the donkey and nothing else. I saw this in yesterday's AP news and the comment immediately jumped into my head. Now I will start watching for other real news stories that can be easily lampooned.

Statistically Speaking

This comic came from reading about the percentage of US citizens that support the AZ Immigration Law in the newspaper vs another company's poll on the web. So I wondered what would a guy who rates everything in his life against stats do if the poll numbers did not match what he had in his life.

Retro TV

Now I think anyone might have guessed where a strip called Retro TV might go. The name just makes me wonder what would happen if it go makes us mentally revert to a "simpler" day and time. Then, I had to remember the shows my kids watched and what would happen if an adult were a kid (or infant) again.

All Projects Green

Even as I am publishing this, i am going back and forth over one other idea I had planned to include. The primary joke here is that management can make what we feel are unreasonable demands that seem to defy logic. From the 50,000 foot level, it does seem as if we could work with team members and get all delayed projects to catch back up to the original due dates. However, team interaction and delay reasons are usually complex and not easily corrected.

My original notes for this said we could make projects green by bribing the team that generates the reports. I almost used that in panel 3. However, then I am proposing two silly options to achieve the management goal instead of one real option and one silly.

Money Where Your Mouth Is

Somewhere, someone reminded me of the "Put your money where your mouth is" phrase and I thought it would be a funny thing to hear at a dentist office. Then, as I created the strip, I wanted some dentist office name behind the characters and found Cavity Search as an over-the-top idea.

Bus Trip

No, this is not about my personal political leanings or opinions. It was a comment on giving back to the California cities that are boycotting AZ. Let's have them put their public money where their political mouth is. It is also a play on what the signs say vs what the bus says.

Airline Fees

This strip has been planned for over three weeks, ever since Spirit (I think) Airlines announced they might institute fees to use the bathroom. So, I knew it was a good candidate for lampooning. I quickly found the Go-Dough phrase, but could not think of how to end it until yesterday.

Color Commentator

I often find that word play is a direction my mind seems to prefer. So today, I fall back on a typical twist on how the word color is used. As I was searching for what the final panel should contain, I also tied in the first part of the state name Colorado.

Don't Sweat It

A friend at work told me almost this exact story. Well, at least the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff purchase and something was wrong with the book part of the cartoon is based on fact.

Dentist Project

Yes, it is an old joke, but it is project related, and seems so much like something Blue would actually do. I needed a break for recent political humor and this one always makes me smile. I imagine I tell it once every six months or so. Well, probably anytime someone says 2:30.

Illegal Irrigation

Like most people, I have personal feelings about decisions in the state or country that could impact me. Unlike most people, I also evaluate what I hear to see if anything funny can be taken from it as fodder for a cartoon. Today is a comment on the uproar in AZ (and the country, it seems) about SB1070 allowing police to ask about immigration status if they stop people.

The verbiage made me remember Emily Litella from Saturday Night Live. So, I confused immigration with irrigation, and then added a final comment about both things being types of floods. Thanks to Gilda Radner for the idea.

Golf Lesson 2

This could be the end of this series. I know a certain golfer's dalliances and hitting a tree with his car, but that's about it. I do like the concept of using his sport to make fun of his situation, though. For now, this is all I thought of for Clarity of Vision cartoons.

TSA

Overall, I think the TSA is doing a fine job. Still, when you hear about agents commenting on what they see in the body scan, it casts doubts an the alleged anonymity of the information revealed. And based on what we heard them saying, I had to comment via today's cartoon.

Golf 1

OK, I waited a respectable period before invoking the Tiger Wood's scandal. Now, what if we used the situation, but in the context of a golf lesson? This first cartoon plays off the dual meaning of the word lie.

Billy the Kidder - Girlfriend

Yes, I do know that these are old jokes. This is Billy the Kid. He's a bad comic. That was part of my mindset for this series. This is the final one. If I had artistic skills, I would have actually placed the hat on his head. Of course, I also would not use standard Visio people, either.

Billy the Kidder - Horsing Around

I got on this Billy the Kidder kick and cannot seem to finish it. Today's cartoon is more of a shtick routine from a stand-up comedian, but it fit the theme. I suspect there might be one more day of Billy, but we'll see how I feel.

Billy the Kidder - The Sequel

A concept like Billy the Kidder provides a conduit for several cowboy or wild west jokes. So of course, I had to do at least one more cartoon along these lines. The struggle for this one was what the final quip needed to be. The words quick draw obviously could be interpreted two ways, which was the primary gist of this strip. However, what would either a comedian or Billy the Kid do after the misinterpretation. Since I did not want to actually have him joking about killing, I settled for a shooting in the leg. I also added the option of a quick drawl contest.

Billy the Kidder

I wish I had some clever tale about how I came up with this. Maybe watching a John Wayne movie or The Rifleman TV series. No, not that I recall. I just thought of the title and wrote the strip. No insight into my creative process there.